No Permanent Majorities in America

By Michael Barone

January 03, 2009

As we approach the change from a Republican to a Democratic administration, I have been thinking about the differences in the basic character of our two historic parties -- the oldest and third oldest free political parties in the world (number two, at least by my count, is the British Conservative Party).

Democrats are now hoping that their party can achieve something like permanent majority status. They can take heart that their presidential candidate won by a wider margin and their party has larger congressional majorities than the Republicans had when they entertained similar hopes four years ago. But there is reason for caution, and not just because the Republicans fell so far short. And the reason lies in the difference in the basic character of the parties.

 

The Republican Party throughout our history has been a party whose core constituency has been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Northern Protestants. Today, it means white married Christians. Yet such people, however typical, have never made up a majority in our culturally and regionally diverse nation.

The Republican core constituency tends to be cohesive and coherent (though sometimes, like now, quarrelsome). But it has almost never been by itself enough to win. As some Democrats like to remind you, Republicans have lost the popular vote for president in four of the last five elections.

The Democratic Party throughout our history has been the party whose core constituencies have been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be something other than typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Southerners and big city Catholics. Today, it means blacks and singles and seculars and those with postgraduate degrees. Such people, while atypical, potentially make up a majority. But they often do not have a lot in common -- and when they have differences over highly visible political issues, they are hard to hold together.

As some Republicans like to remind you, Democrats have lost seven of the 11 presidential elections since their landslide victory in 1964.

Partisan enthusiasts look forward to their side achieving lasting majority status. Others might take counsel from the political scientist David Mayhew, who casts doubt on whether permanent or long-lasting majorities are possible. When you look closely at the supposedly permanent partisan majorities of the past, they fade from view.

Republicans won all but two presidential elections from 1860 to 1892. But Democrats won majorities in the House for most of that period after the Southern states were readmitted to the Union. Republicans won all but two presidential elections from 1896 to 1928. And they held congressional majorities for most of that time, as well. Yet they won almost nowhere in the South, and at the time their dominance was by no means taken for granted.

And what of the New Deal Democratic majority from 1932 to 1968? New Deal Democrats took a hit in the off-year elections of 1938, and polling suggests the Republicans would have won in 1940 if domestic issues had been paramount. Instead, voters re-elected Franklin Roosevelt as a wartime president in 1940 and 1944.

Harry Truman, too, benefited from a foreign issue -- the successful Berlin airlift -- in 1948, and John F. Kennedy campaigned in 1960 as the most determined of Cold Warriors. The Democrats held Congress during almost all this period. But as liberal historians note mournfully, liberal Democrats had effective majorities for only a couple of years from the 1930s to the 1960s.

All of which suggests to me that the more natural state of partisan politics, in this country at least, is something less like party dominance and more like uneasy equilibrium. Equilibrium that swings to one side or another from time to time, as it has swung in varying measure to Democrats in 1992 and 2008 and to Republicans in 1994 and 2004.

Because of their basic character, both parties have difficult tasks in assembling and holding together majorities -- Republicans, because their core constituency is off-putting to those whom it defines as something other than typical Americans; Democrats, because of the difficult of holding together what is usually a very diverse and conflict-prone coalition.

Barack Obama now has that task. He has shown unusual skills and the capacity and willingness to stress what he has in common with those on the other side of the partisan divide. But already rents are appearing in the Democratic fabric -- over Rod Blagojevich, same-sex marriage and the unions' card check bill. My guess is that Obama will hold his majority together for a good long while, but not forever.

Copyright 2009, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Is the GOP Still a National Party?

By Patrick Buchanan

As President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address to a nation filled with anticipation and hope, the vital signs of the loyal opposition appear worse than worrisome.

The new majority of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Nixon cobbled together in 1972, that became the Reagan coalition of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation in 1984, is a faded memory. Demographically, philosophically and culturally, the party base has been shrinking since Bush I won his 40-state triumph over Michael Dukakis. Indeed, the Republican base is rapidly becoming a redoubt, a Fort Apache in Indian country.

In the National Journal, Ron Brownstein renders a grim prognosis of the party's chances of recapturing the White House. Consider:

In the five successive presidential elections, beginning with Clinton's victory in 1992 and ending with Obama's in 2008, 18 states and the District of Columbia, with 248 electoral votes among them, voted for the Democratic ticket all five times. John McCain did not come within 10 points of Obama in any of the 18, and he lost D.C. 92-8.

The 18 cover all of New England, save New Hampshire; New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland; four of the major states in the Midwest — Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota; and the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.

Three other states — Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico — have gone Democratic in four of the past five presidential contests. And Virginia and Colorado have ceased to be reliably red.

Not only are the 18 hostile terrain for any GOP presidential ticket, Republicans hold only three of their 36 Senate seats and fewer than 1 in 3 of their House seats. "Democrats also control two-thirds of these 18 governorships, every state House chamber, and all but two of the state Senates," writes Brownstein.

In many of the 18, the GOP has ceased to be competitive. In the New England states, for example, there is not a single Republican congressman. In New York, there are only three.

"State by state, election by election," says Brownstein, "Democrats since 1992 have constructed the party's largest and most durable Electoral College base in more than half a century. Call it the blue wall."

While that Democratic base is not yet as decisive as the Nixon-Reagan base in the South, and the Plains and Mountain States, it is becoming so solidified it may block any Republican from regaining the White House, in the absence of a catastrophically failed Democratic president.

What does the Republican base look like?

In the same five presidential contests, from 1992 to 2008, Republicans won 13 states all five times.

But the red 13 have but 93 electoral votes, fewer than a third of the number in "the blue wall."

What has been happening to the GOP? Three fatal contractions.

Demographically, the GOP is a party of white Americans, who in 1972 were perhaps 90 percent of the national vote. Nixon and Reagan rolled up almost two-thirds of that vote in 1972 and 1984. But because of abortion and aging, the white vote is shrinking as a share of the national vote and the population.

The minorities that are growing most rapidly, Hispanics and Asians, cast 60 to 70 percent of their presidential votes for the Democratic Party. Black Americans vote 9-1 for national Democrats. In 2008, they went 30-1.

Put succinctly, the red pool of voters is aging, shrinking and dying, while the blue pool, fed by high immigration and a high birth rate among immigrants, is steadily expanding.

Philosophically, too, the country is turning away from the GOP creed of small government and low taxes. Why?

Nearly 90 percent of immigrants, legal and illegal, are Third World poor or working-class and believe in and rely on government for help with health and housing, education and welfare. Second, tax cuts have dropped nearly 40 percent of wage earners from the tax rolls.

If one pays no federal income tax but reaps a cornucopia of benefits, it makes no sense to vote for the party of less government.

The GOP is overrepresented among the taxpaying class, while the Democratic Party is overrepresented among tax consumers. And the latter are growing at a faster rate than the former.

Lastly, Democrats are capturing a rising share of the young and college-educated, who are emerging from schools and colleges where the values of the counterculture on issues from abortion to same-sex marriage to affirmative action have become the new orthodoxy.

The Republican "lock" on the presidency, crafted by Nixon, and patented by Reagan, has been picked. The only lingering question is whether an era of inexorable Republican decline has set in.

Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.