Say what you want about this Presidential election: it hasn’t been predictable. Around this time last year, the favored Presidential candidate was Jeb Bush. When Donald Trump entered into the race, many people assumed that his campaign would last for a handful of weeks and he didn’t stand a chance at the nomination. And while Hillary Clinton currently has the lead over Bernie Sanders, few people would have predicted how competitive the primaries would be on the Democratic side.

I don’t blame commentators for failing to predict how this election would turn out. The election has been so unconventional, so anti-establishment in fact, that we should probably wonder if our current understanding of US elections should be thrown out and replaced with a new model.

We should seriously consider whether 2016 could be the realignment election that the US is overdue for.

The Party Systems of the United States

For those who don’t know, a ‘party system’ is a model used to describe a country’s political structure through their parties.

The simplest way to view a party system is by pointing to the number of major powerful parties; e.g. “The United States has a two-party system”, you would typically hear. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any other parties, but it does mean the Democratic and Republican Parties dominate the US political system and compete for power between the two of them – in contrast with a One-Party or Dominant-Party System, a Multi-Party system or a Non-Partisan System.

However, while this description is a useful shorthand to compare the United States to, say, Denmark or South Africa, it is less useful for articulating the ideological conflicts between those parties, and showing how the party system can evolve over time.

The United States has effectively had a two-party system since the mid-1790’s. But it hasn’t had the same parties, nor has the power dynamic and demographics of those parties remained the same.

When the Republican Party was founded in 1854, it was founded as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery, and to the Kansas-Nebraska Acts. At the time, the two-party system was based around the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. By the 1860 Election, the Republican Party had firmly established itself within a two-party system, as a reform party, advancing civil rights, favoring a strong, centralized federal government with more taxing power, and strongly supported by urban northeasterners and black voters.

150 years later, and the Republican Party is now a conservative party, scaling back civil rights, favoring a weaker, decentralized government with less taxing power, and largely disdained by urban northeasterners and blacks, instead supported by white rural southerners – once a dominant demographic of the Democratic Party.

For this reason, historians will describe multiple “party systems” that existed in the United States, laid out in historical periods, one evolving into the next.

The various party systems were described and largely formalized by the work The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, a 1967 collection of essays edited by William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham. According to their framework, The United States had five Party Systems up to that point:

First Party System: Jeffersonian Democracy (c. 1794 – 1824) Federalist Party v. Democratic-Republican party Marked by Democratic-Republican dominance

Second Party System: Jacksonian Democracy (c. 1828 – 1856) Democratic Party v. Whig Party Marked by Democratic dominance

Third Party System: Gilded Age (c. 1860 – 1894) Democratic Party v. Republican Party Marked by Competitive Elections/Slight Republican Edge

Fourth Party System: Progressive Era (c. 1896-1930) Democratic Party v. Republican Party Marked by Republican dominance

Fifth Party System: New Deal Era (c. 1932-?) Democratic Party v. Republican Party Marked by Democratic dominance



Though it isn’t without controversy, it’s generally agreed that as Burnham and Chambers were compiling their work, the New Deal Era they described was starting to unravel and evolve into a new Sixth Party system, a system marked by intensely competitive elections and quick political turnarounds, sometimes called the Era of Divided Government. Political historians also generally presume this is the era in which we live today.

Realignment Elections: 1964

Why do Party Systems rise and fall? Generally, a Party System comes into place after the old status quo becomes untenable. An ideological issue comes up that makes an old coalition of demographics fall apart, or causes a new coalition to emerge that changes the power dynamic.

Take the transition from the New Deal Era and the current modern era party systems. While researchers disagree on exactly when the paradigm shift occurred they generally agree why.

If you take a look at the 1964 Presidential Election, it would seem like a blowout; Lyndon B. Johnson was carrying the mantle of a popular and tragically assassinated President, and the Republican Party put forward a stringent ideological conservative whom the public found belligerent and slightly extreme. In the end, LBJ won 61.1% of the popular vote, and received 486 of 538 possible electoral votes.

But something odd happened. Something that implied a greater trend which would redefine the US Party system: of the six States that Barry Goldwater won, five were in the Deep South.

Now this doesn’t sound odd now, but up to that point, since the end of the Civil War, the Deep South was perhaps the most heavily Democratic region in the country. It was so Democratic, in fact, that it was once nicknamed “The Solid South”. And yet, Goldwater, a Republican, won the five core states of the Deep South. Why?

