The Emerging Political Realignment
The realignment theory of American politics is badly overworked. Nonetheless, there have been occasions on which American politics did re-align, and there are indications that another realignment is advancing.
What were the arguable realignments? In some order, the first was the collapse of the Federalist party at the start of the nineteenth century. The second, due to The Little Magician Martin Van Buren, was the revival of the two-party system.
The parties were the Democrats (under several names) and the Whigs. The Whig party was never entirely competitive with the Democracy, but it soldiered on. Each party had a northern and southern branch, which ran on somewhat different positions but compromised on a set of positions agreeable to both factions. The compromise ensured that neither the northern nor the southern position on any issue was dominant. What were those issues? The most important issue for many Americans was preserving the Union, to which any other issue was secondary. As the 1850s were approached and entered, the two other issues were immigration and slavery.
That takes us to the sometimes forgotten third realignment. The Democratic Party had been adequately balanced between North and South, but at some point, the Democratic Party did poorly in the north, and the southern Democratic Party became dominant. Compromises over, in particular, slavery faded within the Democratic Party because the northern wing of the Democratic Party was too weak to force a compromise. However, as the southern wing of the Democratic Party became stronger, it also became more effectively dominant in the South. That change was the third realignment.
The fourth realignment was the emergence of a unified abolitionist party in the north. The path to this party was somewhat complicated because the anti-immigration party, the American Party, might have become the dominant wing of a unified American-Free Soil Party. In 1856, the entirely new Republican Party almost won. Opponents of its candidate, John C. Frémont, circulated the rumor that he had converted to Roman Catholicism. Frémont had not, but this rumor cost him a victory in Pennsylvania, among other states.
As 1860 approached, the obvious choice of a Republican presidential candidate was Seward [edited: not Stanton], but it was clear that Seward [edited: not Stanton] could not possibly carry Pennsylvania because of his stances on certain issues. The Republicans instead settled on Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s position on slavery had been made clear in his Cooper Union speech. He opposed the extension of slavery into areas where it did not now exist, but promised that slavery would be left undisturbed in the South. His position did not mollify the South, leading to the War of the Slaveholders’ Rebellion.
Following that war, the fourth realignment led to the circumstance that the Republican Party almost always won outside the South, and the Democratic Party essentially always won inside the South. Indeed, the Republican Party essentially did not exist South of the Mason-Dixon line.
After all, the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, which meant that it was unelectable in the South. Barring catastrophe, which happened several times, the Republican Party was sure to win.
This situation lasted, with occasional irregularities, until 1932, when the Great Depression led to the collapse of the Republican Party across much of the country. That change was the fifth realignment, in which the Democratic Party became identified as the party of the working man, and the Republican Party became the party of the relatively well-to-do and educated classes. There were, of course, exceptions to this description. Since 1932, the Republicans won once with a war hero (Eisenhower), and a second time (Nixon) when an unpopular war disrupted American politics.
We now reach 1980 and the sixth realignment. The sixth realignment had been a trend first described by Kevin Phillips in his book “The Emerging Republican Majority.” Phillips’ book describes what appeared to be happening to American politics; namely, the Republican Party was becoming stronger and stronger in the South. Once that crossover occurred, the Republican Party would have a dominant majority in American politics, at least most of the time. Having read the book several times, I shall note that Phillips did not in his book advocate for a Republican strategy to take advantage of this trend. Instead, he simply described the trend, somewhat like a tide table describing the rising and falling tides.
The sixth realignment mainly affected the South, and at first mostly at the presidential level. At the county courthouse level, where state legislatures and Congressmen were effectively chosen, the Democratic Party continued to predominate for much longer. There were irregularities. George Bush the Elder failed to win reelection against William Jefferson Clinton. George Bush the Younger, in a wide variety of ways, turned out to be less than successful. He was highly unpopular by the end of his term, so he was replaced for two terms by a Democrat, President Barack Obama.
We now reach the emerging seventh realignment. The seventh realignment replaces the 1932 outcome that the Democratic Party was the party of the working man and working woman, and the Republican Party was, in particular, the party of the educated and the well-to-do. That division appears to be in the process of inverting. Just as the deep South moved from being solidly Democratic to being solidly Republican, the Democratic Party is moving from being the party of the working man to the party of the educated, and vice versa. Indeed, the author has read claims that the most reliable single indicator of Democratic Presidential vote in a district is the percentage of college-educated voters in the district.
