Talking 'bout a revolution

Michael Lind wrote something fascinating over the weekend:

What formerly was the left – welfare-state liberalism – is once again the ­centre. To its left (in economic, not social, terms) is protectionist ­populism; to its right, neoliberalism.

This comes as a disorienting shock to Clinton-Blair third-way neoliberals. Having positioned themselves as the reasonable mean between the welfare-state left and the economic libertarian right, they have awakened to find that they are now the extreme right. The clever ones are inching their way, ever more carefully, towards today’s new centre.

You can hear the change in what prominent would-be centrists are saying. In the 1990s, when neoliberalism was the centre, the line was: we must slash middle-class entitlements in order to be more competitive in the global free market. Now the line is: in order to save free-market globalism from populists preying on middle-class economic anxieties, we must expand the middle-class welfare state. [Doesn’t that describe Hillary Clinton’s current policy to a tee? Universal health care, universal 401(k), re-evaluating free trade deals, etc.]

The winners – at least for now – are welfare state liberals such as old-fashioned New Dealers in the US and their equivalents in other countries. The position of the original “third way” of 1932-68 always made sense. Middle-class social insurance programmes, by guaranteeing economic security, reduce the appeal of populism, socialism and other kinds of ­radical statism, and make possible broad political support for open and competitive national and global markets. You will hear much more of this line as politicians rush to occupy the new centre in the years ahead.

While all of this is fascinating in itself, what strikes me as most interesting is the way this is playing out in the American domestic theater. As Lind notes, virtually gone are the Goldwaterites arguing for the abolition of middle-class entitlements. What we seem to have now are two camps. One is a center-right camp on economics that wants to hold down middle-class entitlements to a reasonable level, streamline government to make things run more efficiently (and thus reduce spending), and keep taxes low and budgets balanced. The other is a center-left, populist camp that initially slashes taxes, increases spending, creates new entitlements, pays for it all with more debt, eventually hikes taxes to keep up with its own compassion, and opposes immigration. What seems to be interesting is that neither major political party easily fits within either camp, and on some days, today’s GOP seems to be headed more towards the center-left camp on economics, while today’s Democratic Party is often more in the center-right camp.

While the polarized Boomer generation will have to be displaced for a realignment to truly occur, all of this begs the question as to whether, say, a decade or two down the road, we’ll have a Democratic Party in this country that is center-right on economics and a GOP that is center-left on economics. In other words, a Blairite Democratic Party that follows the model being adopted by Western Democrats like Bill Richardson — low tax, fiscally prudent, keep entitlements as market-friendly as possible — and a Huckabee-style Republican Party that spends, spends, spends for the common good and eventually has to pay for it all by favoring the same sorts of tax hikes that Huckabee backed in Arkansas. We’re already seeing a primer to this in the credible reports coming out of Arkansas that Bill Clinton was the fiscal conservative in relation to Huckabee. Keep in mind that Huckabee raised taxes and increased spending in Arkansas because, in his view, Clinton levels on both were too low.

A realignment such as the one described above would, of course, leave Goldwaterites without a home. But they’d have to go somewhere. And in a world where one major party was socially liberal and fiscally more conservative than the other major party, and where the other major party was fiscally populist and socially collectivist, it wouldn’t be long before some clever strategist or other came up with a new fusionism to create a center-left majority between liberals and libertarians. Granted, this marriage of convenience would be just as tenuous as the Reagan Coalition has been for the past thirty years. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t succeed politically. I suspect a Richardson/Blair/DLC Democratic Party would do quite well in the Northeast, Midwest, West Coast, and Mountain West. And that would make the Democratic Party virtually identical to the GOP of Teddy Roosevelt just a century ago, while the GOP embraces Bryanism with its full populist jacket.

Huckabee vs. Romney

Over at MyDD, Jerome Armstrong has a long and insightful post on the respective campaign strategies of Hillary, Obama and Edwards in Iowa, as well as relating some of the caucus work he did last year for Mark Warner’s abortive presidential campaign. Concluding his piece, he writes something that shocked me:

As for the Republicans, it’s obvious that barring some incredible meltdown or attack ads against him, Huckabee is going to win Iowa.

