The signs suggest that, barring a sudden change in the internal public approval dynamics, the conventional wisdom that this election is a tug-of-war over a handful of exubran Ohio voters is about to shift to one that posits a general sense of desperation in the Bush camp.
Which doesn’t go well with Bush’s attempted aura of Confidence Maximus.
This is barring the possibility that the internal dynamics will change as Kerry’s performance falls flat.
In most other elections, the current dynamics and polling would have the latter being the current horse-race storyline. A combination of factors stop the regular story-line: the unpredictable dynamics of post 9/11 politics that may or may not change the conventional wisdom, and the love affair with the “50/50” “blue state — red state” storyline.
David Broder, the harbinger of the Washington elite’s “conventional wisdom”, chimed in within the past week (and, indeed, has followed Zogby and some guy from the south… Mr. Cook holds what may be becoming the contrary view at this point in time) that we’re, for better or worse, in Kerry-Land.
Zogby has just updated their “swing states poling” list — four new states that Bush carried in 2000.
All despite Kerry’s more than evident weaknesses as a candidate — weaknesses that could still torpedo him.
A couple weeks ago, I had thought that I had seen the outer limits of what any possible Kerry landslide would look like, looking at the current forecasts at electoralvote.com. Bush was up in Virginia by 3 percentage points. Indeed, Bush’s numbers must have shown the same thing, because — there he was: campaigning in Virginia.
But, it appears I was incorrect. Kerry’s position has since improved. Bush is now behind in the supposed bell-weather state of Ohio by 9 points, and… try this state out:
Georgia. Bush: 46%. Kerry: 41%. Nader: 1%.
The state that brought us Jimmy Carter and Zell Miller toward the end of its Democratic stranglehold, transformed to swing over the other way to bring us Sonny Purdue and Zell Miller … a few more polls like this and we’ll see Bush moving into a proverbial shell. Is it possible? Can it at least be close enough to push the Democratic candidate for Senator past the finish line — a race that has been essentially written off as a Republican “gain” from psuedo-Democrat Zell Miller. (The irony of that situation being: the Senate candidate — Majette– was elected in 2002 to a House seat in a primary to a left-wing bomb-thrower McKinnley — the right-ward tilt of the election year bringing her to power. Cynthia McKinnley has since re-won this seat, as Ms. Majette pursued the Senate. Should she win, it’d be part of the same liberal-shift in the winds that had McKinnley win her seat. Still, she’s probably due to lose.) Difficult to fathom, and this poll may just be an abberation — but, on the other hand… if… if… and if… then we’re stuck at the “What is happening here?” moment.
More important than Kerry actually winning Virginia or Georgia is re-creating the electoral map and changing the calculus for winning campaigns.
The previous calculus, essentially, had the states of Arkansas and Florida being the Southern states that the Democrats had any chance of — Arkansas because of Bill Clinton, Florida because half of it is culturally northern. In retrospect, Tennessee doesn’t seem too surprising: sure Gore lost it, but — to build on a previous post on an esoteric political topic: while the other Southern states were tossing out Democrats of the Strom Thurmond and George Wallace variety, Tennessee brought us Al Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver! Louisiania was the only other state in the South with a viable Democratic Party left — very good at churning out Conservative Democrats, at a possibility to hold off as the old Southern Democrats from another era retired across the South.
It’s never a good idea for a political party to write off large sections of the country. Besides which, conventional wisdom seems to shift in the wind. Hell — as late as 1998, the Democratic Party was thought to have re-found its groove in that there South, bottomed-out, and back on the rebound. (Think John Edwards.) Two years later, Al Gore picked up nary a Southern state, and two years after that — Georgia chunked out its Democratic Party — and the conventional wisdom reverted to form: the Democrats are dead to the South.
The South has been the bed-rock for the Republican Coalition’s Majority since Nixon, borne out of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 base of support. The book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out the framework for the Republican’s electoral success, written as the Democratic coalition was falling apart. It’s not too difficult to figure how the Democratic Coaliton could end up unraveling: the party of Jefferson Davis becomes the home for blacks, and at some point, on a national level, it’d have to decide one constituency or the other.
Georgia should probably vanish from the list of “close states”… barring a Kerry rout. But, it looks as though Virginia is there to stay. The Democratic Party dents into the Republican Party’s bed of support. If, on the eve of the election, Georgia actually does look as though it’s tilting toward Kerry — it’s at that point in time that Bush is probably stuck doing what Walter Mondale did at the end of his campaign: ignore his presidential campaign per se and fight for some Senate seats — then we’d be seeing him up in Alaska in that tight Senate race.
Beyond the Southern states, we have the spector of various state party apparatuses dusting themselves off:
The decayed Democratic Party of Colorado is coming back from the ashes.
The decayed Democratic Party of Ohio, they say, has to get its electoral votes to Kerry or risk the emergance of a gubernatorial run from one Jerry Springer.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Republican Party has become unhinged.
On the other side, Minnesota — the formerly solidly Democratic state that brought us Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale — and for that matter Paul Wellstone — heck, for that matter Al Franken — is these days a toss-up state. The upper mid-west states look more hospitable toward Republicanism than they once did.