The seventh realignment also appears to be disrupting the notion that some racial minorities, notably African-Americans and Hispanics, can be counted on to vote very solidly Democratic, while Whites vote somewhat heavily Republican. The Hispanic vote has recently moved toward the Republicans, and the African-American vote, especially among African-American men, has started to trend in the same direction. African-Americans are still very heavily Democratic, but less so than in the past.
The trend is just that, a trend somewhat obscured by the character of the recently-past Republican president, but there are still statistics that indicate where things are going. For example, roughly a third of the population has attended university, while approximately two-thirds have not. Each group is trending rather heavily towards one of the two major parties, the college-educated toward the Democrats and the non-college-educated toward the Republicans. However, the Republican group is much larger. As the Republicans extend their support to Hispanics and African-Americans, the Republican Party once again appears likely to become the dominant majority party.
As an additional feature, note sortation. Districts that lean Democrat or Republican have been leaning more and more heavily Democratic or Republican. As a result, many districts (for examples, Massachusetts, Alabama, Wyoming) are effectively under one-party government, in which the opposition has almost no chance to win an election. (While first-past-the-post voting schemes tend to favor a two-party system, they also work just fine with a one-party scheme.) It appears that Democrats are more heavily concentrated into a smaller number of districts, supporting an emerging Republican strength.
Where does this realignment lead third parties?
For Greens, Libertarians, and supporters of the Constitution Party, opportunities differ. The Green Party faces the severe challenge that it has advanced by being more progressive than the bulk of the Democratic Party. Now the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has a say out of proportion to its numbers, meaning that the Green Party will have difficulties making itself visible as a distinct party.
The Constitution Party changed its platform some time ago so that it became a Christian nationalist party. A substantial emphasis of its platform at one time was opposition to abortion, but for a national party, that issue seems likely to fade. The Supreme Court has made this issue a state rather than a federal issue. In states where the anti-abortion cause is strong, the Republican Party has slurped up the antiabortion support. In other states, the position is a liability.
The Libertarian Party has an opportunity in the middle, but it likely appears that it will be on the unfavorable side of a substantial number of issues. The Libertarian national party moved away from pro-choice, notwithstanding the wording of the platform to the contrary. That change only appeals to a small minority of the population. The Libertarian Party is for open borders, a position not well supported nationally.
Finally, the Libertarian Party has advocated for free trade, based on a variety of economic theories. Unfortunately, at least to this author, those economic theories are wrong. In particular, the claim that free trade means that goods are more affordable, because they are cheaper, ignores the effect of globalization on salaries. For the vast number of Americans rendered unemployed due to globalization, the price of goods has become infinite. Why does this result appear?
For Americans who are employed, wages are relatively constant, while globalization means that the price of goods falls. As a result, for employed Americans, the number of hours of work needed to purchase a particular good falls. However, Americans rendered unemployed by globalization no longer have an income. The number of hours they must work at their non-job in order to buy anything becomes infinite. If you average those infinities into the average number of hours of work needed to buy an object, the average number becomes enormous. Free trade, on average, has thus made goods more expensive.
The Libertarian Party has the further challenge, which shows no signs of abating, that the party has been taken over by the Mises caucus, most recently identifiable by its de facto support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Having explained why the Green, Libertarian, and Constitution groups all have serious challenges, this analysis does not propose a solution. Indeed, it is not obvious to this author that there is one. One alternative would be to identify states that effectively have one-party governments, such as Alabama, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Wyoming, and attempt to become the second party in those places.
Re comments of mine on center-left parties should be merging, from BAN today:
“On January 26, leaders of the Forward Party of California released a message to supporters, asking them to re-register into the Common Sense Party, and declaring that the Common Sense Party will be, in effect, the name of the California branch of the Forward Party.
The Common Sense Party has been trying for four years to obtain enough voter registrations to qualify as a party in California.”
Yeah, I entertained the Alliance Party for a period of time but decided not to for 2 reasons. 1.) they had no presence in my state and a state party chair organizing a group is beyond me – either I’d do a half-ass job as a state party chair of a group with no resources or I’d be taking too much time away from my job and family. They really need more infrastructure in the state party sense. They do in South Carolina and Minnesota. But 2’s a long way from 51. Position wise, they were vaguely centrist but pushed toward left. The guy at the time that ran all their social media if you looked him up on Facebook was a Sinn Fein supporter. Darcy Richardson was nominated for VP by Brian Moore. If that’s what they are, fine. But it really doesn’t make them any different practically than (the remnant of) the MPP and Andrew Yang’s Forward Party. So if all these people want to be problem solvers of the center left, they should problem solve how there’s 3 different organizations all trying to claim the same mantlepiece.