This is shocking because Iowa has been ground zero for the entire Romney campaign. He has visited the state 36 times since January, has blanketed the state with 5,048 ads (worth over $3 million) and was hoping for a resounding victory in order to springboard into New Hampshire and the February 5th states. For the last 6 months or so, this appeared likely as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani more or less conceded the state, Fred Thompson fizzled and Mike Huckabee failed to poll above 3% in the polls.

My, how things change. Huckabee has now polled within 5 points of Romney in Iowa. This is all the more impressive because up until today, he has not run a single ad in the state (although his first ad will appear tomorrow and feature Chuck Norris - it’s very funny). Huckabee’s rise greatly alters Mitt Romney’s path to the nomination. Even if Romney manages to hold him off and win the Caucuses by a slim margin, Romney’s win will be meaningless. This will be very reminiscent of the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic Primary when Bill Clinton was beaten by Paul Tsongas, but Bill managed to portray himself as the “Comeback Kid” and ride that momentum to the nomination. If Huckabee manages to beat Romney, it would be a huge story and almost certainly cause the Romney campaign to implode. It’s a win-win for Huckabee and a lose-lose for Romney.

This outcome will reverberate throughout the rest of the early states, but most significantly in New Hampshire. If Romney loses his Iowa springboard, his lead in NH will drop. This will provide an opening for McCain and Giuliani to make their move in the primaries (Huckabee and Thompson are non-issues in the state). It is hard to speculate beyond this though because the outcome of the NH GOP primary will depend on the outcome of the Democratic race. If Hillary wins in Iowa, she will have the nomination locked up. This outcome makes it more likely that independents in NH will crossover and vote in the GOP primary. McCain would be the main beneficiary of such a shift. Everything changes if Obama wins Iowa. He will ride his momentum into New Hampshire and will draw large numbers of independents to his side. The question then becomes, how much support do McCain and Giuliani pick up from Romney’s decline?

A New Party is Born

For this week of class, we set about forming a new American political party on the assumption that one of the two parties had collapsed. In my group, we decided the following:

The Republican Party had collapsed because it had strayed from its original message of limited government, fiscal conservatism to become a socially conservative version of the Democratic Party. In its ashes, we would form a party based around this platform:

• True fiscal conservatism
• Social Liberalism
• Aggressive Foreign Policy
• Support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (allowing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, possibly including a guest worker program)

Our party would be called the Patriot Party.

One of the center pieces of the party would be to maintain our current military posture abroad in order to defend against foreign threats (first and foremost, al Qaeda). But at home, we'd begin an committed campaign to restore the American economy and cut the national debt in half in our first four years. We would significantly alter the failing War on Drugs. Instead of locking people away for relatively minor drug possession charges, we'd incrementally decriminalize marijuana and set up a national program to help the treatment of offenders rather than incarceration. This is both a fiscally conservative and socially liberal position. We would than use the money saved by reinvesting in the economy to stimulate more productivity.

Our base would the middle and upper class at first and they'd be located in the Midwestern swing states. After a couple of years, we'd expand into the Democratic territory of the Northeast and and the Southern states.

Parties Suck Or Do They?

The conventional wisdom says that the country is ultra polarized and that people are deeply distrustful of both parties. Afterall, one only need to look at the polls to prove it. The President's approval rating currently stands at 34% while the Democratic controlled Congress has an approval that rivals that of Vice President Cheney, at 25%. People are hungry for change and talk of a third party has been in the air for the past year. I have no empirical evidence (only anecdotal) to back this up, but I've seen a lot of college aged students (18-24 mostly) lament the fact that there aren't more than 2 viable political parties in this country. The country is so diverse that to pick the Democrats or Republicans is so limiting.

While these are real criticisms, what is missing from the calculus is that even in countries that are multiparty parliamentary democracies, there are still 2 dominate parties. Look at Canada (Liberals and Conservatives), Britain (Labour and the Tories) France (Conservatives and Socialists), Germany (Christian Democrats and Social Democrats), Israel (Labour and Likud), and on and on.

One of the strengths of the American electoral system are the requisite coalitions that serve as the foundation of each party. Since there are only 2 parties, once a party establishes a winning coalition (based around various and often times disparate interests) that party ends up running the country for a generation or two.

Through the Post-Reconstruction to WWI era, the Progressives were generally Republicans, while the Populists were generally Democrats. After the GOP-Bull Moose rift of the 1912 election, the GOP became the Conservative party, while the Democrats embraced both the Populists and the Progressives.

