You may wish to read Politics Part 6: The Missing Meta in November 8.
(Axios) Trump up, Dems down in new polls.
The history of American politics, as envisaged by political science, is divided into epochs called “party systems.” A party system isn’t determined by which party is in power. It is a statement about how bags of attitudes and constituents become represented in a two party system, and perhaps a marginal, temporary third party.
The prominence of the idea does not guarantee correctness. In their desire to find order in chaos, various authors have sliced the cake in various ways. Minus the details, the concept cannot be denied legitimacy. The vestigial First Party System was composed of Washington’s advisors and others present during the American Revolution. In the period following 1828, denoted the Second Party System, the brand-new Democratic Party resembled the traditional conservatism of the modern Republican Party. Beginning in 1854 and continuing to late in the century, the Republican Party of the Third Party System was a radical force for civil rights. Party ideological alignments were the opposite of today. Did this system end with the end of Reconstruction in 1876 or in 1896? I prefer 1876; historians prefer 1896.
Things remain pretty clear during the Fourth Party System of the Progressive Era. The Fifth Party System of the New Deal was a transformative coalition of the poor and marginalized, and the genesis of “big government.” Alignment with Big Labor dates to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Many antagonisms with traditional Republicans remain based on this legacy. A personal anecdote. As a child who might have appeared thoughtful, I was repeatedly, randomly approached by elderly strangers who imagined it was important for me to understand that FDR was an evil man, and to further this to subsequent generations.
With the Sixth Party System, things become more debatable, the timing murky. The Jim Crow laws of southern states were invalidated with actions like the 1954 Warren Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In response, the Republican Party devised the racist Southern Strategy, which gained them the presidency in 1968. But beginning with the New Deal, and continuing into the 1980’s, the South benefited from a net inflow of federal money. The money ran out about 1983, but slowed the Republican takeover of southern congressional districts. Not until the Congressional elections of 1994, forty years after Brown , did the South flip Republican.
So the Sixth Party System, unlike predecessors, cannot be chronologically defined. Yet remarkably, the advent of a Republican South had profound effect on the ideology of the Democratic Party.
Deprived of their rural southern base, which had a conservative cultural outlook, the mainstream Democratic ethos became unmoored. Union labor, which had been culturally conservative, was diminished by de-industrialization of the U.S. As the union rolls diminished, blue collar labor’s muscles atrophied. Deprived of the requirement of broad cultural inclusion of southern and union attitudes, the Democratic Party was free to drift to the left.
De-industrialization was consequent to the granting China permanent most-favored nation status in 2000, and the more general effects of globalism, which for a period of time afforded low inflation and a boost in living standard at a cost which would not be fully appreciated for a generation.
A constant of the U.S. political landscape is geography. Throughout history, cities have been the sources of intellectual ferment; densely populated coastal areas combine awareness of human interdependence with cosmopolitan outlook. In areas of low population density, which is most of the U.S., the mythology of autonomy combines with exploitation of the land. The Sixth Party System, reflecting this political constant of nature, derives stability from geography.
New features of the Republican Party, of the Seventh Party System are:
- De facto repudiation of American Exceptionalism, as the international and domestic responsibility to do good works.
- Intent to remedy structural economic defects which accumulated since 2000.
- Intent to establish fiscal soundness.
- Nativism.
- Authoritarianism.
- Possible obstruction of the democratic process by groups that seek protection of what they see as their birthright.
If the two-party system is to continue, the Democratic Party must develop a new opposable identity. As the Axios, CNN, and other polls reveal, there is rage against the perceived impotence of Chuck Schumer, a groundswell for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a strongly negative view of the party. Those who urge for activism may be overplaying their hand. Although this administration may stumble on the economy, restoration of the Democratic Party to traditional parity may require an Eighth Party System.
The news media almost invariably discuss politics at the tactical level. You won’t read about the party systems, any more than you read about the next five years. The deficit, that killer of nations, is mentioned less and less as the menace steadily grows. The choices offered so far: let the ill and elderly die in the street, or go broke as a nation. The nation has been unable to resolve this further since the New Deal. It appears that the political process is incapable of simultaneous compassion and responsibility. The words are too long.
Within four to six years, a new menace, with a conveniently short acronym, will become available to the Democrats. Their historic concern for the importance of wealth distribution over wealth creation will become describable as:
A.I.
As humans become vulnerable to obsolescence, which is already happening to some knowledge workers, the job market will crater in every category. Those who want to work will be deprived of the dignity of work. Half of humanity possess less-than-average intelligence. What will happen to all the menials, truck drivers, cab drivers, deliverers, cooks, waiters, cleaners… when they realize that their replacements are not ethnicities, but machines? What will happen to the rest of us, as the machines displace white-collar and battle among themselves in the markets?
This threat is so alien to the political mind it is not yet perceived by either party. The Democratic Party, with its cosmopolitan roots, will seize it first, in resonance with a former alliance with Big Labor.