Well, in context, the tension between the Southern Democrats and the Mainstream Democratic Party was growing for a long time. The “Dixiecrats”, as they were sometimes known, voted Democratic largely out of tradition, and disdained the Republican Party out of its association with Lincoln, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Outside of the South, the Democratic Party was more committed to unions and aid for the poor, and the traditionalist South only tentatively accepted some of the platform.

During the New Deal era, the Democratic Party returned to dominance but the Dixiecrats became increasingly alienated. Social reformers of the Democratic Party from the Northeast and Midwest increasingly appealed to African Americans who moved to urban centers during the Great Migration, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s initiatives for combating inequality and providing economic relief brought many Black voters into the party. The Democratic Party increasingly grew into a coalition for progressive, socially liberal reformers, and twice prior to 1964 Southern Democrats attempted a notable insurgency against their party’s candidate – in 1948, when Strom Thurmond founded the short-lived “States’ Rights Democratic Party” (a.k.a. the Dixiecrat Party), and in 1960, when 15 southern electors cast their vote in favor of US Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia.

And each of those times, it was all over the same issue: Civil Rights.

To the horror of the Southern Democrats, the mainstream Democratic Party had become committed to a platform of desegregation, and took considerable leadership in promoting Civil Rights. When Harry S. Truman created the Civil Rights commission in 1948, it spurred the Dixiecrat Party’s abortive attempt at a third party. When John F. Kennedy publicly supported a pro-Civil Rights platform and called for the release of Martin Luther King, Jr. after he was arrested in Georgia, it spurred Southern electors to pledge against Kennedy.

It all came to a head in 1964, however, when Lyndon Johnson, replacing the assassinated John F. Kennedy, opted to honor JFK’s legacy by securing the passage of the venerable Civil Rights Act of 1964, which fundamentally redefined the role of the Federal Government in combatting discrimination.

His opponent in the ’64 election, Senator Barry Goldwater, had opposed it on conservative principle.

For this reason, Southerners who felt betrayed and were deeply resentful of the now unabashedly liberal and pro-Civil Rights Democratic Party now saw kinship in the growing conservative movement within the Republican Party.

It didn’t happen all at once – which is why it’s hard to judge the beginning of the new party system – but by 1980, Southerners would identify more as Republicans than Democrats, and their influence further helped the Republican Party become more committed to a socially and fiscally conservative platform.

This was largely due to the hard work of Republican strategists, who emphasized the “Southern Strategy” in gaining political power. Taking lessons from the 1968 US Presidential Campaign, which saw George Wallace’s attempt to run with the American Independent Party, strategist Kevin Philips recommended that Republicans cultivate white southerners by playing to their racial anxieties, and using coded language about ‘law and order’ to appeal. If it meant polarizing blacks, Philips said it was all the better:

“All the talk about Republicans making inroads into the Negro vote is persiflage… From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

That was a direct quote from Kevin Philips in an article he wrote in the New York Times magazine in 1970. Sheesh.

The Southern realignment caused the dynamic we see today: minority groups largely voting with the Democratic Party, white Southerners largely voting with the Republican Party; the Republican Party committed to social conservativism, the Democratic Party committed to social progressivism. In terms of the power dynamic, the Republican Party is dominant in the South and the Prairie states, while the Democratic Party is dominant in the Northeast and West Coast; and in terms of elections, they are competitive, close and increasingly focused on a relatively small number of ‘swing states’ to shift the balance.

In short, the Sixth Party System, our current system, all came about because the old rule – that the South votes Democratic – had to be discarded, and the coalition that was once politically viable fell apart. If for some reason the conventional wisdom fails in an election, that may be the sign that we are seeing an electoral shift to a new system…

The Election of 2016: A Possible Change in Tide

One of the peculiarities of the American Party Systems according to research is that they occur on a surprisingly regular and predictable basis: a period of roughly 30 years where a given party system is stable, followed by a period of transition with an election that shifts the paradigm and creates a new party system. The Jeffersonian era, the Jacksonian Era, the Gilded Age era, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal era, all remained stable for about 30 years and never more than 40 years. Some speculative researchers anticipated that somewhere in the 2000’s, a new Party System was going to arise from the ashes of the old.

The problem is, this never really happened; there was no major realignment in the 2000’s, elections continued to be focused on swing states, and parties didn’t shift ideologically. Every promising shift to change the status quo seemed to be almost immediately corrected – such as the commanding Democratic victory in 2008 that was followed by a sound Republican victory in 2010 which balanced out the power at the federal level. Predictable, conventional candidates on both sides continued to win the nominations, platforms hardly budged, and on the whole the Party System has apparently remained stable.

Until this election.