Wilson’s betrayal of the Progressive Movement led to Conservative backlash of the 1920’s — the economic managerial incompetence of the Hoover Administration led to the Great Depression, and the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

The re-alignment of the 1932 lasted until 1968, but even when FDR carried all but two states in 1936, the serpent remained under the table. His victories depended on the Dixiecrat Solid South, which stayed Democratic until LBJ embraced the Civil Rights movement. It was then that the great re-alignment began to happen: the South switched alligence to the GOP and what was once the electoral heartland of the Democratic Party became the lifeblood of the Republican Party.

The Conservative Coalition formed after Hubert Humphrey's defeat to Richard Nixon in 1968. It was massively sucessful as evident by the 1972 massacre of the Democrats, where Nixon won 49 states against George McGovern. It collapsed a few years later due to Nixon's involvement and resignation due to Watergate. Carter took over, only to collapse as spectacularly a few years later. The modern Conservative Coalition was revived and strengthened during the Reagan Administration due to the rise of the social conservatives and large masses of blue collar Reagan Democrats.

My friend Dave Guipe sums up the transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties since 1990:

What the establishmentarians didn’t factor into their equation was the ability of a president to dramatically modify the philosophical core of his party within a relatively short period of time. Evidence for this can be found in the generational transformation of the Democratic Party from what it was in 1990 — a clearinghouse of New Deal interests based in the Old South and the industrial, urban centers of the North and Midwest — to its present-day status as the party of the pro-business Northeast and the pro-NAFTA, pro-growth West, producing pragmatic, technocratic, non-ideological leaders like [Virginia's] Mark Warner and [New Mexico's] Bill Richardson. This seismic shift took place over the course of just a few election cycles in the 1990s, when states like California and Connecticut, which were swing states pre-1992, became the new base states of the Democratic Party. And the shift was due entirely to one man, Bill Clinton, who used his presidency to bring large swaths of fiscally moderate, socially liberal voters into the Democratic Party, the old Rockefeller Republicans, who proceeded to come to town meetings, vote in primary elections, and produce like-minded, DLCified Democratic officeholders like Warner and Richardson. The base of the Democratic Party was changed overnight simply because a different kind of Democrat took the party helm for two presidential terms.

But just as 1992-2000 produced the Rockefeller Republicanization of the Democratic Party, 2000-2008 have quite clearly resulted in the transformation of the Republican Party into an entity that would make William Jennings Bryan swoon. While Hugh Hewitt, et al, were defending Bush’s every apostasy on spending and immigration, confident that the next GOP president would right the ship on those issues before Bush did any lasting damage, something interesting happened to the shape of the GOP base. Fiscal conservatives, libertarians, paleocons, and Main Street business types began to defect from a party that was too fiscally profligate, too pro-war, and that had no qualms about violating the principles of federalism or separation of powers when the president’s personal moral code called for it. Meanwhile, fiscally liberal cultural conservatives began to make their way into the GOP, pleased at the notion of a party whose principles seemed to be sectarian in nature and also motivated by the threat posed by expansionist Islamism to the survival of Christendom. The result, eight years later, is a GOP base that is socially fundamentalist, fiscally compassionate, that puts moral idealism above reality when it comes to foreign affairs such as immigration or the war, and that prefers a candidate for president who is willing to suspend his reason when it conflicts with his predetermined, faith-based beliefs.

It is for this fact, the evolution and dissolution of parties within the two party system that make them incredibly important and more vital than their multi party counterparts.

Realignment II

Reason Magazine’s blog has some sobering numbers that will give a lot of conservatives pause:

Four years ago George W. Bush released his fundraising numbers for the third FEC quarter: $49.5 million. This week the top four Republicans released their numbers:

Rudy Giuliani - $11 million
Mitt Romney - $10 million
Fred Thompson - $9.3 million
John McCain - $6 million

That’s a combined $36.3 million from the party that holds the White House, compared to $59.2 million from the top four Democrats.

As the Washington Times writes, “Republican presidential fundraising has declined by 27 percent since four years ago, and the Democratic presidential field is outraising Republicans by 63 percent.”

During 2004, Bush raised $367 million to Kerry’s $329 million. In 2008, it’s likely that Hillary will have as much as a 2 to 1 money advantage over her Republican opponent.

