Midterm and Long Term Electoral Prospects
by Geoff Johnson
There is no question that the 2010 midterm elections are going to be fairly brutal for the Democratic Party. While there are a number of reasons for this, two are central: the president’s party usually loses congressional seats at midterm elections, and the economy is still largely in shambles, particularly with respect to employment levels (which is what voters are noticing).
Republicans need to pick up 39 seats to capture the House of Representatives, and with over 60 Democratic seats in play and very high voter enthusiasm among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there is a good chance that John Boehner will be the next Speaker of the House. It’s also possible for the Republicans to take power in the Senate, though that seems to be significantly less likely. It’s fairly certain, however, that the Democrats will lose at least several seats in the upper chamber where they are obviously having enormous trouble passing legislation as it is.
As such you hear are lot of gloom and doom from and about the Democrats. It’s not wholly unwarranted, but it’s also worthwhile to take a step back and consider the long term electoral prospects of the two parties rather than simply focusing on November, as our ever-hyperventilating 24/7 corporate news machine is wont.
A new report (PDF file) by Ruy Teixeira (co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority) argues that huge demographic shifts in the United States will see “the Democratic Party…become even more dominated by the emerging constituencies that gave Barack Obama his historic 2008 victory, while the Republican party will be forced to move to the center to compete for these constituencies. As a result, modern conservatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP.”
I’m not so confident about that last point, but let’s come back to it at the end of this post. First, who are these “emerging constituencies?” According to Teixeira they include the following: non-whites, the still up-and-coming voters of the “Millennial Generation,” professionals, the college educated, unmarried women, and voters who are secular or non-affiliated in their religious orientation (as well as various combinations of these, obviously). For example, 80% of “minority” voters supported Obama, and Teixeira estimates that minorities will be 54% of the American population by 2050, with Latinos doubling their share of the population to 30% by that year.
The so-called Millennial Generation (largely made up of those born the last couple of decades of the 20th century) add 4 million new eligible voters to the rolls every year, and by 2020 they will represent around 40% of the eligible voters in the country. In 2008 they voted for Obama at a 66 – 32 margin (Kerry only won them by 9% in 2004). Despite the conventional wisdom that our politics change considerably as we get older (generally in a more conservative direction), Teixeira argues that Millennials are “likely to remain largely progressive” and that “research suggests that a socialization process occurs that leads young adults to hold onto the party identification and opinions they developed in their formative years.” Obviously if Teixeira is right about all of this it’s quite good news for the Democratic Party, and arguably for “progressives” in general.
Certainly the Democratic leadership is aware of these issues, and I think you’ve arguably seen that awareness in the decision to challenge Arizona’s execrable new immigration law, S.B. 1070, in court. While this legal challenge might do favors for Harry Reid and other Western Democrats up for re-election by increasing voter turnout in places like California, Nevada, and Colorado, it could on balance be harmful to Democratic prospects for the midterm given that a majority of Americans seem to support the AZ law. In the long-run though, by challenging the constitutionality of S.B. 1070 the White House strengthens their argument that Democrats are on the side of Latinos. At the same time Republicans like Governor Jan Brewer and leaders of the Arizona legislature (which Ken Silverstein of Harper’s referred to as being “composed almost entirely of dimwits, racists and cranks”) are put front-and-center as the embodiment of the GOP and portrayed (not entirely wrongly) as being racist, nativist reactionaries who hate people with Spanish names and/or darker skin. Karl Rove (who is no dummy) was trying to avoid precisely this situation when he desperately sought to pass immigration reform in 2006, but the current GOP leadership seems not to care a whit about offending Hispanics.
Which brings us back to Teixeira’s suggestion that “modern conservatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP.” Taking account of the likely demographic trends, throwing “modern conservatism” (if by that we mean Rush Limbaugh/Sarah Palin-style conservatism, with its intolerance, extreme religiosity, and fear of The Other) overboard would indeed be a good idea for the GOP if they want to win elections for the rest of this half-century. But the fact is that “modern conservatives” (or what Sam Tanenhaus and others refer to as “movement conservatives” ) began taking over the GOP several decades ago, and the party is now essentially captive to the forces of far-right religious and cultural reaction. So-called “Rockefeller Republicans” still very much exist in the American voter pool, but they are at best a handful in the U.S. Congress, and none too many are in power at the state or local levels either.
