The beginning of a new political era

Or maybe the beginning of the end

Nate Cohn is one of the best political analysts in the business. For those not familiar, he writes for the New York Times and focuses on elections and demographics, two areas I know well, but not as well as he does. He also works on the poll conducted by the Times in partnership with Siena College. It’s one of the best quality pollsters there is.

His most recent piece argues that Trump’s win in November marks the end of the prevailing political order that began during the 1960s and lasted until 2012. Trump has been the central political figure since 2016 and has completely remade the Republican Party in his image. The 2012 election, Cohn argues, was the last “normal” election as defined by the politics from the 1960s until then. During most of that period, both parties’ coalitions were fairly predictable and the issues argued over were more or less the same, broadly speaking.

That’s a generalization, but it has a lot of truth to it. It was common for Democrats to favor more social programs and a more active role for the government in the economy. Republicans tended to want the opposite. Sometimes there was a consensus on particular issues, for example, free trade had broad bipartisan support in the 1990s and 2000s. Support for more immigration was fairly common, too.

The most common points of disagreement during that time tended to be over the role of the government. The election in 2012 was probably the starkest example. Romney ran as a supporter of cutting spending on entitlements and reducing taxes to a bigger degree than McCain, W, Dole, Bush or Reagan did. Obama ran as a defender of social programs, although he still agreed that reforming entitlements was necessary.

When Republicans became the more dominant party at the presidential level in the 1980s, their coalition was supported by a three-legged stool of religious conservatives, fiscal conservatives and foreign policy hawks. The Democratic coalition was centered around working-class voters, left-wingers of all stripes and non-white voters. Fast forward to today and those coalitions have been scrambled.

The new Republican coalition looks very different. It still includes religious conservatives, but foreign policy hawks have mostly left. Many Republicans associated with the pre-Trump establishment are gone. That includes the Bushes and Cheneys along with Paul Ryan and Romney. Trump made big gains with white working-class voters in the north in 2016, but has since made inroads with Hispanic working-class voters.

What I have written about before, but is very hard for people to wrap their heads around is that one source of Trump’s appeal is his relative moderation. The biggest splash he made on policy was disavowing cuts to Medicare and Social Security that previous Republican candidates wholeheartedly embraced. Support for reducing spending on those programs, along with rhetoric targeted at business owners and founders, had very little appeal to many working-class voters.

Trump has turned conventional wisdom on its head in so many ways. As Cohn notes, he made inroads with groups who were supposed to be against him in every way. I remember very well after Romney lost how the conventional wisdom among almost everyone in the politics business was that Republicans would have to moderate on immigration to win Hispanic voters. If they didn’t do that, they would become a permanent minority. That was never true to begin with, but I think it’s clear to even the most blind observers how wrong it was.

Win some, lose some (rinse and repeat)

It’s normal after a party loses a presidential election for there to be hot takes about how it’s at risk of becoming irrelevant. It’s been a regular occurrence at least since 2004, the first presidential election I followed closely. While it’s normal and common, it’s always been wrong. Maybe this time is different, but call me extremely skeptical. If anything, post-election hot takes are good evidence of what won’t happen considering how poorly they tend to age.

There is often talk of a political realignment, especially after presidential elections. It’s an ambiguous term, but it usually refers to one of two things. One is groups who previously supported one party moving to the other. That happens all the time. Since Trump became the face of the Republican Party, non-college educated voters have moved towards it while college educated voters have moved towards Democrats.

The other thing a realignment can mean is one party enjoys a durable national majority for decades. That used to be common, but has not been a thing since the 1960s. I have written many times before about how durable national majorities no longer exist. Between the media ecosystem being highly fragmented, patience with national majorities running very low, party actors adjusting after losing and polarization/partisanship being sky high, maintaining the White House and Congress consistently doesn’t happen anymore. I don’t want to say it’s impossible for it to happen now, but anyone who claims they know how to make it a reality has to explain how they’re going to get past the factors I just listed.

If there is an overarching theme of the electoral politics of the last 50+ years, it’s that control of Congress and the White House changes very frequently, the opposite of a durable national majority. Since 2004, control or partial control of Congress and the White House has changed hands in almost every election held. Going back further, since 1968, the most one party has had control of the White House and Congress for more than two years was from 1977-1981¹ and 2003-2007.²

Just in the last eight years, there has been consistent instability. The incumbent party has lost the White House three times in a row. During that time, control of Congress has gone from full Republican control (2016) to partial control (2018) to no control (2020) to partial control again (2022) and now back to full control. The odds Republicans will enjoy full control after the midterms are very low absent something extraordinary happening. Whether we remain in a period of consistent instability is to be determined, but I see no evidence of it changing right now.

