With respect to American politics, you have to keep your eyes wide open and your ears close to the ground to stay ahead of the constant evolution that the system undergoes from generation to generation, and, not infrequently, from election to election.
Kevin Phillips was exactly on target when he predicted a Republican takeover of the Deep South in the late 1960s. At the time, the Democrats (Dixiecrats, as they were dubbed) had a monopoly on the South. Republicans had been non-viable in local and state elections (and had hardly fared much better in national races) since the Civil War.
But Phillips saw the future far more clearly than anyone other than perhaps Richard Nixon, whose presidential campaign Phillips was working on when he penned “The Emerging Republican Majority.” In that book, he predicted a conservative realignment in national politics that took hold in the 1970s and became an undeniable fact in the 1980s.
Now, over forty years after the publication of his book, no presidential candidate who is running on the Democratic ticket can count on any Electoral College votes from the states of the old confederacy. Indeed, Barack Obama’s wins in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida may well prove to be flukes of political nature as soon as two years from now.
What did Phillips see that so few others saw? More importantly, what might one with his prescience see in the current political scene?
One thought that might soon become reality is the demise of the two-party system in national politics. That possibility has certainly been considered at any number of junctures in America’s history. In fact, it was a fairly popular one at the same time that Phillips was developing his thesis. In 1968, George Wallace, then Governor of Alabama, created a third-party that he dubbed the American Independent Party.
Wallace, a staunch segregationist who had attempted to block school integration in his state just five years earlier, ran for president on his newly formed party label that very year, and he won five states in his attempt to roll back the clock on the civil rights movement. The party is still officially listed as one of California’s registered political parties, attracting old John Birch Society members and their ilk.
Ross Perot initiated another third-party movement with his national campaign for the presidency in 1992. The Reform Party, intended as a slightly right-of-center alternative somewhere between the left-of-center Democrats and the farther right Republicans, flourished briefly but had essentially disappeared by the 2000 election.
The Tea Party movement is the latest “threat” to the two-party system, and it would certainly appear to have legs after the mid-term election of no fewer than five senatorial candidates who profess to have Tea Party affiliation.
Of course, the Tea Party is, as yet, not really a political party, not in the official sense of that word. Instead, it has aligned itself with the Republican Party, for the moment at least. And with any number of potential titular heads (Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, to mention a few with national recognition), a national campaign under the new party banner in 2012 would not be all that far-fetched, especially if Glenn Beck (the real father of the movement) anointed the candidate who carried the banner.
So much can happen so quickly in this new millennium. Could anyone have conceived just ten years ago that the country would be engaged in three separate (albeit inter-related wars) by the end of the decade? (Iraq, Afghanistan and terror, for those who may have lost track.) Or that a previously unheard of governor of a state with fewer residents than Brooklyn, New York would be the second most headline-grabbing politician in the country? (Or is she now just a TV personality?)
The Republicans could easily bifurcate into two separate parties in the next two years. The Tea Party movement could grow disenchanted with the politics-as-usual approach of Speaker-to-be Boehner and still-to-be Minority Leader McConnell. With little real action on the deficit and continued unemployment levels around 9 or 10 percent and with the rejection of a Palin presidential bid (all far from impossible), the movement could easily shake free of its Republican shackles and run Ms. Palin (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in 2012, thereby decimating the GOP.
And the Democrats could face a similar fate. Barack Obama is already tarnished badly, having “led” his party to a devastating defeat earlier this month, and, in the aftermath of that debacle, continuing to sound more like a mediation lawyer than the shining knight many of his followers expected him to be.
If unemployment continues to linger at present levels for another year, if the administration has caved to Republican “pressure” to extend the Bush tax cuts to the highest income-earning millionaires in the country, if the war in Afghanistan continues unabated, and if “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is still in effect, it would not be inconceivable for a liberal alternative to Obama to appear on the scene, a la Gene McCarthy in 1968.
True, McCarthy didn’t form a third party, but this Democratic Party is not nearly as united as even that fractured group was in that revolutionary year of national trauma.
These Democrats are very much at odds with themselves, with some seeking the smallest of victories (watered-down health care reform, exceedingly modest financial reform, “only” a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts) while others cry out for a return of true liberalism and fear even greater electoral losses with a weak and weakened presidential candidate leading the way to ruin. The fight that might emerge if a strong liberal were to emerge to contest the re-nomination of Obama would make the Carter-Kennedy battle of 1980 look like kids’ stuff.
And if this scenario seems inconceivable now, consider how much more inconceivable it was just a month ago, before Obama suffered his “shellacking.”
Will either of our nation’s current parties survive the next two years? Will our very two-party system begin to self-destruct?
Was the Democratic Party doomed to minority status in the Deep South forty years ago?
I think we’ll be stuck with two parties as long as people can remember how Ralph Nader helped to hand over the country to W. Bush.
Nader and Perot were no help in either case, depending on your party affiliation.
The Tea Party movement is beginning to penetrate the Democratic ranks with the election of Allen West R-FL and Tim Scott, R-NC, both from heavily white districts. Both highly principled men (their speeches are viral) have been admitted to the Congressional Black Caucus. This is absolutely pivotal, as the Democrats have held onto 90% of the black vote for years while driving the people into the sewer with welfare programs. These guys won’t stand for it. and aren’t afraid t stand up to the likes of Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Since the Democratic Parrty has been usurped by George Soros and his evil billions (by his own words!), that great party needs to be taken back from the avowed communists, eugenicists and Weather Underground types that swirl around the White House, ignoring every objection from the people and their elected officials.
There have been and will continue to be phony efforts to make the Tea Party movement into a third party. No way, if most of the adherents have their say. One popped up in the NV election.
I’d only ask Ed and others like him to reconsider their views on the Declaration of Independence being passe.’ I know the “endowed by our Creator” part is troubling, but the section on pretended legislation is very much in play in our current era of draconian bills, most earmarks, and riders that bastardize and increase the cost of most legislation.
This would require some serious academic study into what the parallel application of the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity – something I’ve named “SubSoil” since there’s currently no known word for that combination. I narrowed it down once to the “Protestant work ethic and e pluribus unum for starters.
Please name one “avowed communist or eugenicist or Weather Underground type” who is swirling around the White House.
This type of rhetoric has no place in intelligent political commentary and is certainly not what I expect from readers of my blog.
I just saw your informed response. Start with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorn, Cas Sunsteen, Dr. Peter Singer, Van Jones. Jim Wallis – in, out or around the WH plus about 30 more – all pressing their new framework to displace our Constitutional Republic.
Just follow the smell of George Soros,Capstone, Tides Foundation, Apollo Alliance, Faith in Public Life, ad nauseum – about 150 well funded agencies set to eat out the people’s substance.” Oops – seems some dead white guys were bitching about king George about their substance being eaten out.
I’m sending you by email Dorn and Ayers et al’s treatise on going beyond the Weather Undergrund. Wake up man!