The Alliance Party might’ve been founded as a centrist organization with a pro-civility message and a minimal platform, but they’ve taken a hard turn and now fall somewhere between the Democrats and the Greens on the left spectrum. I don’t know what transpired behind the scenes, but their platform went from relatively austere, accommodating a wide range of political and cultural views, to decidedly progressive.
I’m also interested to see how the American Solidarity Party capitalizes, if they can, on many independents’ desire for a political home that walks the talk of civility, reasonableness, actual compassion, and moderation in this political climate. As much as it might pain some of them, however, they’re going to have to rebrand themselves as something like “communitarian” and not be so explicitly reliant on Roman Catholic social teaching if they want to gain needed traction with sympathetic non-Catholics. The libertarian in me wishes they would focus more on their broad philosophical approach and the societal problems they seek to address, be less committal about specific policy prescriptions in the face of alternative reform proposals. Leave the details to the candidates.
Forgot to mention them, but the most interesting recent political party of note that has come about and has potential is the American Solidarity Party. You look at vote results and they get write-ins way above their weight, which means in spite of lack of ballot access they have grassroots support.
Constitution Party (and others of the ilk like the American Independent Party/Independent American Party) I agree with everything said. Trump stole their oxygen. The one way back is such group nominates Trump if the Republicans decide to move away from him for 2024 and Trump’s so furious like Teddy Roosevelt 1912 he’s running anyway. Which would be incredibly huge for the CP if it occurred. They could get 10% of the presidential vote and perhaps even a few Congressmen that are more loyal to Trump than they are the Republican Party. Problem is I doubt Trump wants their ballot line and would just have his supporters go do petition drives on his behalf.
Green Party I think looking at the Canadian Green Party is more insightful than looking at the U.S. one. SocraticGadfly may say I’m an idiot so apologize if I get this wrong, but the Greens here have taken to an “ecosocialist” stance with Hawkins. In other words, whereas they used to be more explicitly about environmentalism they’re putting issues of the left more to the fore. In Canada, the Green Party under Elizabeth May (who is a long-tenured Member of Parliament so is not some non-entity) cultural issues were more on the down low. Some Greens in May’s area were even called per the Boys in Short Pants podcast about Canadian politics I listen to “Tories with bikes”. May left party leadership following the 2019 election being disappointing and the few years since have been a complete disaster for the party to where they cannot be considered a credible party nationally and May has come back to the leadership. But probably comparable to Libertarians with the Mises Caucus and all the anti-Hawkins candidates from 2020 Green nomination there were a lot of nasty things under the surface that those issues exposed about the party in general: anti-Semitism accusations, the Quebec party chair was gung-ho Russia, an interim chair resigned saying “the dream is dead”, you have a list of people that are more pro-their one particular issue than caring about the party as a whole. What SocraticGadfly wrote post-2020 about the U.S. Green Party, there’s some internal issues to work out that need rectified before they can become more.
Libertarians I think have the opportunity to become something more. Whether they take that opportunity and do something with it is an open question. The reason the opportunity exists is the Republicans under Trump’s leadership wholesale abandoning small limited government and now want government to impose itself to make for example culture war shit federal law. Nationally in my opinion, they’re shitting the bed the past couple years. You may want the fed ended but answering “inflation, what do we do about it?” with “END THE FED”, is not a solution. For it to be a solution would require a Libertarian President and supermajority control of both houses of Congress. Libertarians against all odds elect the next President come 2024, who is said Libertarian President nominating to be his or her choice for Secretary of State that will require most Democrats and Republicans to vote for the individual in order to take office in Cabinet? These are not questions the current Libertarian Party can answer because not enough of us agree, so it’s easier to just not have the discussion.
As far as other parties, there’s an outline there for a vaguely center-left problem solver party. The problem is there’s a ton of those out of there and none of them did much of anything in the most recent midterms. The Forward Party and Alliance Party for example are on the exact same real estate. There should be a merger although the problem with parties of minimal infrastructure is “what are you merging with?” No Labels is incredibly well-funded albeit secretive about what their end goal is to do. I feel one problem with not just these entities but all third parties is they focus everything on President when they should focus more on state legislatures, Congress, etc. No Labels for example in February 2024 comes out and says they have $100 million to spend on a presidential candidate. Okay…guy by third party standards will get support. What then?