I’m of the belief that both parties are close to parity and that will remain the case going forward. Talk of one party becoming a permanent minority notwithstanding, elections have been very close. Trump’s “blowout” win consisted of him winning the popular vote by 1.5 points and six of the seven swing states by three points or less. Downballot, as I have discussed, Democrats largely held their own and are just three seats short of a majority in the House. That’s why I’m dismissive of the handwringing from people about the Democrats’ coalition falling apart. It’s not that they didn’t lose some supporters. It’s that calling it a collapse is a wild overstatement.

They lost significant support from groups they were previously strong with, but in the grand scheme of things we’re only talking about a few percentage points. Obviously, that matters because it can be the difference between winning and losing. Still, we’re talking about extremely close margins, not 1972-like blowouts. Those kinds of wins are long gone. It’s important to keep things in perspective, which is something many of those in the politics business routinely fail to do (not Cohn). Sorry to brag again, but that’s one thing you will get from me and is one of many reasons why I’m so much better at this than almost all of the people who get paid to do it.

Unstable coalitions and the unique appeal of presidents

As I have written about before, Trump has an appeal that is unique to him. His ability to get away with things that would sink anyone else is not something anyone else can do.³ Nobody has the star power he had before running nor does anyone have the ability to generate media coverage like he does. Because he was a blank slate in 2016, he could be everything to everyone to get their votes and he still does that today, as we’re seeing with the spat over high-skilled immigration. During the campaign, he convinced Silicon Valley venture capitalists and hardcore nativists that he was on their side. That can work for winning elections, but it’s a big problem when trying to govern.

That’s another reason why durable national majorities don’t exist anymore. Party coalitions are much less stable than they used to be. Cobbling together people with different priorities and interests can get you elected, but once you’re in office you have to pick sides and someone is going to be disappointed. The past attachment many felt to parties going back decades is not nearly as strong as it used to be. It’s an even bigger problem when a party is being fundamentally remade and pulled away from many of the things it used to see as integral to its existence.

Party coalitions in general are not stable, but I would argue that the current Republican coalition is unusually unstable. It centers entirely around one person who everyone in the coalition believes is on their side and who frequently promises contradictory things.⁴ It includes people who are not particularly interested in politics or policy, but are fanatical about Trump himself. It’s unlikely that any other Republican is going to be able to keep all of them together. That doesn’t mean Republicans can’t win without Trump, it just means their future presidential nominees will have to find some new supporters.

The only thing I can confidently say is if whoever Republicans nominate in 2028 tries to act like Trump it will substantially reduce their odds of winning. We saw in 2022 and last year that acting Trumpy without having his appeal is a great way to lose. I don’t know what will be on Republican candidates’ minds regarding Trump in 2028, but if they become convinced that Trump won because of his behavior they will be doing Democrats’ work for them.

Another thing that makes me think the current Republican coalition is especially unstable is that it’s not rooted in any kind of positive vision. What brings it together is a shared dislike of Democrats and the left. It’s why Republicans have had such a hard time governing before and almost certainly will struggle with it again. When you have no positive agenda, you can get elected, but once you win you don’t have anything left and dysfunction ensues.

Elections in the US are highly candidate-centric. That’s especially so in presidential elections. Since TV became widely available, presidents have usually been people who generate enthusiasm for themselves just by existing. Because of TV and now the internet, presidential candidates are a ubiquitous presence and so their personality tends to go a long way towards making or breaking their prospects.

Those who get elected president who excite people tend to get reelected. When the contest is between one candidate who excites people and another candidate who doesn’t, the former almost always wins. The problem is presidents who excite people have an appeal unique to them that doesn’t carry over to anyone else. Going as far back as the 1950s, Eisenhower was popular and consistently had a high job approval rating, but it was just about him and didn’t help Nixon.

Similarly, Reagan’s appeal didn’t carry over to Bush. Luckily for Bush, his first opponent was someone even less exciting, but when faced with an opponent who was exciting he lost. Just eight years later, though, Clinton’s appeal didn’t carry over to Gore. Like with Clinton, Obama’s appeal didn’t carry over to Hilary Clinton, Biden or Harris.

What’s so unusual about Biden is that he won in the first place. He doesn’t excite anyone and has no fanatical following. His beating Trump is the only time I know of where the less exciting candidate won. For all the fanaticism he inspires in his followers, Trump is a fundamentally horrible candidate. Even when running in the favorable national environments of 2016 and 2024, he only won by a little.

Why the new era may not last much longer

Recency bias is something we all can fall prey to. It’s tempting to think that whatever is going on now will continue forever. Maybe there are areas where it happens, but not in the world of US electoral politics. Very often, what looks like a new era or trend is just an offshoot of a particular time period.

Trump has been the most important political actor of the last eight years and will remain so until 2028, assuming he doesn’t become leader for life. The last time someone was a central national figure for as long as he’s been was FDR from 1933-1945. He’s not just a highly unusual candidate and president, but his running again after losing has only one precedent and that was in 1892.

For those in the 18-29 age range, as long as they’ve been eligible to vote, Trump has been on every presidential ballot. It can be hard to remember what it was like before he was around. Believe it or not, there was such a time and there will be one again.

