Obama and a Realigning Election

Obama and a Realigning Election: A Look at the Future
I want to introduce you to a rather simple concept, which is useful to explain where this election might move if Barak Obama is the candidate of the Democratic Party in 2008.

The Distribution of Partisan Loyalties in the United States:
One of the bedrocks of the two-party system in the United States is the distribution of partisan loyalties within the electorate at any given point in time. Partisan loyalty refers to the extent to which voters think of themselves as Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or something else. These attachments of voters to the Republican and Democratic parties vary by degree from people who are very loyal and generally vote only for candidates of their party to voters who feel inclined toward one party or the other, and generally vote for that party’s candidates, but who will switch on occasion and vote for candidates of other parties.

As pollsters, we often measure these loyalties in terms of scales that include points called “strong Democrat, weak Democrat, independent, weak Republican, or strong Republican. The percentage of voters at each point on the scale represents the “distribution of partisan loyalties” at any given point in time.

The Importance of the Distribution of Partisan Loyalties:
The relative percentage of voters who think of themselves as Democrats, Republicans or Independents shapes every electoral campaign that occurs. If one party enjoys a sizable plurality of voters who favor it, as the Democrats do presently, that party has an advantage in every election that occurs. Where the number of Republicans and Democrats are relatively balanced, by contrast, those districts or states are likely to be highly competitive with elections that are more hotly contested. In the Country as a whole, there have been periods in which one of the two major parties has been relatively dominant in politics, and those periods have usually had as their basis an underlying distribution of partisan loyalties that was decidedly in favor of the dominant political party.

These distributions of partisan loyalty continually shift over time, normally as new voters join the ranks of the “partisans,” choosing one party over time. Since 2000, for example, the percentage of people who think of themselves as Democrats has been gradually growing in response to the hostility that many Americans feel toward the Bush/Cheney War in Iraq and the deteriorating economy driven by huge tax cuts for the rich, massive deficits, a deteriorating dollar, and growing price inflation for imported goods, especially oil. At other times in history, these realignments have occurred more dramatically, sometimes during a single election cycle.

There have been two great “realigning election” periods in recent American electoral history. The first was the period defined by the first election victory of Franklin Roosevelt over Herbert Hoover in 1932, which culminated in the great landslide victory of Roosevelt over Alf Landon, in 1936. The second started with the campaign of Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and culminated with the landslide victory of Reagan over Walter Mondale in 1984. There are, of course, changing alignments of party loyalties going on regularly in politics, such as the shift of conservative White voters in the south to the Republican Party, but these two periods are distinguished by the fact that the realignment produced a more dramatic redistribution of party loyalties in the electorate that shaped much of politics in the decades that followed.

What are the main characteristics of a realigning period, and why does large scale realignment occur? One necessary element essential to the realignment is a large body of relatively young voters who are not closely tied with either political party. These voters have not yet chosen up sides in the continuing battle between the two parties, and they are characterized as “independents” or “weakly affiliated voters.” When individuals have acquired a strong sense of partisan loyalty to either party, they are very hard to dislodge from those loyalties. As we age, voters tend to attach themselves to one party or the other, rendering them unlikely to shift their loyalty to the other party.

A second characteristic of the realigning period is the presence of Presidential candidates who appear to be highly differentiated on policy grounds in the perception of the electorate. In a line made famous by Barry Goldwater, the candidates provide “a choice, not an echo.” In the Roosevelt’s case, the Great Depression pushed a desperate electorate in the direction of supporting a more “activist government”. In a sense, the “center of the electorate” itself shifted to the left, and neither Landon nor Hoover was able to accompany themselves in their movement. In a real sense, the Republicans remained the captive of its older guard, recruited in a previous period, and they do not give up control easily to people who want to take the party in a different direction. In 1932, Roosevelt actually ran as a fiscal conservative, lauding the importance of balanced budgets and reduced government spending. As the Depression deepened, Roosevelt became a much more vocal proponent of government action, turning that view into a whole range of new government programs he called, “The New Deal.” Roosevelt’s 1936 election landslide victory was a clear endorsement of that policy, and the shift toward the Democrats among the voters persisted for decades.