The far-right wing of the Republican Party will not be inclined to give up their stranglehold on the party apparatus and move to the center simply because a demographer said they should in order to win elections. They did not get into politics to compromise on core principles, or even really to govern, but rather to fight for deeply held beliefs which are non-negotiable and often literally ordained by God in their view. But when you have Senate candidates who mock people for being gay and say government probably should not have done anything to let black folks get served in white-owned restaurants, and a core, Tea Party base that will make all manner of inflammatory comments in public, it’s damned difficult to attract the voters of the future who are fine with gay folks and increasingly non-white. It’s going to be incredibly hard if not impossible for a Sarah Palin-style GOP to win national elections 20 or even 10 years from now, even if they win a landslide in a few months.
So while Democrats could be looking at a semi-catastrophe in the November midterms, in the long term we could be looking at a situation where the Republican party is essentially a permanent minority party, or is forced to throw its overwhelmingly white, ultra-conservative and nativist base overboard, presumably into some fringe third party, which would be a tectonic shift in the American political landscape. Unless “moderate Republicans” are able to assert some of the power they’ve been losing for decades now, I’d say the former option is considerably more likely.
One problem with Dems as the permanent majority. With no serious threat from the GOP, the Democrat party will fall apart.
First any party that is in permanent majority status, becomes brain dead and has tendencies to be extremely corrupt. Dont believe me? The most electorally successful political party in the west the past 100 years, is the Canadian Liberal party. Yet the Canadian liberals have been out of power for 13/26 years (1984 – 1993 and 2006-Present). They lost their power both in 1984 and 2006 due to corruption and incompetence. Even though the Liberals are “Canada’s natural governing party”, they have a tendency to be arrogant and corrupt when left in power too long. Then they lose.
Secondly, how will the Democrats get their base to the polls with no threat that the GOP will ever win??? Without the GOP, there is increasingly likelihood that the Dem’s own factions will wage war on one another and eventually split the party.
Thirdly, Ruy Tuxieria’s theory will be completely blown away if Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina win in CA, where the white population is under 50% and the state has many “wired” workers who are suppose to be friendly to the Democrats.
To emo, you’ll get no arguments from me as to the dangers and problems of being in a “permanent” majority (the points you raise about that are quite valid), and obviously that term is fairly hyperbolic, though it gets kicked around a lot which is basically why I employed it. “Period of dominance” might be a better phrase, and what I’m talking about here in terms of (possible) future Democratic electoral success could perhaps best be analogized to the period of Republican dominance from 1896 – 1932 and the period of Democratic dominance from 1932 to the late 1960s. The less dominant party certainly won national elections (both presidential and legislative) during those periods, but one party was clearly dominant in electoral terms.
As to your point about possible Whitman and/or Fiorina victories in California and their bearing on the efficacy of Teixeira’s demographic argument, part of the general thrust of my post is that it’s likely the 2010 midterms will not tell us much of anything about the future, and thus would neither validate nor blow away Teixeira’s theories or those of anyone else.
This is a weird cycle, coming during the first term of a unique presidency (Obama is certainly perceived by many as “something different” for a variety of reasons) after ostensibly major reforms have been passed and during a time of profound, profound economic crisis. Many incumbents are vulnerable, and if Barbara Boxer loses to Fiorina it’s hardly a sign, in my view at least, that non-whites and “wired” workers will not be solidly Democratic in the future. California is also an absolute basket case in fiscal terms, Jerry Brown is an odd candidate for several reasons, and the gubernatorial election could hinge on any number of issues that seem critical now but less important going forward. Even more so than other 2010 contests, I would avoid extrapolating much of anything from the CA election results.