Summary: Politics

although there seem to have been no fireworks or fuss marking its demise, with this election the Republican party has lost not only the White House and more than a few seats in Congress but an entire generation of voters.

--James Carville, 11.5.08

Politics is about power. The north that emerged victorious from the civil war created an industrial and agricultural powerhouse from New England to California. The New York financial industry stood at its center, while at the local level, banks lead elites in cities and towns across the country where each chamber of commerce and Rotary club included Republican-friendly newspaper publishers and Republican Party leaders. Republicans won election after election by reminding voters who won the civil war (Republicans), and who sided with slave owners (Democrats). When robber barons, monopolies, and cartels grew too powerful around 1900, Republicans supported government reforms under trust buster Teddy Roosevelt, a shift that helped keep the party in power another 30 years, until the Crash of 1929.

Democrats replaced Republicans as the majority party during the Great Depression, promising to use government and Washington to put people back to work, and to provide the “forgotten man” needed security for his family. As Democratic Washington gained power, the business-based national elite made room for New Deal power brokers—top government officials, well-connected law firms, big city machines, and labor union leaders—the America of Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson (1933-1968).

When national Democrats under Johnson in the 1960s pressed ahead on both civil rights and Vietnam, it cost them dearly. Democrats first lost the South and then “middle America," even as they consolidated domination of America’s elite, led by a powerful, unified national media that helped force our withdrawal from Vietnam, then forced Nixon to resign. Republicans under Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush were able to check the Democratic drive toward government take-over of the country. Still, the GOP during 1969-2005 could never gain control over the Democrat-dominated elite, leaving the nation at more or less a stand-off.

More recently, Bush mistakes in Iraq, with Katrina, on immigration, on boosting the national debt, and with social security reform—all topped by overseeing the greatest economic collapse since the Depression—opened a path for liberal Democrats to override Republican opposition for the first time in 45 years. Republicans, as James Carville suggested (above), after losing badly in 2008 seemed crushed, no longer a major political force. But that was yesterday.

Liberal Democratic efforts to transform the U.S. into a European-like social democracy are generating a powerful reaction, as seen by Republican victories in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts--states Democrats carried easily in 2008. We will see if Democrats have misread the public mood so badly in 2010 that they face a dramatic loss of power that goes beyond their setbacks during the Nixon-Reagan-Gingrich-Bush years. The possibility exists for such a rout; the liberals controlling our national agenda today are just 20% of the electorate. Yet Democrats so dominate the elite that they may fail to grasp the degree to which they are alienated from their country. Democrats seem all head, no body. All leader, no follower.

Democrats do claim that significant blocs of voters—young people, African-Americans, Hispanics, unmarried women, nearly half the electorate—are in their corner. But will male or married female young people who are outside the elite and not African-American stick with Democrats? Will male and married female Hispanics searching for private sector jobs? It may be the foot soldiers the national elite truly possesses are limited to:

 African-Americans, plus
 Non-African-American unmarried females, plus
 Non-African-American male or married female government workers.