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Emerging Democratic Minority III
By Horace Cooper
December 1, 2004
As former Majority Leader Dick Armey says, "There is no good lesson to be learned from the second kick of a mule." What does one say about the third kick? In the wake of the Democrat's loss in this year's presidential elections it seems there is no upper limit to the number of kicks the party is willing to take. Tragically as a result of their leaders' reckless refusal to recognize the signals it probably is already too late to save the nation's oldest political party.
When the public believes your candidate won the presidential debates, your party raises record sums of money and on election day your party earns more votes than any Democratic ticket in history (including claiming the second highest vote tally on record) and you still lose, it's time to be afraid. Be very afraid.
Forty-eight percent - not a terribly low number - is the last gasp of a party in the midst of collapse and meltdown. Forty-eight percent represents just how close the party was able to come to victory this time. But in the next election cycle the party is unlikely even to reach this point. Why? With the exception of their candidate, Democrats had more advantages than they've had in a generation. Press, enthusiasm, resources, and motivation were all on their side. Also the election was held in a year in which success on the war front was unclear and the economic recovery had yet to fully manifest itself. Despite these advantages the Democrats lost. Next time even a great candidate won't be able to count on these advantages.
And yet even now leaders fail to appreciate the seriousness of the crisis. Remarkably the post election soul searching and naval gazing taking place on the part of Democratic leaders looks remarkably like the soul searching and naval gazing accompanying prior losses and is likely to be just as efficacious.
The party's impending collapse was a long time in the making. Becoming more obvious in the 1980s and picking up steam in the 1990s, the steady decline in electoral performance by the Democratic Party was apparent to those willing to see it. But leaders - and the secular fundamentalists who make up the activist party base - refused. Each loss or setback was explained away. The failed candidacies of Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis were in no way a direct rejection of the party or its philosophy. Instead they represented unique circumstances out of the candidates control, tactical failings or unethical and divisive campaign techniques on the part of the GOP.
And after successive presidential wins during the '90s, the outcome of the 2000 election (in which Arkansas and Tennessee the home states of Clinton and Gore tilted against the Democrats) was also dismissed as anomalous and merely a consequence of a divided national electorate. Ignoring these two states and West Virginia along with the steady exodus of elected officials whose party switching enthusiasm was matched only by the phalanx of Southern states lining up to send as many GOPers to Washington as each election would legally allow is remarkable in and of itself. But to do so after the dramatic loss of the House and Senate in 1994 was inexcusable.
Even the 2002 midterm congressional elections - which should have been seen as a final notice by leaders in the party - were overlooked. Again, Democrats decided they could ignore the 53-47 national drubbing they were administered without taking any corrective actions. And yet this year's presidential election loss and near sweep in the competitive House and Senate races is seen as a surprise.
But is it really? Today more than 60 percent of the country resides in states with Republican Governors including the four largest California, Texas, New York and Florida. And as a result of pickups in Indiana, Missouri and Washington State Republicans have expanded their gubernatorial pickups for the second consecutive election.
When the 2002 elections concluded Republicans held a majority of statehouses, governorships, and the majority in Congress. Today the GOP has consolidated and in many instances expanded its control. The Democrats lost every competitive Senate race save one, Colorado. In Louisiana the state elected its first Republican senator since Reconstruction and Democrats weren't even able to force a run-off to delay their inevitable loss. The party lost ground in the House of Representatives including losing well known incumbents Martin Frost and Charlie Stenholm to lesser known Republicans. The GOP now maintains a slim 20-19 edge over Democrats in state legislatures across the nation.
In Georgia the party lost control of the State House of Representatives for the first time in more than 100 years. To do this, Democrats had to cede nearly 20 seats to the Republicans. The chamber in Oklahoma also flipped and so did the Senate Chamber in Tennessee.
Perhaps most tellingly, in 49 out of 50 states the Republican presidential vote percentage increased over 2000. Conversely, the party of Andrew Jackson lost ground in 25 states. Revealingly, the GOP ticket carried four times as many states with a 20 point margin as did the Democratic ticket. When victory requires getting to 270 electoral votes, overall percentages must increase, not decrease.
And astonishingly, for the first time in a generation the number of self-identified Republicans equaled the number of Democrats on Election Day - 37% each. In the past, winning Republican tickets typically had to overcome an Election Day party affiliation deficit averaging between 5-10% and as high as 20%. This was true even as late as 2000. On the other hand no winning Democratic ticket in the 20th century ever had to overcome an electorate with more republicans than Democrats.