This election cycle has been so anti-establishment, so discontent, so counter to the predictions of pundits, that this could be the sign that our Party System, as we know it, could collapse. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Republican side. People expected that Trump would be a passing candidate – he would enter, ride high on the attention, and collapse once he said something so unforgivable that he would lose support. This never happened – and not for a shortage of unforgivable statements.

What Trump has shown fundamentally is that the Republican Party that once seemed monolithic and ideologically consistent actually has a great divide within its ranks, represented in its purest form by the division between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. What was once broadly labelled conservativism now looks more like two different veins of thought in the right-of-center: true intellectual conservatism, represented by Ted Cruz, and right-wing reactionary populism, represented by Donald Trump.

Trump supporters aren’t the typically rigid, ideologically consistent brand of conservative that you’d expect of a fringe candidate who is simply more extreme than his moderate counterparts. Trump supporters are instead disproportionately low-and-middle income, uneducated, white and male. They are driven not by a clear agenda but by a more vague belief that the country has lost greatness and needs a strong-willed authority figure who speaks plainly and disdains civility in favor of public displays of self-importance and contempt. They are emboldened by Trump who, without fear of consequence, states as fact the same uninformed prejudiced opinions his supporters believe themselves, and they are enthused by his media attention. They come for the show, far more than the policy.

Origins of the Shift

The origins of the tidal wave of support for Donald Trump is fascinating to study on its own, but in some ways this can be seen as a product of the Southern realignment in the last great electoral shift. The Republican Party under Nixon and especially under Reagan convinced a lot of people to lean Republican even though they didn’t have a real depth of conservativism. By appealing to national pride, law and order, strong defense and anti-government sentiment, Republican candidates were able to create a nativist appeal, and convince the reactionary populist to vote with the more traditionalist religious social conservatives and intellectual, laissez-faire economic conservatives.

Why this rift has only now been agitated, I believe, dates back to 2009. In a short period of time the Republican Party lost virtually all of their policy credibility, with the foreign policy debacles of the Bush administration followed by the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. They were defeated by a young, charismatic Democratic candidate who offered a message of change, and was about to embark on an ambitious policy platform that rivaled that of the New Deal and Great Society.

The Republican might have taken the reserved approach, and attempted to negotiate Barack Obama’s policies closer to the center as they had done in the past with FDR and LBJ. Instead, they chose to embark on one of the greatest campaigns of legislative obstruction of modern times, and use their one remaining asset and exploit it in order to regain power: reactionary populist outrage.

The result was mainstream Republican support for the Tea Party, and the Tea Party’s initially smooth integration into Republican ranks.

In the short term, the strategy worked swimmingly; the 2010 election virtually eliminated the Democratic congressional gains in the 2008 election and gave the House over to the Republican Party. Now, however, we are seeing the consequences – not just for national governance as a whole, but for the Republican Party’s functionality in particular.

The leadership falsely assessed that they would control the influence of the Tea Party in Congress. Tea Party politicians falsely assessed that their movement was wholly conservative, and accordingly took their conservative positions to such an extreme that it undermined the federal government and their party’s governing credibility in general. And both sides overpromised and misled the public about the extent to which they could pass an agenda against the will of Barack Obama. In turn, Tea Partiers were left falsely believing that standard Republicans were too weak-willed or complicit with the political system to create the change they wanted.

This caused broad, anti-establishment resentment, and many Republican voters saw the solution in the intensely conservative brand of Ted Cruz. Many more, meanwhile, gravitated to Donald Trump – an authoritarian personality who pandered to their chauvinistic worldview, even if he wasn’t consistently conservative.

That is what brought Trump to prominence despite the overwhelming hostility of the Republican establishment, and which is likely going to land him the nomination. This is a potential crisis for the Republican faithful, and has caused some to predict the collapse and end of the Republican Party. I’m not so sure, but I do think it threatens to weaken the Republican Party for a long time – and that could be enough to create an electoral shift. This would be particularly true if Trump decides to stay in politics after the election, even if he doesn’t win.

A Seventh Party System

What this new party system looks like – if it happens at all – is a little hard to tell. If the Republican establishment cannot stomach Trump as a continued influence in the Republican Party, and one side or the other create a schism, it could threaten to break the Republican Party in two: a conservative party, and a Trump Party, a party that would perhaps bear resemblance to the American Party, a.k.a. the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850’s. (Though if I know Trump at all, he wouldn’t pass up the chance to put his name on that new Party.) That would be excellent for Democrats looking to maintain control of the executive branch, and would create a real blow to the conservative movement.