Demographic changes shift the states in one direction or the other. The map is being reshaped. Karl Rove’s fantasy that the 2004 election would bring with it a 20-year Republican hegenomy has completely and utterly been destroyed.
I do not know if the writers of The Emerging Democratic Majority are correct or not (in no small part because I’ve not read the book, and really only have the broadest awareness of the thesis and few of the details. I suspect I’d chunk it as moving statistics around to fulfill wishful thinking.). But, there are some things worth noting.
If John Kerry wins the election, it will be the fourth straight election where the Democrats have won the majority of the popular vote. And somewhat worth noting: Bush I won running on a platform of a “kinder, gentler” Reaganism. Bush II was a “Compassionate Conservative”.
For most of the 2000 campaign, I had the general sense that Bush would win… when I saw Gore win Florida, I was somewhat stunned and taken aback. I now suspect that my general surprise of Gore’s electability came from the fact that the RNC has louder megaphones than the DNC. Worth noting, Gore only picked up momentum after he picked up some generic “populist” rhetoric… a departure from Clinton’s “New Democratic” Centrism. (Clinton thus becomes a part of the Republican’s ruling Majority, similar to Eisenhower’s placement in the middle of the Democrat’s ruling Majority of 1932 – 1968. In a sense, he was nothing but a “Reagan Democrat” — the rise of Newt Gingrich and Clinton’s subsequent re-election campaign of “Triangulation” being the final nail in the coffin to this position.)
I’d place the disintegration of the Republican Coalition as starting in 1998 — during the Lewinsky Affair. Toss out the muddled presidential election in 2000 and look at the other races — if these were mid-term elections, the results would have been considered a Democratic Year.
2002 becomes an abberation. Hell — the conventional wisdom for 2002 even up to snuff with the reality of 2002. Had Wellstone not crashed in that plane, he probably would have pulled neighboring Missouria’s close race to the Democratic side and all we’d have is one Democratic pick-up in Arkansas and one Republican pick-up in Georgia… one state’s sex scandal and one state’s Republican trend-line.
On the other hand, this macro-cosmic frame for American political history tends to gloss over reality.
The old Democratic Coalition was borne when the public quite understandably tossed out the mixture of laissez fare and crony capitalism favoured by the previous Republican trio of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. But, the party adapted to changing dynamics. Roosevelt largely ended up adopting much of the Socialist Party’s platform — in a real sense, necessary to fend off a public longing for an American version of the Bolshevik Revolution or something similar. You can probably compare some of Roosevelt’s political speeches to those of Hugo Chavez’s. But, between this high-point of 1936 and 1940 — a court-packing scandal pulled the man down a notch, and the opposition party became a little smarter — Al Landon gave way to Wendell Wilkie. 1944, the US at war, Roosevelt considered sticking Wendell Wilkie on the ticket — “National Unity” ticket, if you will, with the man who pretty well compromised away the Republican Party’s isolationist sentiment anyway. Picking his running-mate at that point in his tenure was tountamount to picking his successor. The party demanded Henry Wallace’s head, and gave us Harry Truman. Henry Wallace was essentially purged from the party — and Truman would later do what has come to be known as a “Sister Soljuah” with Wallace supporters. The move from Wallace to Truman marks a significant step rightward for the Democratic Party.
Truman’s 1948 victory looks like an abberation. We forget, in our historical placement of him into the “Canon of Great Presidents”, that Truman was an unpopular president. He won through psychological voo-doo: playing up the tropes of the underdog and the “Fighter”. Thomas Dewey’s campaigning was the political equivalent of the “Prevent Defense”. (for non-football fans: a conservative defensive strategy played when your team is ahead with the philosphy that it doesn’t matter how many yards you give up, just keep the team out of the end-zone. What happens with great frequency is that the down-team gets large chunks of yards, gets close to the end-zone, and gets a touch-down.)
Eisenhower won in 1952, and again in 1956. The Democratic Party selected John F Kennedy, as a step to the right from his predecessors, who only squeaked by Nixon in 1960 with the help of the key constituency of Dead People in Illinois and Texas. Lyndon Johnson’s electoral landslide in 1964 came off of the glow of JFK’s death.
Richard Nixon rushed in in 1968. He defeated McGovern in 1972. So, what you have here is a race where one of the participants was a crooked, cynical, power-hungry madman. The Democrats have been apologizing for their candidate ever since.
Jimmy Carter’s 1976 win can only be considered an abberation. Note that Gerald Ford came within Mississippi of actually winning the thing. The man who pardoned Nixon. And fell down a lot, making him a laughingstock. During a low-point for Republican Party. Nearly won.
So, you see, the Republican’s Ruling Majority Coalition — in spirit at least — stretches back to 1948.
On the other hand, give me 50 years and I’ll probably be able to formulate a cockamine theory that a Democratic Coalition was borne with Richard Nixon. He was America’s last liberal president, after all…
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UPDATE: Georgia: Bush: 54% Kerry: 38%. I suspected as much, anyway, as I said in this post.
