The election is far from over, and given the pattern of this election, nothing can be taken for granted. So while at the moment Hillary Clinton appears to be winning, two weeks remain. Nevertheless, whoever wins the election, certain massive shifts in the party structure of the United States have become visible and need to be considered.
My focus, in general, is on the broad geopolitical forces shaping and reshaping the world. Politics (or which individual has what job) is of little interest to me. But in this case, there are two reasons to be interested in the American election. First, this is the United States, and shifts in the behavior of the US affect geopolitics globally. Second, this election (regardless of who wins) has revealed some profound changes in the underlying dynamics of American politics.
The New Deal Kicks Off A New Era
The frame for thinking about this issue lies with the two major political parties. I want to begin with the Democrats because it is the party that has undergone the most profound change, and the party in which change is least discussed.
The framework of the Democratic Party was set in the New Deal. It was a coalition of Southern whites, Northeastern industrial workers, and African Americans. There were other elements, but this was the core. It was an unlikely coalition. In dominating the American South, it included white supremacists and African Americans in the same coalition, and then threw Catholic and Jewish Northeastern and Midwestern urbanites into the mix.
The foundation of this coalition was poverty. The Civil War had ended 67 years before the New Deal, and the South remained impoverished compared to the rest of the country. The ethnic Northern industrial class (many of whom were just a generation or two away from immigration) had been devastated by the Great Depression, as had African Americans who had migrated north since the Civil War.
The Democratic Party won the election of 1932 because it cast itself against the economic and social disruption of the Depression. It created a coalition of those who had been most affected by the Depression and the Civil War.
The Republican coalition was focused on small businesses, small towns, the more prosperous farmers, professionals, and the upper class. It was the party of the previous generation, in terms of both wealth and culture. It retained the Republican disdain for the South, dating back to slavery, and felt unease regarding both the waves of Eastern and Southern European immigrants and massive industrial urbanization. This was in many ways the coalition that had ruled the country since the Civil War. But its power had been broken by the Depression.
The Republicans argued that the Depression was caused by the irresponsible consumption and lifestyle of the 1920s and that the solution was a dose of austerity. The Democrats’ view was that this was a systemic failure of capitalism that could only be corrected by state intervention.
Goldwater Crashes The Party