A brief comment on last night’s results, from a purely analytical perspective.
It was interesting to me how the 1992 results re-capitulated the 1860 election, only in reverse. Clinton won where Lincoln had, while Bush won where Douglas or Breckenridge had.
This year’s results are a reverse of 1896. Obama has won where McKinley did, while McCain has won where Bryan did. What’s most startling about that is it shows Republicans to be a Populist Party, one led (no joke) by Sarah Palin.
The result of these switches was almost a wash. Despite the higher turnout Obama’s popular vote win did nothing more than reverse the 2004 result. But it’s really significant, and shows the makings of a longer-lasting coalition than Clinton’s win did.
That’s because Republicans are left with the crazy. Bizarro economic
populists, because Ron Paul is the exact opposite in his attitude
toward money of Bryan. Social populist, all the backwards tub-thumping
religiosity for which Bryan himself became notorious after the Monkey
Trial. And racism.
The South is more divided by race today than it has been at any time
since the 1960s. That’s the untold story of last night. McCain won 7 of
the 10 Voic.Us states I cover, won them handily, and nearly came
through in the other three. Republicans lost almost no ground in the
Congress. They lost one seat (net) in Florida, but picked up one in
Louisiana. They lost some ground in North Carolina but picked up ground
in Tennessee. The Senate was a wash.
What this does, in the end, is magnify the Republicans’ problems to a
greater degree than a landslide loss would have. A landslide loss would
have caused them to start fresh. This bakes in their worst impulses.
Palin 2012? Don’t snicker.
On the other hand this also gives Obama a much stronger hand than even
a landslide would have. For every racist or religious-fascism action in
the South and Great Plains there is an equal and opposite reaction in
the east and the west. Wall Street can’t live in the new Republican
Party. It has to go with the Democrats. That will cause the Democratic
run to last much longer than it would have, had Wall Street been able
to pick up the GOP pieces.
Obamaism has a lot of room to grow. The economic policies he plans to put
in place will benefit makers. They will benefit manufacturers. They
will be of most benefit to places like the Great Plains and the South,
which were today’s regions of Republican strength.
The Democrats are the new majority party, but it was a closer-run thing
than I imagined it would be. That does not make it more precarious. The
nature of that closeness makes it more solid. While the Republican
Party was discredited last night, it was beaten in such a way so as to
assure it won’t reform, and will come into future elections even weaker
than it was last night.
That’s what happened to Democrats under Bryan. They came closest in
1896. After that they faded, slowly, for a generation, electing only
one President, Wilson, because the Republicans split. Will this happen
again, with Obama choosing as a successor the 21st century equivalent
of a William Howard Taft? That’s something Democrats need to be on
guard against, something they must push hard against. And the race for
the 2012 Democratic Vice Presidential nomination is already on. Joe
Biden will be 69, and will likely want to cap his career as Secretary
of State rather than run for the Presidency at the age of 73. For
ambitious Democrats that makes the next four years a try-out, to
replace Biden and become the front-runner for 2016.
