Email: Why do people start counting in 1980?

Why do people start counting the Republican re-alignment in 1980? I’m too young to remember the Reagan administration, but Nixon won in 68 and 72 by landslides. From what I understand, this can be seen as a resounding rejection by the electorate of Johnson and the Great Society. Not to mention that Kennedy’s victory in 1960 was as close as Bush’s two were. So if you start counting in 1968, the GOP won 6 and the Democrats won four. Is it because the message of Reagan’s 1980 campaign was big shift from Nixon in ’68 and ’72?
_________________________________________________
Realignments are references to the party coalitions. What FDR did was create a clientele system, a sort of national Tammany Hall, where the electorate became various interest groups.  The New Deal was a coalition that transformed classes of society into clients of the Democratic Party. The New Deal triumvirate was the Urban machines (which also included African Americans), southern segregationists (the Solid South), and organized labor (the Unions). The Republican response was to attempt to steal it by saying, “If you join us, we can better serve you as clients.” Alas, to Alf Landon, the factions did not come. Republicans kept trying though.In order to identify when a realignment ends, you have to find out when the New Deal coalition ends. It certainly didn’t end in 1968.Saying realignment occurred in 1968 is as absurd as saying it occurred in 1952. Let’s take a look:

And look at 1956:

What was interesting with these elections is how television came to be more used and how women were targeted for the first time by campaigns.People say, “Eisenhower would have been elected president no matter what party he chose.” And this is true. But the point is that the New Deal coalition was still there. It just went to Eisenhower. Truman was seen as incompetent on foreign policy matters and Eisenhower, being the war hero, was seen as the expert.In 1960:

The New Deal is still present. While the New Deal favored the Democrats, the fatigue of having one party in the White House all was good for Kennedy. Nixon, however, had the economy which was in a very good shape. Texas was a swing state which is why LBJ was on the ticket (and the state had massive voter fraud).

The FDR model is to transform portions of American society into clients of the Democratic Party. So successors to FDR would add more clients (African Americans, environmentalists, feminists, teachers, etc).

The Republican Party likely had some clients of their own notably the big business. However, in order to win national elections, the Republican Party was entirely dependent on crossover vote, not the independent vote.

The fatal flaw in the FDR clientele party model is that it is based on a society in stasis. American society is constantly changing, classes are forming and dissolving. Economic growth rewrites society.

After World War 2, an economic revolution was occurring in the South. The political structure of the southern states, leftovers from the Confederacy, ruled the South not unlike the power of a totalitarian control. Blacks, until 1932, always voted for the party of Lincoln (Republicans) and totalitarians want such votes to be suppressed. Other social groups in the South that voted Republican were suppressed. The Solid South wasn’t solid based on social conformity. The poor farmers in the South were kept in line because blacks were made as a permanent underclass. You don’t feel poor if there is someone more poor than you.

The South part of the New Deal Coalition is the first to begin to go wobbly as economic transformations began to eat away at the political structures there. The reason why Texas was a swing state was that it was further ahead of the southern states in its economic transformation. Spindletop of the early 1900s began its economic transformation while the other states had to wait until post-World War 2.

1964:

This is a very simple one. Just months after Kennedy was assassinated, this was a sympathy vote for Johnson. I have to laugh at anyone reading anything more into this race.

As you can see, the New Deal coalition is very well intact except for the wobbly Southern Segregationists heading to extinction. Both LBJ and Goldwater won their home states (Arizona and Texas). Goldwater had a libertarian response to the Civil Rights Act and voted against it (for the idea that businesses can refuse service to anyone it wishes). This brought in the Southern Segregationists. What’s interesting is how the Southern Segregationist faction had fallen off the New Deal coalition but hasn’t yet dissolved.

Rockefeller would have won the Republican nomination had it not been for his extramarital affairs. This allowed Goldwater to win. What’s interesting about Goldwater is that he represented the ‘small government’ conservatism originating in the midwest (not the south) and seemed more reminiscent of the Calvin Coolidge or Mckinley candidates before the New Deal. Goldwater famously called Eisenhower the ‘Dime Store New Deal’. Ouch. While Rockefeller’s personal failings doomed him, the New England wing of the Republicans didn’t lose gracefully. They swore to vote Democratic in the election. The only high mark of Goldwater’s campaign was Reagan’s convention speech.

1964 would be the last election that a plurality of whites consisted of Democratic Party voters. While attention is given to the south voting Republican in this election, this is also the first time New England votes solidly Democratic.

LBJ doesn’t run for another term because of how unpopular he was and his health was very poor.

The primaries are interesting for this year. The favored to win Democratic candidate was Robert Kennedy who was assassinated. Hubert Humphrey would get the nomination. However, Humphrey was for the Vietnam War which put him at odds with the protesters. The infamous Democratic 1968 convention showed the Chicago police beating protestors with clubs and tear gas. The main reason why Democrats would lose this election is due to coalition problems within their party.

In the Republican primaries, George Romney, governor to Michigan, lost because he was anti-war to the Vietnam War (this is the father of current presidential candidate Romney). Interestingly enough, Ronald Reagan got more votes than anyone else but Nixon won more states.