This thread is right up my alley:
the 1st Realignment was the one that produced the political parties into more cohesive units, I’d say early-to-mid 1790s
2nd-Federalist disintegration and inability to expand beyond the Northeast leads to the Jefferson/Madison/Monroe party running with little organized opposition that had a chance of taking majority control again, probably the last gasp of the Federalists being relevant would’ve been the 1812 election due to anger at Madison’s war with England and the embargo
3rd-pretty obvious, the 1824 election creating the Democrats now and the anti-Jacksonians, who would later be called Whigs
4th-Whig disintegration of the early 1850s
5th-post-Civil War era of Republican domination in north, Democratic domination in south, although we should be careful of distinguishing Reconstruction from the post-1876 era because like in my native North Carolina, there were organized Republican groups that elected black representatives for example; post-1876 those groups gave up and the Republican Party ceased to exist in a lot of areas in southern states (much like Republicans in some major cities and Democrats in some rural areas now)
6th-1896-William Jennings Bryan refocuses American politics around economic factors
7th-1932-pretty obvious, Depression sends everyone Democratic
8th-1968-Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition finally disintegrates into three factions of Humphrey’s labor and law and order, McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam War stance, and George Wallace’s states’ rights
9th-a realignment occurred in the 1990s, it’s really hard to see it in the presidential races because of the presence of Ross Perot, but compare the 1988 and 2000 presidential elections together, they’re completely different races, I think the year to assign this realignment to is the 1994 midterms because it brought an end to 40 consecutive years of Democratic rule in the House, which means the Democrats finally lost rural voters
I’d venture the realignment we’re in now the genesis of it was the 2016 election. Trump taking the Republicans away from free trade and embracing big government to impose conservative ideals is as sharp a stick toward realignment as anything else in living memory, probably since Bill Clinton as President coming out pro-NAFTA. I know I’ve done studies of the vote in Indiana where I’ve divided the 92 counties into quartiles (counties with largest number of votes – quarter 1, counties with least number of votes – quarter 4, each quarter has exactly 25% of the vote plus or minus 1). Democratic votes in the rural less-populated counties have completely collapsed. Where they used to lose these counties 65/35 to 60/40, they’re now losing them 75/25 to 80/20. Trump’s positive vote margin in quarter 4 in 2016 and 2020 was more than double that of Romney 2012 and McCain 2008. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was seen in other states.
Jim,
Agreed. The MAGA shift away from neoconservatism toward paleoconservatism within the GOP has done serious damage to the Constitution Party. Why would, say, a Buchananite Catholic paleocon stick around in a powerless party full of incorrigible Calvinist theonomists when a major right-of-center party has opened the door to them? I’d wager that’s why the CP has taken a sharper turn toward Protestant theocratic nationalism–it’s the faction that didn’t break for the Republicans.
I’d also be surprised if the Green Party hasn’t already suffered on account of the Squad. Even if democratic ecosocialists don’t hold the same influence within the Democratic Party that paleo- and national conservatives hold within the Republican Party, it’s clear they’re at least vocally represented now in a way they weren’t a few years ago, back when Bernie, an independent, was the only notable politician speaking their language about their priorities. Sure, he caucused with Senate Dems, but it isn’t the same.
Thanks, Jim, for that clarification. It just seemed strange that Rothbard’s departure coincided neatly with the 1989 defeat of his candidate for LNC Chair, after Rothbard was caught in a bald-face lie during his nomination speech for said candidate.
The Constitution Party has no future in a world of MAGA Republicans. They occupy the same ideological space. Don Blankenship only raised $5,900 from individual donors. The Constitution party national committee hasn’t cracked $100,000 in raised funds since 2016. They had been slowly losing ballot access even before Trump came along. There is virtually no chance of a revival.
If the Sanders/AOC wing of the Democratic party ever takes decisive control away from the modestly more moderate Biden/Hillary faction, the Green party will suffer the same fate.
Rothbard quit the party for cultural reasons. He initially tried to claim that he was quitting because the party was overrun with “big government libertarians”, but when he went into detail about what big government they supported, it turned out to be things like not allowing public libraries to expel homeless people, not allowing government funded organizations to discriminate based on race, gay rights, and open borders. He was, apparently, quite upset when some seemingly drug addicted libertarians showed up unannounced at his residence one day and asked to spend the night. This culminated in Rothbard and Rockwell forming PaleoLibertarianism.
