Time For A Realignment

Recent events have increased my belief that the U.S. is at a political tipping point.

In the past few weeks, in addition to the mass shootings that are now horrifyingly routine, we’ve seen Tennessee’s gerrymandered White Republican legislature expel two young Black Democrats who breached “House Order”–despite that body’s unwillingness to expel White Republicans accused of sexual misconduct and criminal activity.

Immediately after a jury found a defendant guilty of intentionally murdering a Black Lives Matter demonstrator, Greg Abbott vowed to pardon him.

Then, thanks to Pro Publica– in deeply-researched reports which have once again underlined the importance of a free and vigorous press–Americans learned that Clarence Thomas’ corruption extends well beyond his widely-criticized refusal to recuse himself from cases involving organizations with which his wife has been active. Not only did Thomas accept trips on yachts and luxurious accommodations worth millions from his “dear friend” Harlan Crowe (a “friendship” that began five years after Thomas joined the Court), not only did Crowe’s purchase of real estate from Thomas (at an evidently inflated price)  go similarly unreported, we’ve also learned that Crowe’s creepy collection of memorabilia includes two pictures painted by Hitler and a signed copy of Mein Kampf. 

We also learned that, early in their “friendship,” Thomas had reported some of those gifts, but when those reports generated criticism, rather than stop accepting them, Thomas stopped reporting them.

It isn’t just Clarence Thomas.

For years, the American public ignored the legal profession’s exhortations about the importance of the judicial branch, and the need to vote against lawmakers intent upon elevating ideologues to the bench. It’s not just Thomas and the rabidly conservative bloc that now dominates the Supreme Court; thanks to a rogue Texas Judge,  a lot more people understand the importance of an intellectually honest, honorable and professionally competent judicial branch.

A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, an unprecedented order that — if it stands through court challenges — could make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion is legal, not just in those trying to restrict it.

Kacsmaryk’s ruling wasn’t unexpected. Since Trump placed him on the bench, this poster boy for judicial activism has been the choice of forum-shopping rightwing extremists who’ve responded to clear signals that he would ignore legal precedents that conflicted with his religious beliefs.  Among other numerous legal deficits, this particular decision ignored a six-year statute of limitations, rules governing standing, and sound science.

Worse–as two hundred drug companies pointed out in a letter blasting the decision,

“The decision ignores decades of scientific evidence and legal precedent,” the drugmakers wrote. “Judge Kacsmaryk’s act of judicial interference has set a precedent for diminishing FDA’s authority over drug approvals, and in so doing, creates uncertainty for the entire biopharma industry.”

Should the decision be upheld, the consequences of second-guessing the experts at the FDA decades after the fact would threaten investment in all new medications, not just those related to reproduction.

Meanwhile, Rightwing activists and lawmakers are continuing their attacks on local school boards and libraries, and Republican legislators in Red states continue to focus mean-spirited and dishonest attacks on trans children and the medical professionals who treat them.

The narrow focus on transgender folks is strategic. Polling has confirmed that significant majorities of Americans now support same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ+ citizens, making wholesale attacks on the gay community politically  unwise.

Nearly eight in ten Americans (79%) favor laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing, including 41% who strongly support them.

Trans children are more vulnerable–in more ways than one.

As Jennifer Rubin wrote in the Washington Post

It is one thing to gin up the base on invented threats from critical race theory or the “great replacement theory.” But when the MAGA movement’s judges begin to inflict radically unpopular edicts on those outside the right-wing audience, that risks sparking a counter-response: a determined, broad-based movement insistent that the United States not turn the clock back on decades of social progress….

The more the Supreme Court diverges from overwhelming public sentiment on issues such as abortion, guns and voting rights, the more strength and more allies the progressive movement may gain.

Add to all this the ongoing antics of the buffoons in Washington whose behavior continues to prevent anything remotely resembling thoughtful governance, the  constantly unraveling spectacle that is Donald Trump, and the increasingly overt racism and misogyny that pervades today’s GOP.

Walter Dean Burnham once argued that there’s a 30–38 year “cycle” of political realignments.

We’re overdue, but the signs are there.

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Hoping For Realignment

Political realignments are momentous shifts in the balance of power between political parties that give one party and ideology a long- lasting dominance. According to George Packer, such realignments occur far more often in the minds of partisans than in reality. 

In the past century there have been only two realignments—one in 1932, the other in 1980. The first brought Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats to power, and liberalism dominated until the late ’60s. The second brought Ronald Reagan and the Republicans to power, and conservatism retains its grip on our political institutions, if not on electoral majorities, to this day. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer, the author of The True Believer, wrote. By the early 1970s, the New Deal coalition of urban machines and interest groups was becoming a racket, symbolized by piles of uncollected garbage in the streets of a nearly bankrupt New York City. Sure signs of degeneracy in the Reagan revolution appeared in the late 1990s, when Tom DeLay’s K Street Project erased the line between governing and big-money lobbying. The next step is dissolution, but the end of Hoffer’s life cycle can drag on for agonizing years.

Packer says that realignments occur when traditional politics are manifestly not working–when government fails to address chronic social ills. They are precipitated by the “rising activism of popular movements—industrial workers, evangelical Christians—pushed the parties toward new ideological commitments.” And while realignments come from tectonic shifts, they aren’t inevitable.

They’re subject to a combination of elements, including chance—more like a hurricane than the coming of spring. No one can know whether 2020 will bring the realignment that some people on the left expect. In the years since 2008 many things have changed, including three big ones. First is the lingering hangover of the Great Recession, with increased economic divisions, leaving Democratic voters impatient with the kind of incremental reforms that Hillary Clinton campaigned on in 2016 and hungry for more ambitious policies. A second is the coming to political age of Millennials—the most powerful generation since the Boomers, and far more left-wing than their elders. The third is Donald Trump.

Since getting elected, Trump—by being true to himself every minute of his presidency—has pushed educated women, suburban voters, and even a small percentage of his white working-class base toward the Democratic Party. His hateful rhetoric and character are making Americans—white Democrats in particular—more rather than less liberalon issues of immigration, religion, and race. Last November, nonwhite voters made upa record 28 percent of the midterm electorate, and 38 percent of young voters. At the same time, the Republican Party has built its ramparts around the diminishing ground inhabited by older, whiter, more rural, less educated Americans. These are the kind of changes that could bring a new Democratic coalition to power for years to come.

Given the accuracy of the above paragraphs, a realignment would certainly seem possible, even highly probable. So why does Hacker tell us not to get our hopes up?

There are still a lot of people living back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the red fields of the republic roll on under the night. Since progressives, especially younger ones, and especially the hyperpoliticized partisans on Twitter, rarely talk to people who don’t think like them, they stop believing that such people still exist, at least not in meaningful numbers—sooner or later they’ll have to die out. And yet, year after year, those nearly extinct Americans keep showing up to vote, and often win.

The ability to usher in lasting change–or even short-term change–ultimately depends upon political leadership. Hacker reminds us that leadership isn’t synonymous with ideology or policy.

Campaigns tell stories, and in politics as in literature, style matters as much as plot. Roosevelt and Reagan, ideological opposites, both won by speaking in a way that gave Americans a sense of dignity and belonging and made them hopeful. They didn’t win by haranguing the public. They didn’t win by implying that anyone who disagreed must be either stupid or venal. They didn’t assemble majorities by degrading Americans into identity blocs. They didn’t force their party to pledge allegiance to the most extreme positions, or turn politics into a joyless exercise in orthodoxy. They hammered their opponents, but they did it with a smile.

In other words, the message is important–but the messenger is even more important. I hope the primary electorate understands that.

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