The era we’ve been in since 2016 has been defined not just by Trump himself, but also by a new consensus on some policy matters. As Cohn notes in his piece, issues like Medicare and Social Security have been taken off the table because of Trump’s opposition to previous Republican ideas. For Democrats, it has been a mixed blessing. They have won the fight against privatizing Social Security and Ryan’s vision for Medicare. The flipside is that Trump has deprived them of issues that worked to their advantage and that has helped him make inroads with previously Democratic-leaning groups.

There is now a consensus among the parties that government is good or at least not bad. The fights over the size of the government that were prevalent before 2016 are over for the time being. Likewise, just about everyone agrees that invading Iraq was a mistake and gay marriage is a settled matter. It wasn’t long ago when there was a consensus that free trade was good. Now, if anything, there is a consensus that we should have more protectionism. As Cohn puts it, the dominant ideology today is right-wing populism, which is basically right-wing cultural ideas/vibes combined with support for the welfare state and opposition to trade and immigration.

A defining feature of the era we’re in, and of most of this century, has been very low interest rates. The importance of that can’t be overstated. For the better part of two decades, interest rates were very low and unemployment was elevated. Under those conditions, the tradeoff between spending and taxes was effectively on a hiatus.

That tradeoff is at the core of the rationale for needing to address the country’s fiscal trajectory, which has not been good for years, but has lately gotten much worse. It has never been a secret that Medicare and Social Security will need to be addressed, but the date was far off for a long time. Now, it’s fast approaching and it means the taxes/spending tradeoff will be back. In some ways, it already is.

Interest rates today are higher and inflation is a concern. It was sustainable to take Medicare and Social Security off the table for a while, but that likely won’t be the case for much longer. Republicans have benefitted from not talking about those issues, but they will have to soon. When that happens, it will cause a split in their coalition.

Republicans will have to choose between their hatred of tax increases (pleasing their donors and committed ideologues) and their gains among working-class voters (they depend on those programs). Democrats will have to choose between their hatred of entitlement cuts (at the core of their identity) and their gains among educated, higher income voters (they don’t want to pay higher taxes). Both parties will likely see their coalitions splinter, but my guess is it will be a bigger deal for Republicans. Whatever ultimately winds up happening, it won’t happen without some big intraparty fights.

With money being tighter and the bills coming due, it’s already constraining both parties’ agendas. This year, Republicans want to extend the tax cuts passed in 2017. It was okay then to not offset it with spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere because of low interest rates and the economy still having room to grow on the employment front. Today, it’s almost the opposite situation.

No matter what Republicans do with tax cuts this year, they are likely to be between a rock and a hard place. Extending the tax cuts with little to no offsets risks higher interest rates and/or inflation. Offsetting their extension completely or close to it will require draconian cuts to Medicaid and the ACA. Either way, it will be very unpopular. For Democrats, it will be an easy way for them to get out of their funk and unite just as they did after 2004 and 2016.

Regardless of who gets elected to what in the future, the days of being able to raise spending and cut taxes are over. I’m sure they will be back some day, but not before taxes are raised and spending is cut. While the current era is defined by protectionist impulses, it likely won’t last very long. As I write about regularly, red tape everywhere is preventing things from being built. It’s something that is finally getting the attention it deserves. It’s going to be necessary because we will need economic growth to be higher if we want to avoid having to make big spending cuts and tax increases. Both are likely inevitable, but the amount can be limited if revenue can be boosted by higher growth.

Protectionism and heavy state intervention are in vogue now, but in an age of austerity that won’t work. Just like the inflation of the 1970s spurred deregulation in many areas, higher interest rates and a desire to avoid substantial spending cuts and tax increases might spur a push for deregulation to boost growth. From a policy standpoint, I think that’s very good. There are plenty of spending measures I support, but the biggest issue we have now is we make it way too hard to build things we badly need. That includes everything from nuclear plants to transmission lines to housing to infrastructure of all sorts.

From an electoral standpoint, it’s hard to say what will happen. Although the Republican coalition will likely be more impacted by the age of austerity, that doesn’t mean the Republican Party will implode. We have two major parties and that has never not been the case. Both will have to make adjustments and will have to deal with tradeoffs and inevitably upset people in their coalitions. It might make things messy for a while, but there will be an equilibrium sooner or later as there always is.

1. This was Jimmy Carter’s term, which was over before it began. Democrats technically had control of Congress during that time, but very little in the way of big domestic legislation was enacted, nothing like the New Deal or Great Society.

2. This was right after 9/11. Absent that happening, Republicans were almost certainly going to lose the House and Senate in 2002.

3. If you don’t believe me, just ask Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina and the Governor of Arizona and now Senator Kari Lake.

4. An example is Trump’s promise to deport everyone here illegally and to fire federal government employees en masse. Who is going to do the deporting?