Rothbard described that in numerous places. Here is an excerpt of one, in Rothbard’s own words:
“The point of the new paleo movement, including the designation, is to separate ourselves out of the broader movement, to find and inspire other paleos, and to form our own separate and self-conscious movement.
“…We are still hard-core libertarians, but we now are not willing to settle, as a movement, for liberty alone. We insist on liberty plus.
“We have said that a certain cultural matrix is essential to liberty…. But that is not the point, although I agree that liberty will tend to flourish most in a bourgeois, Christian culture. I am willing to concede that you can indeed be a good, hard-core libertarian and still be a hippie, an aggressive anti-bourgeois and anti-Christian, a drug addict, a moocher, a rude and intolerable fellow, and even an outright thief.
“But the point is that we paleos are no longer willing to be movement colleagues with these sorts of people. For two separate and powerful reasons, each of which would be good enough reason to form a separate and distinct paleo movement. One is strategic: that these sorts of people tend, for obvious reasons, to turn off, indeed to repel, most “real people,” people who either work for a living or meet a payroll, middle class or working class people who, in the grand old phrase, enjoy “visible means of support.”
“… But our reasons are not only strategic. For among the repelled are we ourselves…
“… the glorious events of 1989 have ended the Cold War and have made an alliance with “paleo-conservatives,” a reconstitution of the Old Right, possible and feasible. But our accelerating disgust with our libertarian movement comrades is a separate phenomenon, although it dovetails neatly with our new movement and has given us the word “paleo.””
Rothbard’s late-life abandonment of libertarianism on social issues is what allowed him to be willing to compromise with paleoconservatives in allowing local bans of things like pornography and prostitution.
Jared – perhaps one reason Murray quit the Party in 1989 is that sufficient numbers of members weren’t “promot(ing) deontological anarcho-capitalism as the only logically consistent form of libertarianism.” Though many, if not most, libertarians would distill their guiding principle down to “I want to live my life as I see fit, as long as I don’t take other people’s stuff or hit them, except in self-defense,” most involved in the Party have realized a more pragmatic approach is required if the Party wants to engage in real politics. Certainly, very few candidates have ever seriously run as anarcho-capitalists. What we have seen is gradualism; sort of “this train is going to Liberty but will be making several stops along the way. Come along for the ride for as many stops as you are comfortable with.” But the pragmatic approach hasn’t, to my knowledge, ever seriously considered proposing that net liberty be rolled back in order to curry favor with voters who favor, let’s say, ending Free Trade and advocating government action be taken to prevent consumers or manufacturers or importers from dealing with countries with whom the U.S. is not formally at war. Many of us would continue to support a Party that calls for, say, an immediate 25% rollback in Fed gas taxes instead of a 25% increase, but few would support a Party that called for a 15% increase instead of a 25% increase.
Seward, not Stanton. I stand corrected. 1896 did not substantially change the significant issue..the Republicans kept winning until 1932.
I opposed the 2003 war of aggression against Iraq, because Iraq was staying at home. That war was supported by Bush Administration claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or was plotting to make them. Those claims were as false as the Putin dictatorship’s claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis and Satanists. The war was about Bush Jr’s effort to prove he had as many cojonesas his father
In contrast the first Iraq war was to end aggression against a friendly country. The current activity, which consists entirely of sending people money and some arms (M-60s and F-16s now, please), is not even armed intervention. It’s similarly intended to stop a war of aggression against a friendly country. It’s the national equivalent of stopping a rapist caught in flagrante delicto.
I interpret the Libertarian Pledge as safeguarding the party against 18 U.S.C. § 2385, which applies to
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of [the U.S. or any state] government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof
Clearly it isn’t required of all members to commit to a crude Rothbardian conception of the non-aggression principle. It’s there to ward off and protect the party from insurrectionary anarchist rhetoric, not to enshrine or promote deontological anarcho-capitalism as the only logically consistent form of libertarianism. That said, I think we shouldn’t conflate the meaning of the Pledge with a version or interpretation of the NAP.
