The Republican resurgence in 2010 seemed to cast doubt on this analysis, but it seems to have peaked. Now, after the hardest-fought, most expensive election ever, Obama remains president, the Democrats still control the Senate, the Republicans still control the House – nothing changed. The new party system appears to have more or less stabilized. Movement conservatism is on the ropes, but it’s not going away.
This might be near the end of the Sixth System, but it can’t be the beginning of the Seventh yet. Even if the Republican party does finish self-destructing (and I don’t think we can say that until and unless they’ve lost both houses, at least), the Seventh System won’t start until something else rises from the ashes.
A party doesn’t have to self-destruct for there to be a new party system-the last few have all involved Republicans and Democrats in various incarnations.
So its not a Seventh Party System because we can’t know for certain if its a Seventh Party System? That seems weirdly solipsistic.
You think we’ll have a long period of a divided legislature? That’s pretty uncommon. There were six years under Reagan, and that’s about it for the twentieth century (only seven of the last 55 Congresses were divided, and the three under Reagan that were divided was the only time in the last hundred years where they were consecutive).
The next congress will give us two in a row. It would be unprecedented in US history for that state of affairs to continue past 2016.
I believe there were far fewer competitive House districts than in previous years due to successful gerrymandering on both sides. Despite continuing demographic change, I don’t think the Dems will take control of the House in 2014. In order to do so in 2016, they’d have to do most of the following:
Nominate a white male for President,
Who is just as good in all other aspects as Obama,
Who runs a good campaign,
Who runs a 50 state campaign,
Not have the economy tank for a year or more before 2016.
Which isn’t to say that #1 is the be all end all, but in order to have a chance of overcoming gerrymandering you’ll have to have the coattails from the 5% or so (might be more, might be less) of people who won’t vote for anyone but a white male.
Which isn’t to say that it will not happen in the medium term, but I think the medium term is more like 10-15 years rather than 4.
And what’s more important, the GOP will not have much chance to recapture the Senate or the Presidency with their current platform considering the continuing demographic and ethical shift taking place. They will only continue to hold the House due to favorable districting. And these districts are so favorable that anyone who speak out against the right-line will be primaried out, forcing them to play to their base which will leave them weak nationally.
Most evidence I’ve seen has redistricting netting the GOP six or seven seats this cycle. Not trivial, but hardly enough to maintain control of the House all by itself, considering recent elections had shifts of up to 60 seats.
Is that relative to previous gerrymandering, or relative to some ungerrymandered ideal? And by “net”, I assume you mean Republican gerrymandering gains minus Democratic gerrymandering gains?
Well, by Seventh Party System, I mean a long period where the Dems predominate but the Pubs are always in there, while movement conservatism hangs on, sometimes dominating the GOP, sometimes not. In such a period, Congress probably will never be Pub-controlled in both houses.
The Sixth Party System being the Pub-dominant/centered system that lasted about from 1980 to 2008 – yes, even through the Clinton years. That Obama was able to accomplish some form of health-care reform where Clinton failed shows the sea-change.
Again, there seemed reason to doubt this judgment in 2010, but this election reaffirms it: After the hardest-fought, most expensive election ever, Obama remains president, the Democrats still control the Senate, the Republicans still control the House – nothing changed. Apparently the people want the Dems as the sun party and the Pubs as the moon party. That does not make the Pubs irrelevant – they were relevant throughout the Roosevelt and Truman years, weren’t they?
OK. Strike the “No” from my response. We’re too close to these events. We can speculate, but I genuinely don’t think that we can seriously identify trends like that right now. We might be in such a major shift now, or we might not. However, to conclude that we are in such a shift based on the 2008 and 2012 elections kind of ignores the 2010 election, in which the Republicans, running on one of the most extreme party platforms of the last thirty years, made tremendous gains in Congress. Unless you’re making this conclusion based solely on the 2012 election, which is foolish. You can’t have a trend from a single data point, and you can’t draw much of a trend from three when they’re as disparate as the last four years.
Its this years districts compared to those that existed prior to 2010 redistricting.
I agree. While there are some decently strong arguments that the Dems have a long term advantage, I think people are being overly cavalier in handwaving away the House elections in 2010 and 2012.
In which case, you could argue that the latest round of redistricting just turned an already-strong gerrymandered incumbent advantage, and made it even stronger.
I don’t think “self-destruct” in this context necessarily means literally disbanding, but simply ceasing to become electorally competitive. Obviously there wouldn’t be too much question that we were entering a new party system if one party actually disbanded!
The GOP resurgence in 2010 was due to turnout, not an ideological shift among the electorate. In 2008 about 70 million people voted for Obama and 60 million voted McCain. In 2010 about 40 million people voted for democrats, about 50 million voted for GOP. I don’t know exactly what % voted in 2008 vs 2010, but basically a lot of Obama voters stayed home in 2010 while the GOP went out and voted. I do remember reading blurbs showing far far more people who voted Obama stayed home while McCain voters did not.
But that is an issue with turnout, not ideology (a lot of dems seemed to feel there was no point in voting, if the dems are so disorganized, outclassed and promoting conservative bills with super majorities, what good would bigger majorities do). If the nations ideology shifted then Obama wouldn’t have won the 2012 election by a 3% popular vote margin despite being president during a mild depression.
I do think we are in a shift. Assuming millennials (born 1978-2000) maintain their 30 point margin for democratic candidates and issues, by 2020 they will make up almost 40% of the electorate. Also by 2020 a sizable chunk of the fox news/talk radio audience will have passed from old age. Even in 2012 the millennial voters outnumbered the 65+ voters. So by 2020 you are (assuming demographic trends are still tied to the same voting habits, no idea if that’ll stick) going to have a nation where 51% of the nation easily supports more liberal and progressive causes due to millennials, non-whites, GLBT, white liberals, single women, etc forming a coalition, and the voting base of movement conservatism (elderly white people) have been decimated by old age. Plus with registration effort states like Texas could be a swing state by 2020, making it nearly impossible for the contemporary GOP to get to 270.