It’s really astounding that after Bush was re-elected in 2004, Democrats were fretting about a permanent Republican majority and the need to soften their stances on controversial issues in order to win elections. And now Rudy is on record as saying that the GOP enters 2008 as underdogs. How quickly things change.

Clinton-Webb '08?

Some interesting comments by Rudy Giuliani on the future Democratic ticket:

“I believe she will be the nominee, and Senator Obama will be the vice presidential nominee…that’s the candidacy we are going to be facing, and that is a very formidable candidacy,” he said in an interview conducted late last week.

“[Obama’s] kind of earned it,” Giuliani said. “He brings a kind of enthusiasm to the ticket that everyone desires and likes to have.”

I would very much disagree with the Mayor here. I think that it’s highly unlikely that Hillary picks Obama as her veep. The two main arguments against this is that by virtue of Hillary being the first woman with a serious shot at winning the Presidency, she wouldn’t want to jeopardize her chances by adding Barack to the ticket. Also, given that she’s pulled away from Obama to such an extent (she now leads him among African Americans and college-educated urban liberals) that she won’t feel compelled to cater to his supporters, because they’d vote for her over the GOP nominee anyway. This is buttressed by the intriguing speculation that around a quarter of Hillary’s new O3 donors have also contributed to Obama. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

With that said, I can foresee one scenario where Hillary might be forced to pick Obama as her running mate. If Obama manages to win Iowa, a significant portion of the February 5th primaries, and manges to come close to defeating Hillary, she would be heavily pressured from within the party to put Obama on the ticket (much the same way that Kerry was in regards to Edwards in ‘04). But given that the latest polls have her ahead in all of the early states as well as huge leads nationally, that scenario appears less likely.

As to who I think Hillary would be most likely to pick as her Vice President, I haven’t settled on particular person (and I doubt she has either). Evan Bayh would be the most logical choice considering Mark Warner has taken himself out of the running. But given that Hillary is viewed by Democrats as the most centrist candidate running, picking Mr. Centrist might not be the best idea. If Hillary gets the nomination she’ll want to be free to go into the South and Mountain West without worrying about her left flank undermining her. That means choosing someone who can appeal to skeptical liberals and Red Staters who’re sick of the Bush Administration. If that ends up the case, Jim Webb’s Jacksonian populism might be just the ticket.

SoCons Unite Against Rudy?

It feels like ages ago when the conventional wisdom posited that Rudy Giuliani could never win the Republican nomination because of the his positions on God, Guns and Gays (not to mention Abortion). Well, 7 months later, not only is Rudy still in the race, but he's raising more than his rivals and leads almost all of the national polls.

Given that the primaries begin in a mere 14 weeks, this revelation has many prominent social conservative activists panicking. After all, the SoCons have been the most powerful group within the GOP since 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat the more moderate George H.W. Bush for the nomination. What then does it say that the party would turn around 28 years later and nominate a candidate that would be further to the left than Bush Sr.? When faced with this question, SoCons have to then ask themselves whether it would be preferable to lose the election outright to the Democrats by forcing the GOP to nominate a more traditional conservative or to allow the GOP to select what they view as a heretic. The latter option would implicitly concede that the power of the movement is severely weakened if Giuliani would be able to overcome their objections and win the nomination. That would set a dangerous precedent for future elections.

Thus it's not surprising to see that key social conservatives have begun floating the idea of forming a third party to block Rudy from winning the Presidency (were he to win the nomination) by throwing the election to the Democrats:

Alarmed at the chance that the Republican party might pick Rudolph Giuliani as its presidential nominee despite his support for abortion rights, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop him.

The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians, participants said. Almost everyone present expressed support for a written resolution that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

The participants spoke on condition of anonymity because the both the Council for National Policy and the smaller meeting were secret, but they said members of the intend to publicize its resolution. These participants said the group chose the qualified term “consider” because they have not yet identified an alternative third party candidate, but the group was largely united in its plans to bolt the party if Mr. Giuliani became the candidate.

Of course, this would be a blatant attempt to intentionally sabotage the Republican Party and it is highly doubtful that it would attract Perot-levels of support. But, if the third party effort pulls even 3%-4% (Nader 2000 levels) from Rudy's total, that would be enough to do the job.