I believe it is possible to break the majority Republican coalition, which is primarily an ideological coalition of conservatives against liberals, and create a majority Democratic coalition that will last for at least two or three decades, by liberalizing / progressivizing the 10-15% of the population that is currently primarily reform minded and non-ideological (and thus has a strong tendency to support major third-party efforts). While it is currently non-ideological, this segment of the population, which has existed in large numbers since at least the 1880's, has an outlook on politics that is far more closely allied with liberalism than conservatism because of its emphasis on reform. It is, to put it one way, latently liberal. This segment of the electorate can be swung toward the liberal camp, thus breaking the Republican majority coalition, if the pragmatic, non-dogmatic, reformer, anti-status quo, entrepreneurial aspects of liberalism are foregrounded and turned into a national narrative and platform. Pulling this off will also require dismantling the Great Backlash narrative of oppressive liberal elites, and replacing it with a narrative about conservatism being a force that relies on pure theory, faith-based worldviews, and that supports status-quo institutions such as corporations and the media.
Currently, the significant majority (60-70%) of the non-ideological "reformer" segment of the population, which has a tendency to vote in blocks, is allied with the Republican coalition. In fact, it was this addition to the Republican coalition that led to their 1994 sweep to power, and it remains the aspect of the Republican coalition that gives them their national slim majority (50-52% of the electorate). Primarily, this alliance is a result of the Great Backlash narrative, which identifies liberalism as an oppressive, status quo force in control of academia, the media, the entertainment industry, and the judiciary. However, unlike the conservative and evangelic / born again segments of the coalition that allies itself against liberalism on ideological grounds, the non-ideological element allies itself against liberalism not because of what liberalism stands for, but because liberals are viewed as powerful, anti-reform "insiders." It opposes liberalism not because of left / center / right reasons, but because of insider / outsider reasons. Best of all, because liberalism is a reformer ideology, liberals have the potential to swing this group more or less permanently, which is something that conservatism have never been able to do.
In other words, we win, both short term and long term, with a reformer platform and a national narrative that pits liberalism as a reformer ideology against a status-quo conservative ideology. This is how we grow liberalism and finally push the liberal electoral coalition first postulated by the McGovern campaign into power. Obviously, this is a big thesis. I will try to explain it after the jump.
1912 Socialist
1912 Progressive
1924 Progressive
1948 Progressive
1980 Independent
1992 Reform
1996 Reform
Take a while to look at these seven maps, as all seven show the same pattern. Specifically, these significant third party campaigns found their strength in the Western, Midwestern and Northeastern parts of the country, but were extremely weak in the South. Except for the regional, segregationist third-party movements of 1948-1968, the South is where third-party movements go to die. By contrast, from Perot to Wallace to Anderson to Debs to Roosevelt, the Northeast, and especially the Midwest and West, offer tremendous support to third-party movements. Considering the ideological diversity of these third-party movements, there seems to be a large group of voters living mostly outside of the South who base their vote primarily on change and reform, regardless of the ideology pushing that reform.
While this group of voters would seem like a natural ally of liberals, since voting for change and reform is a liberal act, unfortunately right now the reformers are voting Republican. Granted, there is nothing fixed about this, especially since the MO of the block, voting for change, is inherently liberal, and they can be brought back. Further, because the reformers can be swung, this group also holds the balance of power between the two coalitions. For example, in 2000, Gore only received 27% of the 1996 Perot vote, according to exit polls. In the 1984 and 1988 elections, I have little doubt where the majority of the1980 Anderson vote went. If Gore has received an equal share of the Perot vote in 2000, the election would have been a blowout in Gore's favor. If Dukakis has managed to acquire an equal share of the Anderson vote, 1988 would have been a toss-up. The 50-52% national Republican majority exists primarily because Republicans and conservatives have managed to bring the majority of the non-ideological reform-minded voters into their coalition. Aptly, the reformers hold the key to change this situation.
I believe that the liberal / Democratic failure among the non-ideological reformers is a direct result of the Great Backlash narrative insightfully described by Thomas Frank in What's the Matter with Kansas (read our recent discussion of the book). In the current, dominant political narrative, liberals are understood to be status-quo "elites" controlling the levers of power of important institutions such as academia, the judiciary, the media and the entertainment industry, and thus a vote against these liberal insiders is generally perceived as, well, the reformer and liberal thing to do. Non-ideological reformers, who are latent liberals, vote for change in these institutions and for the individual struggling against these institutions, as a reformer and a liberal would be expected to do. They vote to throw the bums out of these anti-Democratic institutions by voting outsiders (conservatives are the outsiders, according to the current dominant narrative) into offices that have control over these institutions. This is what we must fix and reverse in order to regain power.
