The Identity Crisis Facing Both
Republicans and Democrats
By Gerald F. Seib (WSJ)
Updated Feb. 25, 2019 11:36 a.m. ET
Voter shifts are causing ideological and policy whiplash
Sometimes the most momentous shifts in American life happen
in plain sight, but in such slow motion that they aren’t fully appreciated
until complete.
Such a shift is happening right now with the country’s two
major political parties. Both Republicans and Democrats are in the midst of—and
in fact, may be near the end of—significant realignments that are altering who
they are and what they stand for.
This realignment was on display in the results of both the
2016 and 2018 elections. Yet, as we’re seeing in the current policy debates in
Washington, the parties haven’t caught up with their own new realities. In
fact, they are facing a kind of identity crisis, in which they are pushing
policy prescriptions that aren’t really in tune with their changed
rank-and-file membership.
The Democrats, once the party seen, at least in stereotype,
as the home of lunch-pail, working-class union members in the Rust Belt, now
are a party dominated by higher-educated, higher-income voters, particularly
women, on the coasts, combined with progressive young voters and minorities.
And the Republicans, once the party seen in stereotype as
the party of the country club and the Chamber of Commerce, now are dominated by
working-class and middle-class Americans, particularly men, as well as older
citizens in exurban, small-town and rural America.
This shift is well illustrated by two groups my Journal
colleagues have been tracking closely in recent years: college-educated white
women, and men without a college degree. In the 1990s, these two groups voted
almost identically: They were just right of center, almost in the middle of the
political and ideological spectrum.
Now they have veered off in dramatically different
directions. Last fall, college-educated white women favored Democrats in House
races by 33 percentage points, while white men without a college degree favored
Republicans by 42 points. These two groups also are rough proxies for Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump voters in the 2016 presidential elections.
As the rank-and-file has shifted, so has the geographical
center of the two parties. Among Republicans, New York liberals and California
conservatives once coexisted as powerful internal blocs. Indeed, since World
War II, Republicans five times picked a presidential nominee from California
(Richard Nixon three times, Ronald Reagan twice), and had a serious California
contender as late as 1996 in former Gov. Pete Wilson. Twice they chose New
York’s Thomas Dewey.
Now California and New York rarely produce a Republican
candidate who can win statewide, much less lead the party nationally. The party
is weak on the two coasts, and is centered in the interior of the country.
Democrats, meanwhile, regularly nominated presidential candidates from the heartland and the South—Missouri’s Harry Truman, Texas’ Lyndon Johnson, South Dakota’s George McGovern, Georgia’s Jimmy Carter, Arkansas’ Bill Clinton, Tennessee’s Al Gore. Each of those states has since turned Republican red.
The problem for the two parties is that these changes are creating some ideological and policy whiplash. Republicans, traditionally dominated by business interests, used to be the party of free trade and open movement of workers across borders. But the new, middle-America Republican party under President Trump has become the party of tariffs and border walls.
And when the core of the party is older, working-class Americans, can Republicans really advocate cutting entitlements, as former House Speaker Paul Ryan did in the wake of a big tax cut?
And for Democrats, can the party that increasingly represents wealthier Americans really be the party that stands for a 70% top tax rate and an across-the-board wealth tax on the most well-heeled? And can the party that considers climate change an existential threat really speak to the coal miners and auto workers that used to form part of its core constituency?
A lot of this realignment is captured in the immigration issue. To vastly overgeneralize, Democrats are the party that embraces diversity. Republicans are the party that fears diversity is changing the face and the economy of America in harmful ways.
Mr. Trump, better than most, has understood the change within his own party, while also accelerating it. The new GOP is, for now at least, the party of Trump.
For their part, Democrats have some tough choices: Do they pursue a more moderate policy path that tries to meld the impulses of the old Rust Belt version of their party with the new coastal and millennial sentiments? A couple of presidential contenders—Sens. Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar—are trying to do that. Others—Sens. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker—play more to the new, progressive, millennial version of the party.
Footnote: The odd constituency out in the realigned world may be the business community, which now finds neither party particularly in sync with its free-market view of the world.
MORE
• Worrying
About Deficits Falls Out of Style February 18, 2019
• Democrats
Face Great Opportunity—and High Peril February 11, 2019
• Trump
Preaches Unity, Though Immigration Intrudes February 6, 2019
• As Trump
Speech Nears, Democrats Dig In February 4, 2019
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com