For Democrats - having had a sizeable ID advantage throughout the entire 20th century - parity is a disadvantage likely too great to overcome. And consider, in 4 years the pollsters will change the traditional weighting of all their weekly polls to eliminate the past Democratic preference. This will result in a significant GOP tilt in most likely voter models. Fundraising and motivating activists in this environment will be quite a challenge.
What does all of this mean? The 30 year secular decline by the party has ceded to the GOP an almost impregnable Electoral College advantage. The day he receives the nomination, the typical GOP candidate for president will start with between 200 and 240 electoral votes in the bank while his Democratic opponent with start with less than half that number. Sadly, this year's election results demonstrate the trend is likely to expand that advantage rather than decrease it since in category after category Democrat voter support collapsed.
In practically every demographic, support for Democrats declined. A majority of Catholics rejected the Democratic ticket. Critical constituencies offered only tepid support. Only 75% of Jews and 56% of Hispanics supported the party. The party continued its dramatic losses among white men losing nearly 2/3 this year. And even the so-call gender gap was cut in half. Notably the Democrats gained in one category: gays and lesbians where they gained 2% over the year 2000. But with eleven states holding gay marriage referenda, Democrats should be asking why they couldn't have made greater inroads with this group. And perhaps more disturbingly this gain was more than offset by the decrease in support of a significantly larger voter bloc, blacks (who are the bedrock of the party). Alienating your voter base while making only marginal gains with smaller voter blocs is the perfect strategy for losing. The collapse has happened and it can no longer be denied.
But the news is worse. In both the House and Senate it is increasingly clear that Republicans have yet to reach their limit in the so-called "red states." If trends continue the United States Senate could be sent 60+ Republicans (enough to overcome a filibuster) from just Republican presidential voting states alone. And the House could sustain a Republican majority of between 240 - 270 members with votes just from those same states.
This is why the results of this past election are so monumental. If the challenge of repositioning the party so that it is more attractive to the electorate seemed daunting prior to then, now the challenge is practically overwhelming. But overcome this challenge it must if the party is to survive. For if the party is unable to develop its bearings and regain national appeal it will not only cease being competitive and thus relevant, it may follow the path of an earlier American political party, the Whigs and disappear entirely. Success breeds success and failure breeds failure. It is not plausible for the Democratic Party to remain viable if it continues with a track record of losing seven out of the last ten presidential elections.
And yet defenders of the status quo say there is no need to sound an alarum. When the party was still competitive perhaps such willful ignorance could be countenanced. But even then this was risky. Democrats have won only three out of the last ten elections. In only one of the three victories since 1968 have the Democrats managed to break 50%. And that was 1976 with Jimmy Carter's 50.1% win. On the other hand the GOP has broken 50% five times and twice managed 49 state sweeps.
When the poor performance of the party was primarily a presidential ticket problem, the party could conceivably afford to ignore it. Voters rejecting the Democratic ticket at the national level increasingly do the same down ballot as well making recapturing the House and Senate even more daunting. Clearly the cancer has metastasized spreading down ballot. As the last two congressional elections reveal failing to treat this political ailment has proven deadly.
But party leaders are resolute in their grip of "progressive" cultural and economic orthodoxy. Party activists continue to oppose the Boy Scouts and almost any public expression of faith while expressing hostility to practically any constraint on abortion. Even in a post 911 America they are remarkably ambivalent about the use of military force and openly chafe over market oriented tax reform. Their embrace of a counter-cultural moral code is only exceeded by their enthusiasm for relying on failed schemes using race and gender to determine rewards and success. Party leaders suggest that retreat on these fronts would be tantamount to ending the party itself further limiting their maneuvering room.
Today the public's alienation with the Democratic Party is a given, but what isn't clear is whether it's reversible. In baseball its one, two, three strikes you're out. As the Whigs found out, in politics the game may be over even before you ever get up to the plate.
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Horace Cooper, a nationally syndicated columnist is a senior fellow with the Centre for New Black Leadership. He was praised as a key Republican strategist in Elizabeth Drew's New York Times bestseller "Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House" and extolled as a "poster conservative" by Michele Mitchell in "A New Kind of Party Animal."
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
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