In addition to the maps above, my evidence for the existence of this group of voters comes from the wide gap between Kerry's performance among self-identifying moderates in states with strong support for third-parties when compared to Kerry's performance among self-identifying moderates in states with weak support for third parties. In order to demonstrate this, I have constructed a metric I refer to as the "non-partisan index." The non-partisan index shows the average percentage by which state is willing to vote for a third party-candidate in relation to the rest of the nation. For example, if the national third-party popular vote is 10.0% in a given election, and a state gives 15.0% of its votes to third-party candidates in that election, then that state would have a non-partisan index of +5.0. At the same time, if the national third-party popular vote was 10.0% in a given election, and a state only gave 5.0% of its votes to third party candidates in that election, then the non-partisan index for that state would be -5.0.
With this in mind, compare Kerry's performance among moderates with the non-partisan index in these two groups of conservative states. In these tables, "Liberal IM" equals the liberal margin over conservatives in a given state according to 2004 exit polls, "Moderate VM" equals Kerry overall margin in a state among self-identified moderates according to exit polls, and Non-Partisan Index equals the average non-partisan index for the state in the 1980, 1992 and 1996 elections:
Group One: States With Strong Third-Party Support Liberal IM Moderate VM Non-Partisan Index AK -20 -18 +9.2 ID -22 -31 +4.7 KS -24 -9 +2.7 WY -24 -22 +3.7In the highly conservative states listed above, all which have strong inclinations toward third parties, Kerry was crushed among moderates. However....
Group Two: States With Weak Third Party Support Liberal IM Moderate VM Non-Partisan Index KY -24 -1 -3.6 LA -23 -4 -4.0 NC -23 +1 -4.4 SC -24 +1 -5.7 VA -21 +15 -3.0In these states, all of which have very weak support for third parties, Kerry either pulled even or won among moderates. Overall, the nine states in these two tables all have nearly identical gaps between self-identifying liberals and self-identifying conservatives. The difference between the two groups of states when it comes to the overall vote, which is vast, is that they are dominated by two very different groups of moderates. On the one hand, the states with weak support for third parties are dominated by ideological moderates, among whom Kerry did very well nationwide and which the Democratic Party does a much better job of appealing to and representing than does the Republican Party. On the other hand, Kerry did poorly among moderates in states with strong support for third-parties--that is, states dominated by reformer, non-ideological moderates. This is because in our current coalitions, as a result of the Great Backlash Narrative, non-ideological reformer moderates are breaking Republican in large numbers while ideological moderates are breaking Democrat in almost equally large numbers.
This pattern can be found across the nation. Generally speaking, the higher the support for third-party candidates in a given state, then the worse Kerry probably did among self-identified moderates in that state. By contrast, the less a state supports third party candidates, than the better Kerry probably did among moderates. Just look at the comparison between other states with similar ideological margins:
Liberal IM Moderate VM Non-Partisan Index CT +2 +9 +3.3 NY +2 +20 -0.7With identical ideological margins, New York moderates love Kerry, but do not like third parties, while Connecticut moderates kind of like Kerry, but love third parties. The situation is similar in these two states:
Liberal IM Moderate VM Non-Partisan Index NE -28 -16 +2.0 TX -29 +3 -1.6Nebraskan reformer moderates, who love third parties, hated Kerry. Texas ideological moderates, who liked Kerry, do not like third-parties. These are not the only examples, but for now they will do.
In our current coalition, we have almost all of the liberals, and we have most of the ideological moderates. To complete a majority coalition, we need the reformers. I believe that "moderates" who are concerned with reform and supportive of third-party movements are streaming toward the Republican Party in order to strike a blow against the insider "elites" in charge of unpopular institutions: the media, academia, the judiciary and the entertainment industry. In do doing, they are performing a liberal act while allying with a conservative party. By positioning liberalism as a reformist ideology permanently struggling against elites--which it is--we could bring a large segment of the non-ideological "moderate" population back into the liberal camp on a semi-permanent basis. This would allow us to break the Republican majority coalition which is currently run by the nation's 34% conservative minority, and regain the reigns of power for the next generation.
Right now, Republicans control somewhere between 60-70% of the non-ideological reformer vote, and between 51-52% of the national vote. The average third party vote in 1980, 1992 and 1996 was 12.6%. Bringing the majority of the 10-15% of the electorate that falls into the non-ideological / reformer category into the Democratic coalition would almost precisely flip the exiting balance of power between the two coalitions, as it would give Democrats a 51-52% national majority coalition. In the immediate short-term, this means to me that Dean absolutely must become the spokesmen of the Democratic Party. No one else up for the job even remotely approaches his reformer / outside cred nationally, not even Simon Rosenberg. Bringing the reformer segment of the electorate into the Democratic / liberal camp is even more important than increasing our share of the growing Latino vote, which is undeniably important.
Our future success is not predicated upon moving to the left or the right, but rather in our ability to move from the inside to the outside in the national political frame. This is something we succeeded in doing in the past. This is something that Republicans learned immediately following the Perot movement of 1992, and executed so brilliantly in their 1994 "Contract with America," campaign. The Contract With America was filled almost entirely with reformist, rather than conservative, legislative proposals. Conservatives won, and are currently in power, because they swung the reformer vote their way, even though our coalition is a more natural fit for such voters. We can change this and set things right. Howard Dean as DNC chair is a darn good place to start.
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