I have been suggesting for some time now that our two major
political parties are each undergoing a political transformation.
If we employ the traditional imagery of a Republican wearing a
three-piece suit or a designer dress, and a Democrat wearing
blue jeans or an off-the rack skirt, I say the two parties are
changing their political wardrobes. Today’s Republican is more
likely to wear working clothes, and today’s Democrat likely to
dress upscale befitting his or her new upper middle class status.
The fact is that more blue collar, rural and small town voters,
many of whom voted Democratic in the past, are now populist
conservatives responding to the call “to make America great
again.” A the same time, many suburban women, new-rich
urban entrepreneurs, university-educated millennials, and urban
ethnic voters, many of whom might be considered more
conservative in the past, say they are now distributionist
progressive voters responding to the siren of “tax the rich.”
The top political agents for this transformation currently, in
great irony, are a former New York City liberal real estate
developer (and TV personality), Donald Trump, leading the
populist conservative surge --- and two millionaire politicians,
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, leading the distributionist
progressive surge.
We are witnessing in recent elections, more union members and
other blue collar voters voting Republican. Simultaneously, more
and more new-rich high tech billionaires and millionaires,
educated urban professional young persons and upscale suburban
females are moving sharply to the left.
Some might be tempted to explain this in terms of differing
responses to Donald Trump. While the highly controversial and
disruptive president does provoke deeply-felt reactions, the
political transformations began well before he appeared, and
likely will continue after his presidency ends (whenever that
might be).
The always thoughtful Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics has
written a useful piece on his subject at the American Enterprise
Institute (“The (18)70s Show”) in which he illustrates another U.S.
political party transformation that took place 1870 to1900, and
which paralleled our national transition from an agrarian to an
industrial society. In that era, the agrarian Democratic Party
which had been unsympathetic to blacks, city dwellers and women
began its transformation into a party which championed workers
(a transformation, I might add, not fully realized until the New
Deal). At the same time, the abolitionist and pro-women’s suffrage
Republican Party, as the nation retreated from Reconstruction in
the South, increasingly identified with the new industrial
establishment.
The post-Civil War era and extended depression beginning with
the Panic of 1873 are given as catalysts --- although, I note, in 1859,
the pre-presidential (but so often prescient) Abraham Lincoln saw a
political transformation coming when he wrote in a letter citing
the reversal of political principles of the “party of Jefferson” and
the “party of Hamilton.” Trende asserts that the political parties
in the late 19th century, and today, adjusted to the changing tensions
felt by voters.
A more detailed and longer term account of U,S. political party
transformations has just been published by my friend Michael
Barone in his excellent new book How Political Parties Change
(And How They Don’t). Barone has been for some time an
incomparable political demographic commentator. In his new book,
and in an article in Washington Examiner Magazine (“The perils of
downscale political parties”), he makes a persuasive case not
only for the various transformations, but also of their frequent
resilience:
“.....(Franklin) Roosevelt’s downscale Democrats did win five
straight presidential elections.”
It seems to me that many opponents of Donald Trump think that
if he went away, political parties --- particularly the Republican
Party ---would revert to their old selves. An underlying message
of Barone and Trende (with which I concur) is that the changes
are irreversible --- until the next transformations (which could
take decades). Trump, Sanders and Warren are the faces of their
parties today, but new personalities, I think, will emerge soon
enough to speak to most of the same voters of their respective
parties.
Barone also makes the interesting point of the parallels between
the changes in the two major U.S. parties, and what’s going on just
now in the United Kingdom where Boris Johnson is taking his
Conservative Party to more working class voters, and the Labour
Party leader is taking his party more sharply to the left.
That election is only four weeks away, and thus might be worth
special attention from those of us on this side of the big old Pond.
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Copyright (c) 2019 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.
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