George is correct that Nolan meant for the NAP to signal the LP wasn’t for violent change. However, that is only part of why Nolan insisted on the non-initiation pledge for all members (don’t “believe or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.”) I, too, knew Dave Nolan – from 1967 until his untimely death, and have discussed the pledge with him. To the best of my recollection, he wanted the pledge to serve as a permanent reminder that Party positions must always move toward more liberty even if practical politics had to be non-anarcho-capitalist. For example, while libertarian principles and NAP may call for the immediate abolishment of social security, the realistic political position would be some sort of phase-out over time. In the instant case of free trade, I believe Nolan would have seen prohibition of a voluntary commercial transaction between, say, a consumer in the U.S. and a seller in Germany, would be a violation of NAP and the Pledge, while
calling for lower tariffs or relaxation of trade restrictions to be a step in the right direction that the Party could, recognizing practical politics, support.
George, I seem to remember you being against the Iraq War in the 2000s.
You opposed foreign intervention to stop Hussein, but support foreign intervention to stop Putin? Why the difference?
It helps to have some recognition of current history rhyming with old history, 1938 to be precise. If you allow dictatorships to conquer neighboring relatively free countries and absorb their resources, when they reach you you will be short of allies. In addition, some of us believe that the German extermination policies of the early 1940s are completely outside the pale, so that it is a moral duty to oppose them to whatever extent is possible. The declared Russian policy is the extermination of the Ukrainian language and culture, indeed, the denial that Ukrainian is a distinct language. If you are walking down the street and you see a thug raping a ten-year-old girl (Bucha), your interpretation of nonintervention may say that you should not intervene, but I would say intervention would be morally obligatory if possible. You seem to disagree.
I discussed NAP directly with David Nolan himself, the fellow who set down the Libertarian Party’s principles. He was totally clear on this point: our non-aggression statement is that the Libertarian party is here to effect political change by peaceful political means. We are not the bomb-planting antiwar groups of the early 1970s. In particular the non-aggression principal has nothing to do with enforcing laws, collecting and paying taxes, or other practices deprecated by anarchists.
Thanks for the views of American political history. I am impressed by the commenters’ knowledge of the subject. I support the practical strategy of identifying states that effectively have one-party governments and attempting to become the second party in those places. I think this approach could also be used within two party states where one region of a state is one-party. But we have to be well funded and prepared to defend these successes as using this strategy will immediately attract the attention of one of the top two parties and they will focus on taking over from us.
George, why should the US government support either side in this conflict? What about a non-interventionist foreign policy? How is anti-war pro-Russia?
I would sure like to hear Darcy Richardson’s take on all this.
I’m chagrined to find out that I’ve apparently broken the NAP everytime I advocated for or signed off on any technological improvement at work that caused someone to be unemployed.
SocraticGadfly: I didn’t count the collapse of the Whigs at all. I counted the question as to whether the core opposition would be an anti-immigration party or an abolition party, the strength of the anti-immigration party being neglected in more modern sources. The Republicans with Fremont won. Changes in who controlled the Democratic Party did not change the main issue, namely that from 1860 to 1932 the Republicans usually won the White House, barring scandal, depression, or party split.
Sorry, no, there are several things wrong, especially on 19th century realignments, George.
First, historians and political scientists do not count the collapse of the Whigs and the fragmentation of Democrats in the 1850s as two separate alignments.
Second, Stanton was nobody’s candidate for president in 1860. Before Lincoln split the difference, it was Seward and Chase in the new GOP.
Third, you skip another re-alignment. McKinley’s election in 1896 is generally considered one. You reference Bryan but don’t tie him fully into a realignment, per Jim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_realignment#United_States
As for today’s third parties? As an ex-Green, there’s been fragmentation over COVID-related issues. There’s been lesser splintering over other things, like Howie Hawkins’ stance on “Russiagate,” and IMO, his non-stance on China issues. Hawkins also getting the SPUSA nod in 2020 meant I didn’t have a third party vote option to fit me. (I had SPUSA via write-in in 2016 and wish I had done that.)
Andy: Apparently you missed the LNC, which was completely taken over by the Mises caucus. They voted to support (under some terminology) the February antiwar demonstration in DC, opposing American support for Ukraine being overtly proRussian.
Jim,
I agree you can make matters more complicated, as Kevin Phillips and others have done. Some folks try to force matters into rigid 20 (or whatever) cycles, somewhat on the muffler repair philosophy ‘don’t worry, we’ll make it fit’) Thank you for interesting details. There are details as to who moved to which party when. Scandals and (1912) party splits can change matters, as do weak candidates, so we do not see 40 or 50 years of one-party rule. With respect to when the 1980 realignment ‘started’, Eisenhower got more electoral votes out of the south than Goldwater did, and Carter in 1976 carried almost the entire south. Only in 1980 and following was it clear which way the South had changed. The period after 1840 was complicated (read Potter, The Impending Crisis, or Rhodes, History of the United States for more), but understandable.
