Moral Majority – Dead Kennedys
Not counting the chickens before they hatch, but…
You’d have to imagine that John Judis and Ruy Teixeira are feeling pretty clever right about now. In 2002 they published a book declaring the emergence of a new Democratic Majority, grounded in the final ushering out of the last remnants of the New Deal structure. A coalition that was fractured in the 60s and left for dead in the 80s and 90s. But they forsaw that out of its ashes would emerge a new Democratic Party, far more progressive, and guided by slow but powerful demographic trends.
Of course, this was right in the midst of some very tough times for Democrats. And so they mostly got responses like this:
But a stable Democratic majority in the Congress or the Presidency is not likely to emerge anytime soon, and here’s why: because even if Judis and Teixeira are correct that the demographics are shifting toward the Democratic side, structurally our 18th century winner-take-all political system will continue to favor conservatives and the Republican Party. Unless confronted by reformers, that structural bias trumps the shifting demographics.
Electoral battles for the House, the Senate and the presidency are fought out district by district and state by state in winner-take-all contests–not on a national basis. The national polls on which Judis and Teixeira rely for their analysis are less and less meaningful.
The problem is where Democrats and Republicans live. Democrats tend to live heavily concentrated in the Blue America urban areas, wit Republicans more evenly dispersed in the Red America rural areas as well as suburban areas. The fact is, when the national vote is tied, Republicans still win a healthy majority of Congressional seats.
Indeed in 2000, even as Al Gore beat George Bush by a half-million votes, and the combined center-left Gore-Nader vote had an even bigger lead, Bush beat Gore in 227 out of 435 US House districts and in 30 out of 50 states. New US House districts are even more lopsided, with Bush’s advantage now rising to 237 to 198. It’s no coincidence that Republicans currently hold 229 US House seats.
This sort attitude was quite common at the time. Things seemed bad for the left. And it only appeared to get worse in 2004. I certainly felt tremendously despondent four years ago, thinking that the country really was going in exactly the opposite direction from me.
But suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, almost precisely the coalition that was discussed in The Emerging Democratic Majority has taken shape. Growth of the professional class has turned Virgina from red to purple (and frankly, maybe blue). Same with North Carolina. Growing Hispanic populations have put New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona on the table. And the Republican Party has yet to find a way to reconcile its base with more moderate issues in order to win back women.
We stand on the verge of an election that could usher in the most progressive government in US history, with a full mandate to take action on a wide range of issues
Of course, none of this means that the election is guaranteed. Or that if 2008 is another Blue wave that it will hold for any length of time. But at the very least it demonstrates how powerful the underlying demographics are, and argues for paying close attention to these factors. And perhaps some of those who laughed off Judis and Teixeira at the time could issue a mea culpa.