Barack Obama is the transition Democrat president, I don’t think Bill Clinton fit the bill(no pun intended) of a transition. Clinton was the start of the new direction of the party, which was different than it was under President Jimmy Carter and vice presidemt and candidate Walter Mondale. Candidates like Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis, while never president, were the nod to the direction the democrats were going. And Bill Clinton was the result and start. Today though President Clinton is a dated type of Democrat, he was of his time.
The Democrats are moving to the left, this is the future of the party. Barack Obama is a transition of this direction. A hypothetical President Hillary Clinton would continue that transition, but she is not the future of the party, nor is her ideas. By nature she is an outdated Democrat more of her husband’s time. Hillary has been forced to adopt ideas of what people in the party want, the ideas Bernie Sanders has long advocated for, and continuing what Barack Obama is doing. She is not far left, she even less left than he current president. In some ways Hillary is out of tune with some things, like $15 minimum wage. Only recently has she been forced to adopt it, she woukd look like a fool if she did not. Take New York which passed that minimum wage law and signed by Gov Andrew Cuomo who endorsed her. Given all this she is now on board.
I do have to giver the Clintons credit, they fought for healthcare nearly a quarter century ago. So in many ways she was ahead of her time in the 1990s, but not much today.
According to polls taken by CNN, most Democrats want the party to vote towards the left and go further than Obama. Now what explains Hillary being ahead of Bernie, I don’t know and some things are a contradiction. But I think ultimately Democrats are moving towards the Bernie lane. While Sanders will likely not win the nomination, his message is resonating and part of the reason why he ran is to bring attention to certain issues, force Hillary to adopt some of his ideas, and lay the groundwork and door open to future candidates who share his views. Sanders running also had to do with his message. Any other election year like 2000 or 2004, heck even 2008 or 2012, Sanders would have been running as a third party socialist. Now giving a giant of the party like Hillary Clinton a run for her money, shows that he and others like him are no longer considered fringe.
The future of the Democraticons party is Bernie Sanders NOT Hillary Clinton. Sure she will be the nominee in all certainity, but the Clintons are not the future. Like Obama she will a transition president, and we will see more leftist wing candidates running for the Democratic ticket in he near future.
The GOP are harder to predict in terms of future direction. Will they become a far right party which will lose elections for president for years to come or will radically change and gain more voters, especially minorities? I don’t know if Donald Trump is the future of the party. If they lose this November, I think they would have lost regardless of who was their nominee. They have become very obstructionist in the past eight years, and with this STOP Trump movement among some of them, the GOP is now even alienating their base.
I have to nit pick the part of your comment which says the Democrats will move from being the party of the economically disadvantaged to the economically comfortable who face discrimination based on their identities.
While more in tuned to the needs of the poor than Republicans, the Democrats have been he party of the disadvantaged. Neither party, in fact the U.S as a country lags behind all other democratic, high income nation in terms of social safety net. Take a look at Germany for example, we can learn a lot from them. The U.S sucks in that regard. Heck weeks of paid vacation or maternity leave are not the norm in America, even under Democratic presidents.
I think there will be a shift towards more social safety, universal healthcare, maternity leave, and more things that other industrialized nations are used to and take for granted. In the UK under conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, there is more access to healthcare by going into a clinic and walking out than in the U.S under Democrat Barack Obama. Obamacare was the beginning, not the end. It’s a slow shift, but it’s happening. The U.S is moving towards a mixed economy, like Europe.
Even those on far right are beginning to see that unfettered capitalism is not working, free trade, market economy does not solve everything. Reaganomics was not as reate as it seemed. This seems to be Trump’s message also.
This article explains it best:http://www.thenation.com/article/start-making-sense-bernie-is-bringing-the-reagan-era-to-an-end/ Thomas Piketty on the rise of Bernie Sanders: the US enters a new political era | Thomas Piketty for Le Monde | The Guardian
I don’t see how Democrats can run based only on identity politics, gay marriage is already legal and Trans rights, or racial equality is not enough to run solely on for president. Likewise Republicans can’t just run based on ranting against immigrants or any minority group.
The problem with the Democrats’ direction is that once the party reaches a tipping point where it’s majority minority voters that’s going to change things. Right now the Democrats’ activist base is primarily young leftists. It’s donor base is a combination of rich liberals, especially from Hollywood, and socially liberal but economically conservative tech giants and Wall Streeters. In all cases, the party is controlled by white people.
Once the party is no longer controlled by white liberals, things change a lot. Latinos, who will probably end up being the largest demographic group within the party, are not all that liberal and they don’t prioritize social issues the way white liberals do. A Latino-dominated Democratic Party will be a populist party dominated by the interests of Latino voters.
Right now, the GOP seems headed towards also being a populist party dominated by the interests of white voters. Thus my statement that we’re headed towards a very unhealthy state of affairs.
There’s no chance of a socially-rightward swing for the Democrats – anyone who actually cares about socially conservative issues enough to vote based on them isn’t coming close to the Democratic party and hasn’t for years.
This is a feature, not a bug, especially considering the ever-dwindling nature of socially conservative (also known as anti-gay and anti-trans) voters.