And now we reach the present day, and what appears to be the current realignment.
Be careful with ‘real income’, which with some frequency ignores the plight of the unemployed. The ‘unemployment rate’ number skips large numbers of people who dropped out of the labor force. Look at the participation rate.
George, I jumped on board with the Mises Caucus right after I heard it was being formed around August or September of 2017, and I have been on the Mises Caucus email list since early 2018, and I regularly read and post on Mises Caucus discussion forums, and I am unaware of the Mises Caucus supporting Russia invading Ukraine. Can you show us where the Mises Caucus Board of Directors voted in favor of this? I do not recall receiving any emails from the Mises Caucus saying that the caucus was in favor of Russia invading Ukraine. I communicate with Mises Caucus members on a regular basis, and this has never been mentioned in conversation.
I have disagreements on the nature and dating of these realignments.
And first, I have to say, the ideological divide along geographic lines is due to which groups colonized the various parts of the US. The northeast by Puritans from southeastern England, the midwest by Quakers from northwestern England and also by many continental Europeans (Germans, Dutch, Norwegians), the lowland south in part by the middle children of Royalists and in part by poor, uneducated, hicks, both of whom came from southwestern England, and the highland south by Scots-Irish.
Flash forward several hundred years and the Democratic party of roughly 1848 had 3 factions, not two. The northeast was dominated more by free market classical liberals, the south by ethno-nationalists, and the midwest by anti-corporate populists. From there until the conclusion of the Civil War everything was chaos. But, after the Civil War, things returned to basically the same lines. The northeastern Democrats produced Grover Cleveland, the Midwest Democrats produced populist proto-progressive James Weaver and William Jennings Bryan, and the southeast Democrats produced the Klan.
William Jennings Bryan was a major turning point. The Democratic party went from Grover Cleveland style liberalism to Bryan’s progressivism. Gold Democrats ran to the Republican party and Silver Republicans became Democrats.
There were two factions in the Republican party following the Civil war, personified by the faction that had backed Lincoln (the Moderates) and the faction that supported US Grant (the Radicals). The difference between them being how harsh they wanted to be toward the post-war south. When that issue was settled in 1877, the two factions remained split along the same lines over the spoils system and civil service reform. With the civil service reform question settled in 1883, one faction of the Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting Grover Cleveland, which is how the Democrats managed to get someone elected president.
The faction of the Republican party that did not cross over to support Cleveland became imperialist-trade protectionist progressives. Think William McKinley through Teddy Roosevelt.
Then along comes William Jennings Bryan and his progressivism wins control of the Democratic party.
That left the liberals politically homeless. Eventually they mostly migrated to the Republican party to form the Old Right. But that migration took 40 years and wasn’t complete until FDR’s time. They did manage to sneak Coolidge in before then.
Moving forward to post WW2, the Old Right Republicans split into thirds over the Soviet threat question. One faction (the Buckleyites) wanted to bomb Moscow. Another faction (the PaleoConservatives) wanted to turtle up, shut down the borders and cut off foreign contact, and let the outside world succumb to communism, if that was their fate. And the other faction became libertarians who more or less wanted to ignore the Soviets.
The realignment which you date to 1980 actually began in 1964, when southern Democrats began supporting Barry Goldwater because Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act (although Goldwater did not oppose it for the same reasons that the southerners did, it was the best they could hope for.) Those southern Democrats who crossed over were, in that election, put in contact with the PaleoConservatives. And the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the PaleoConservatives was very appealing to the ethno-nationalist southern whites. (Strom Thurmond became a Republican in 1964. Democrat Larry McDonald became head of the PaleoConservative John Birch Society in 1966, etc.) The two groups got together again in 1968 to support George Wallace and that cemented their ties. (One of many, many examples: Revilo Oliver, a founding member of the John Birch Society, was also a member of the National Alliance, a spin off of the George Wallace campaign.) Nixon picked up on the trend in 1970 and developed his Southern Strategy around it. But, again, it took 30 odd years for the migration of those southern Democrats to become Republicans.
As for your anti-free trade position – the unemployment rate and real median household income says you’re wrong.