That could open up the possibility that moderate Republicans and independents would defect and join the Democratic Party. I don’t think it could happen right away – it would require someone more likeable than Hillary Clinton and more moderate than Bernie Sanders – but if the Democrats decided to put forward candidates like Bill Clinton, it could turn the Democratic Party into a dynamic, albeit fractured coalition – a little like the Republican Party at the turn of the century, which contained both progressive reformers and business-minded conservatives.

That’s the trouble with third parties; many voters think they want a third party, but what they want is a third party that better reflects their beliefs – and the third party they envision differs radically from person to person. Just think how many people would suddenly regret their wish for a third party if it ended up being based around Donald Trump.

(It is also possible, though in my view significantly less likely, that a different third party would emerge. Supporters of Bernie Sanders could schism and create a new Democratic Socialist party, which would weaken the Democratic Party. Or, in the event that Bernie makes a substantial comeback against Hillary Clinton and manages to win the nomination, a Sanders/Trump election contest could bring out a third, moderate candidate to try and pull voters in the middle. Michael Bloomberg has made statements to that effect, and a third party based on centrism and reform. I still contend that the best chance at a third party is Trump, because he is the only candidate that could stigmatize his major party enough to cause a schism.)

In the long term, the demographics may be even more favorable to the Democratic Party, as white voters become less and less of a majority, and the share of Latino voters grow. The continued influence of Donald Trump would only accelerate this process; Trump’s net favorability among Latinos is an incredibly low -51 points (who knows why?…) and his influence in the political process could solidify and mobilize Latinos in favor of the Democratic Party. Even without an internal schism among the Republican Party, we might just see a more powerful Democratic Party and a weaker Republican Party.

But that isn’t guaranteed. If the Democratic Party really dropped the ball in a Clinton/Trump race – and I mean really dropped the ball – let’s just hypothesize a Trump Presidency. While reactionary politics have always been a factor in American politics, a Trump Presidency would bring those politics to the foreground, and make it the dominant factor. We would likely see the two parties shift toward “reactionary v. counter-reactionary” sides, characterized as a “Trump v. anti-Trump” debate.

Currently, I am less stressed about the possibility of a Trump presidency, than I am worried about the influence of Trump on future campaigning. I have stated before that our political campaigning system is based on the presumption that voters are reactive, impulsive creatures of outrage, or otherwise so ideologically dogmatic that trying to earn their vote is a waste of time. We have created a bloated complex campaign finance system just to barrage voters with negative ads that will change their mind, but Trump has potentially shown a simpler, blunter, more vulgar way of appealing to outrage: a campaign based around public theatrical displays of contempt, bolstered by media coverage (or “earned media”, the Orwellian term that marketing experts often use). It remains to be seen whether this political tactic can be scaled up and can be broadly effective, or whether it requires the unique instinctive salesmanship of an unscrupulous businessman. One thing is clear, however: aspiring politicians will try it, and we will see voters treated with even less dignity than they are now.

The more difficult thing to predict is perhaps the most important: what the underlying party lines and conflicts are going to be. It’s impossible to tell if issues such as immigration, income inequality, foreign policy or racial justice will come to the forefront, or even something as simple as ‘establishment v. anti-establishment’. That is for us to decide.

Conclusion

There is no better argument I can muster for people to get involved in the political process this election, than the fact that this election is going to be one of the most consequential in a generation. This is more than deciding between a Democrat and a Republican; the growing dissatisfaction with the status quo and shifted the tide of this election has a real opportunity to redefine our politics for decades to come.

It is exciting, in an apocalyptic sort of way. The forces that maintained an established party system are now weakened and the result is equal parts chaos and opportunity. If this election were to create a new party system, the US populace has the ultimate power to mold that system while the clay is still wet.

Whatever you want the next system to be about, I implore you to be vocal about it. The trick of any social movement is to make your representative’s political future depend on action towards change. Do you want racial justice to be a part of the new system? Don’t just get pissed when a politician says something insensitive – decide what tangible action you want, and compel your political leaders to take you seriously. Do you want immigration reform to be a part of the new system? Learn the details. Communicate with people. Push back when they support a candidate’s absurd “Mexico will pay for it” statements. Do you simply want Washington, DC to burn in a big fire? Well, supporting Trump is the next best thing.

If, on the other hand, you just want to conserve your mental energy and sit the election out, that decision is going to mold the next party system too. You might not recognize it, but you will change it by the absence of your input. That is the best way to ensure that nothing you care about will shape the new party system.

If you’re alright with that, more power to you… or less power, technically – what I mean is, if you’re alright with that, fine. But maybe you should consider whether you really value living in a democratic system at all.

Next Time: Reasons and Motivations!

Partyin’ in the U.S.A.,

Connor Raikes, a.k.a. Raikespeare