For the forseeable future, the Democratic party will be a big-tent made up of white liberals/moderates and minorities. Growing numbers of various minorities won’t change this – each sub-group will need the others for electoral victory, so we’ll continue to see candidates reaching out to all these groups. And considering how many white people refuse to be members of a whites-only group (which the Republican party looks more like every year), I’m not worried that the Democratic party will lose a significantly greater portion of the white electorate than they’ve lost already. I think just about everyone willing to be part of a whites-only club is already out of the Democratic party.
If by “the two groups” you mean the two parties, that’s inevitable. How can we have a competitive two-party system without the parties opposing each other?
If by “the two groups” you mean the rich and the rest of us, well, if each merely serves its own interests – it turns out that class interests are sometimes in accord but often in conflict, therefore there are class interests opposed to other class interests. Is that any reason why a class should not collectively serve its own collective interests? Perhaps, but if you preach that message I can guarantee you only the middle and poor will listen to it hard enough to reject it; the rich will simply ignore it.
Here’s an interesting perspective: Former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett wants Trump to get the nomination because that “is the surest path to complete and total destruction of the Republican Party as we know it.” Which is a good thing, like an addict’s rock-bottom – the GOP has been getting hooked progressively worse on the crazy-stupid and needs an intervention. Then a newer, saner, more reasonable GOP can form.
He is completely overlooking the fact that Trump’s base will still be there and will have a say in how the party is re-formed. They have real grievances – they might misunderstand their causes and be willing to believe in unworkable solutions, but the grievances are real. The new white-working-class populist nationalism is not going away.
I don’t think th I donere will be a rightward shift in social issues on the Democratic platform so much as a deprioritization of them, much as we saw in the party from the 30s to the 60s. The party was 99% about economic issues back then with little concern for social issues. It took a new generation plus a comfortable, growing middle class to cause the party to change priorities.
We don’t know for sure what will happen because rich white people decide the ideological direction of the party and minorities get to take it or leave it. Minority politicians who aren’t 100% on board don’t get supported in primaries, whereas white candidates the party is more forgiving towards because they tend to represent areas where Democratic wins aren’t a sure thing. Once white liberals no longer control the party, everything changes. Then minority candidates start to more fully represent the views of their constituents.
That depends on how hostile the party becomes to white voters. Wait 20 years or so and see what happens if Democrats nominate a Latino version of Donald Trump.
Yep. The party can become more liberal to try to attract more young and minority voters, or it can become more populist and attract more white voters. Either path works in the short and medium term. Trump isn’t the guy to be the standard bearer, but imagine someone with more political skill but a similar message.
That also changes the Democratic Party because it pushes the Bruce Bartletts of the party into the Democratic camp, which makes the Democrats more economically conservative. This shift will be especially noticeable given how important moderate Republican voters are to Democratic hopes in many states and districts. the Blue Dogs will be back with a vengeance and might even challenge for the leadership.
So what? I’m all for more emphasis on economic issues.
This sounds like a good and positive thing – better representation of the constituents. I see no reason to believe this would make white liberals less likely to support Democrats.
What if they nominate robot Hitler? Or alien Stalin?
My fear of these possibilities is roughly the same – adaher’s wishful thinking about the demise of the Democratic party still doesn’t penetrate my real world worries about the future of politics.
The Democratic Party is not hostile to white voters, never has been, and shows no signs of becoming so in the future, and would not be if it nominated a “Latino version of Donald Trump,” whatever that may mean. That would make the Dems stupid, but not anti-white in the sense the Pubs backing Trump now are showing themselves to be anti-Latino.
It’s not about whether the party is actually anti-white, but whether whites perceive the party as anti-white. Or at least less sensitive to the needs of white voters as compared to minority voters. Which is already a problem for Democrats and will only get worse once white liberals don’t control the party anymore.
As for the constant “I don’t want to be in a whites-only club” arguments, it’s easy to say when you know that very rich people who share your views and look like you are actually running things. It’s a lot harder to stick to when the masses are controlling the direction of the party and using it for rather ugly ends, as is happening with the Republican Party.
Well, it is possible. that rich white people will play their hand skillfully enough to maintain control… Democratic voters seem more willing to follow along with what the rich Democratic donors want.
That is indeed an ugly phenomenon – but, if the Dem-and-leftier masses controlled the Democratic Party like Sanders wants, the ends would not be ugly. That’s just the difference. It’s all a matter of content.
Sanders supporters can’t control the party because they are the same people who control the party now, just poorer. White people. We have not yet seen what a minority-dominated party would look like, or what kind of rhetoric its candidates would use if the white vote was unnecessary in primaries.
It’s based on history. Parties change as their demographics change. The flight of working class whites from the Democratic Party caused it to be run by wealthier liberals as opposed to unions. The Democratic base is minorities and well off whites. The well off whites decide the direction of the party. To think that the party won’t change if minority voters are calling the shots is actually the definition of wishful thinking.
And we won’t see that, because even a left-populist Democratic Party with practically all minority voters in America driven into it would still have a white majority or at least plurality – and, it doesn’t matter either way; what matters is not what race predominates in the party but what class.