George Wallace, a Democratic Governor from Alabama, ran as a third party candidate. What’s interesting with Wallace is that he won the youth vote and won many blue-collar workers throughout the country. Wallace wanted to use the Southern Segregationist faction as a spoiler to both both parties (where neither could win a majority popular vote) and to gain future leverage.

There is no way anyone can say 1968 was a realignment because the New Deal coalition still existed. The southern segregationist faction was broken off, but it was still there as a faction. The only way Nixon won was through Democratic crossovers. Nixon won by chipping into the New Deal coalition.

So why do people call it realignment? The first reason is that the kook Pat Buchanan says it is. Of course, he would say that. Pat Buchanan was a member of the Nixon administration.

Much of this is said due to Nixon’s ‘southern strategy’. But look at the map. The ‘southern strategy’ failed. Texas went Democratic and it had way more electoral votes than any other southern state. Most of the other Solid South states went Wallace. This is no alignment at all. It is a scrambled mess. The Southern Segregation faction was falling apart as the economic revolution kept sweeping the South.

So if the ‘southern strategy’ was a bust and the Solid South was now the Scrambled South, why do people keep trying to insist 1968 was some sort of realignment? It’s the desire to make-believe that the economic modernization of the South never occurred, that the Democratic Party left the South instead of the other way around.

The key to understanding the South’s transformation is Texas as it was the forerunner. It’s economic growth due to the oil boom in the early 1900s made Texas the protestor of FDR’s New Deal and transformed the state into a swing state. Truman had to go to Texas to campaign personally because Texas was warming up to bolt the Democratic Party. Democratic presidential candidate Stevenson got hit in the head in Texas because he had to keep visiting it to keep it in the D column. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. What was he doing in Texas? Talking to Texas politicians to keep the state in the D column. (Massive voter fraud occurred in Texas during the 1960 election.) I remember hearing stories of how ‘ugly’ Texas politics was then and at the massive, massive amount of voter fraud.

I don’t see how 1968 can remotely be argued as realignment when the victor, Nixon, only got 43% of the vote. (Humphrey got 42% of the vote.)

In 1972, we find:

No one voted in this election. Only 55% of the electorate voted which is the lowest ever since 1948. The Democratic Candidate, McGovern, had some major coalition problems. McGovern was against the Vietnam War which probably hurt him. Also, McGovern replaced his Vice Presidential candidate which is why parties today don’t do that. It makes the main candidate appear weak.

While winning 49 states is impressive, this can’t be realignment because Nixon didn’t bust up the New Deal coalition. In many ways, he added on to it. I think this was an election dominated by foreign policy and Republicans win when that is the case (in this era). 1972 says more of how poor a candidate McGovern was than how good Nixon was.

If anyone wants to call Nixon’s election a ‘realignment’, then how do you explain 1976:

This has to be one of the most strangest elections I’ve ever seen. Carter got 50.1 % of the vote. This was a very close election.

One thing is for sure is that the New Deal coalition was falling apart. Carter ran on ‘reform’ as Watergate tainted Ford (even though he didn’t have anything to do with it). The Democratic Party was divided into the Southern and Northern wings at the time. Carter was able to deliver the South.

It should be noted how weak Ford was. Ford is the only President who had never been elected to a public office. How can such a person win a national election?

1980:

The primaries are very interesting here. One of the reasons why Reagan won so large was because the Democratic coalition had collapsed. The New Deal had collapsed. Carter had to fight Senator Kennedy in a very bitter primary. Ideology had entered the Democratic primaries. Carter would write that the most opposition to his policies came from Senator Kennedy.

Everyone should know about the funny Republican primary in 1980. I won’t repeat it here.

Reagan had 50% of the vote. Carter had 41% of the vote. Anderson had 6% of the vote.

This appears to be the origin of the ’empty chair as president’ meme that Clint Eastwood might have come up with. Carter refused to debate. So Reagan and Anderson debated and an empty chair was displayed to represent President Carter. At the last minute, Carter convinced the League of Women Voters to remove the empty chair.

Pat Caddel, Carter’s pollster, told him he was going to get ‘walloped’ just days before the election. He did so on Air Force One. It is said that Carter began to cry. The last couple of days before the election, Carter had a ‘deer in the headlights’ look on his face. It’s not true that the polls had the candidates tied. Gallup had Reagan far ahead after the primaries.

The reason why 1980 is considered a realigning election is because…

-This was the first landslide victory against an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover.
-Republicans won the Senate.
-Unlike Nixon or Eisenhower, this was not an election about foreign policy.
-Reagan ran against the New Deal coalition, he did not try to ‘chip into it’ like Nixon or run a ‘dime store New Deal’ like Eisenhower.
-Every presidential candidate afterward has sought to emulate Reagan in terms of campaign and mannerisms.
-After Reagan, the Democratic Party and Republican Party realigned into ideologies. Democratic Party was the party for liberals and the left. The Republican Party was the party for conservatives and the right.
-While not immediate, the House of Representatives would go Republican in 1994 based on the Reagan ideas ending 40 years of Democratic control of the House.
-After Reagan was the rise of Independents.