In 1980, the specter of uncontrollable inflation, coupled with appearance of American ineptitude in our treatment by Iran and the threat from the Soviet Union, launched the success of the Reagan campaign. That race was very close right up to the last week, when the swing of undecided voters shifted the outcome decidedly against Carter. Again, the “center of politics” was shifting toward a renewal of American pride and confidence, coupled with a profound distrust of many of the bureaucratic “solutions” to social problems created by the Democrats, and Reagan was just the candidate to give voice to that new majority. Again, the 1984 campaign marked a ratification of the change away from traditional “bureaucratic liberalism,” where the government was seen as the cure to all social and economic ills, toward a reliance of less governmental interference in social policy and a more open commitment to a free market philosophy and economic growth. Walter Mondale represented the older, “bureaucratic liberalism” coalition of "activist liberals", teachers, government employees, welfare client groups, etc., and he was roundly defeated. During that campaign, the number of new voters calling themselves “Republican” rose by such a margin that we could see the distribution of partisan loyalty changing in the course of the 12 month election cycle.

In both of these instances, the Presidential candidate attracted and galvanized a disproportionate number of those people with weak or no party affiliation, mostly voters under 35, and these new voters came into the political mainstream disproportionately as affiliated with the Party of the Presidential candidate. Once the new voters acquired a “partisan identity,” they tended to vote for their political party at all levels of government, thereby intensifying the loyalty they had acquired. As a result, their voting behavior shaped the character of American politics for decades.

Realignment With an Obama Campaign:
With Barak Obama at the head of the Democratic ticket, I believe quite strongly that we are moving into just this type of realigning period. John McCain has clearly declared his intention to stick with the policies of George Bush on the Iraq War, and with the tax cuts that Bush created. Although he claims to be a "fiscal conservative," he has publicly stated that he will continue with the War in Iraq and make the tax cuts permanent, and that inevitably ties him to a policy that will continue deficits, the erosion of the dollar, and the growth of Federal debt. Moreover, he continues to genuflect to the religious right in the Republican Party even as it voted for others in the primary process, and he has promised to select judges according the doctrines established under George Bush and the religious right wing of the Republican Party. Like Mondale in 1984 and Alf Landon in 1936, he reflects a portion of the political spectrum that is far outside of the center in American politics.

Hillary Clinton, however, would prove a very poor choice against McCain, largely because she is so disliked by such a large portion of the electorate, particularly among the independents and weakly affiliated Republicans. She herself is largely captive of the older wing of the Democratic Party, which has financed her campaign, and she is unlikely for forge new policy positions given her commitment to the bureaucratic establishment within the party. McCain and his Republican coalition partners will renew every personal and ethical accusation against her, reminding the voters of why they dislike and distrust the Clintons.

Barak Obama is a much more difficult target for McCain, and especially his Republican allies. His "approval profile" is very similar to McCain’s, although voters have had more time to form an opinion about McCain and, therefore, his approval scores are more durable. Obama simply has none of the liabilities that Hillary Clinton carries with her into the campaign.

A McCain/Clinton election campaign will be all about Hillary Clinton herself, and her husband, and she will constantly have to deal with partisan attacks via the media that are personal in character. McCain may disavow some of these attacks, but he cannot under the law stop them and his allies know it. The allied groups will paint her for every infraction from Whitewater forward, including her failed health care monstrosity in 1994, and they will not be anywhere as gentle as Obama has been with her.

A McCain/Obama election campaign, by contrast, will be all about the War in Iraq, massive deficits, tax cuts for the rich, and the deteriorating economy, and it is on these issues that McCain is out of step with the public at large. McCain’s positions on these issues are simply not in the mainstream of the public, and that makes him vulnerable to a defection of the moderates among the independents and the weakly affiliated Republicans. Although Obama is not yet an established figure for many voters, McCain will have a very hard time “defining” him in ways that alienate the middle of the electorate. They will try, of course, and the attempt to label him as a "black separatist and Muslim extremist" is already underway via the Internet. At the same time, the election will provide a distinctive policy choice, and certainly not an echo, but it will be McCain who is trapped into the unpopular wing of politics as the middle moves away from him.

The realignment will start with Obama’s election, which is likely to be close and not a landslide. The realignment will occur if an Obama Presidency starts the movement of public policy away from the policies that the electorate questions and dislikes under George Bush and Dick Cheney. There is a full generation of new voters up for grabs, and they clearly admire and like Barak Obama. Over time, four years and perhaps eight years, they will become a larger portion of the electorate and the older opposing interests less significant.

A realignment that begins with an Obama victory in November is a realignment that will aid Democrats up and down the ticket, both today and in the future. However, it does mean that many “interests” supporting Clinton will lose some of their prominence under an Obama Presidency, and that is very threatening indeed.

Just my opinion,

Gordon Black