1984:

Extreme economic growth made it easy for Reagan. Mondale did not run as a moderate but as an ideological leftist supporting nuclear freeze and tax raises.

1988:

The Democratic primaries are interesting. Biden (current vice president) would have been the nominee had he not plagiarized another person’s speeches. Al Gore also ran but he was considered too young at the time.

Bush, the VP of Reagan, was elected primarily because people wanted a third term of Reagan. Dukakis ran as an ideological liberal which the Bush Campaign had great fun mocking (Dukakis had quotes like ‘card carrying member of the ACLU’ or ‘proud liberal’). Dukakis was a small man who also looked ridiculous in a helmet in a tank. Bill Clinton watching Democrats get trounced in 1984 and 1988 realized that a Democrat could not win nationally if he was an ideological leftist.

1992:

Clinton got 43% of the vote. Bush got 37%. Perot got 19%.In the primaries, Bill Clinton positioned himself as a centrist or ‘New Democrat’. The only problem was that all these affairs of women kept popping up! (hahaha) Meanwhile, Bush probably thought reelection was in the bag since he had 90% approval rating after the Iraq War.Perot is what’s interesting here. He was a Texas businessman, had some sort of grudge against Bush, and somehow got a fifth of the electorate’s vote. It was the rise of the independents. More interesting, Perot siphoned votes from both parties. What I think occurred is that the Reagan Coalition splintered into the independents.This was also the first time a Democrat had become president without Texas.1996:

Vote percentages are Clinton: 49%, Dole 40%, and Perot 8%.

After the 1994 Republican takeover of the House and Senate, Clinton pivoted and went centrist. He signed the Welfare Reform Act and at the State of the Union address declared: “The Era of Big Government is over.” Dole was a dusty GOP senator where it was ‘his turn’ to run. Independents were still out in force as Perot got 8% of the vote.

As you can see reader, there is no New Deal. Clinton is running against the New Deal, at least in the campaigns. There is still such a high number of independents though.

2000:

It’s interesting to look back and wonder how it got to be so even. Not too many people voted. The campaign wasn’t very exciting. Both candidates reacted to Clinton’s impeachment. Gore distanced himself. Bush promised to restore ‘honor and dignity’.What is interesting to note is that independents broke for both candidates evenly.2004:

Kerry, like Gore, campaigned as a centrist. Bush campaigned on the War of Terror. Bush increased his performance from 2000, yet it seemed somewhat similar.The economy wasn’t the issue in this election. If you look at the polling, voters were split about like four or five different issues. None of them dominated.Independents split somewhat evenly for Kerry and Bush.

2008:

The economy was the number one issue of this campaign and dominated everything. Obama was seen by the voters as the one with the advantage on economic issues (just as Clinton was in 1992 and 1996). McCain was an old, dusty senator.

I had famously said on this website of a contrary prediction of a McCain win. I did not think whatever people blamed on Bush would transfer over to McCain (but it did). I also thought that 2004 showed that ‘ground game’ and repeated visits could flip a state. So when PA was constantly visited by McCain, I thought there might be something going on there. The reality is that a state like PA won’t flip unless states like Ohio and Iowa are secure for the R.Independents went to Obama.

2012:

We’ll see in a couple days what happens. One thing is for sure, the economy is the number one issue. Romney’s strategy is to ‘win people on the economic issue’.Obama’s strategy is very strange. He appears to be saying the economy is good now and that he should be voted to continue it.

What I find more interesting were statements years ago that Obama was envious of Reagan because he was a ‘transformational president’. However, Obama wanted to undo what Reagan did. Many of his policies appears to be as if he is recreating the New Deal, to create a clientele system by converting parts of American society. For example, the auto bailout would be to keep unions happy. He said he would not pivot like Clinton did. He also said that if he was unsuccessful, he would be a one term president.

One thing about Obama is that he governs against the Reagan alignment (unlike Clinton who was more interested in co-opting it). The election results will certainly tell us what is truly going on.

But realize: If the Industrial Revolution follows the Agrarian Revolution, then we are in the blossoming of a third economic revolution that only a few people know its name. Detroit was once the icon of the Industrial Revolution, today it is a fourth world country. The center of car manufacturing in America is in Alabama. Things are changing. In the Industrial Era, poor people lived in the rural areas while the wealthy people lived in the cities. More and more, it is becoming the other way around.Economics shapes politics. The reason why southern politics revolved around slavery was because their economy revolved around slavery. When the economy modernized, everything changed including the politics of the regions.When I look at the New Deal, I see a leper and wonder which of its fingers will fall off next. My guess will be the unions. An artifact of the Industrial Era, unions are on the way to extinction. Sensing the collapse of private unions, unions retreated into governments. But with cities and states going bankrupt, the taxpayers look poised to skewer them once and for all.

After something like the auto bailout, Romney shouldn’t even get remotely close in Michigan. If he does get close, it is proof that the New Deal is never coming back.