Time may change the parties, but they can't trace time
Since 2016, a defining feature of the Democratic Party has been opposition to Trump. It’s not unusual for the party out of the White House to be mostly defined by opposition to the president. What is unusual is for the party in the White House to be mostly defined by opposition to a former president. Ordinarily, presidents who lose reelection go away and stay quiet. Trump hasn’t done that at all.
He has been a great foil for Democrats and has helped them out many times. That very much includes the time since he became a former president. Most notably, he helped them in the midterms by endorsing toxic candidates in primaries in nearly every key race. He is now all but the Republican presidential nominee, which is why I don’t worry about Democrats being unified this year. It may be a while before it happens, but it will happen once all doubts about who the major party nominees will be are gone.
There is nothing better to unify a party than a shared dislike of the other side. I think that’s not great because I would much rather have parties, especially Democrats, united by a positive vision, but that’s not how it works. It’s much easier to unite against something than to unite in favor of something. Democrats still have plenty of ideas that unify them, but opposition to and fear of Trump is and has been the driving force behind what keeps them all on the same page.
Post-2016 changes
Both parties’ coalitions have undergone some significant changes since 2016 not just in terms of demographics, but in terms of reliability when it comes to voting. In sharp contrast with the Obama years, during the Trump and now Biden years it has been Democrats who are more likely to show up regularly. That was the trade Republicans effectively made by nominating and becoming the party of Trump.
Republicans have made gains with non-college educated voters while they’ve lost ground with college educated voters. That has its pluses and minuses as all trades do. On the plus side, there are more voters who didn’t go to college. On the minus side, they’re less likely to vote, especially in non-presidential elections. The change in which parties’ voters are more likely to show up has made some recent battles very outdated.
For example, last decade, there were big fights over voter ID laws. Republicans were almost entirely the ones pushing to make voting harder while Democrats were doing the opposite. The belief then, almost universally held, was that higher voter turnout always benefitted Democrats. That belief is still widely held, but it’s fighting the last battle. Based on sheer self-interest, Democrats and Republicans should be switching sides in the voter ID debate. Republicans are now the ones who would probably be more likely to benefit from higher voter turnout.
The plus side for Democrats in gaining college educated voters has been demonstrated in the 2022 midterms and elections held since. Their making gains with college educated voters means they don’t have to worry about voter turnout nearly as much as they did in the 2010s. Republicans, on the other hand, now have to worry about the voters Trump brought in not showing up when he’s not on the ballot.
What the long-term implications of that trade are, I don’t know and neither does anyone else. It’s not clear if the current configuration is an enduring feature or just a byproduct of Trump being a central figure. Parties can change and they can do so quickly. Just think back to where things were ten years ago.
It wasn’t long ago when almost all Republicans favored free trade, entitlement reform and a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy. All of that is virtually gone. It wasn’t long ago when Putin had almost no support from Republicans. Now, since becoming the party of Trump, he’s their favorite foreign leader.
Democrats for their part have moved leftward on most issues since the 2010s. It wasn’t long ago when many Democrats were uneasy about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Now, virtually all of them enthusiastically support it. On abortion, Democrats used to run away from it. Now, they can’t stop talking about it. Where they once tried to never mention the Affordable Care Act, they now are champions of it and support for a public option is widespread.
It’s not just on policy where the parties have changed, but party geographic strengths have shifted as well. There are many parts of the country, particularly in the midwest, that were reliably Democratic, but have since flipped to voting reliably Republican. Conversely, there are many suburban areas that were once reliably Republican, but are now reliably Democratic, including where I live in Houston and used to live in Atlanta.
Trump has thoroughly remade the Republican Party in his image. That will remain true this year, but if he loses it’s not clear what will happen next. I’m skeptical that the GOP will remain a Trumpy party when he is gone. I say that because so far all of his imitators have flopped. It’s true many Republicans, especially primary voters, care more about fighting than winning, but that will change if they continue losing and Trump isn’t there to tell them they were robbed.
In the case of Democrats, they have benefitted from gaining college educated voters, but those voters aren’t thrilled about the big, transformative changes pushed for by the party’s left-wing. This piece by Ezra Klein gets at the tension that is causing. As he puts it, Democrats are going through an identity crisis in trying to figure out what comes after Trump is no longer a unifying force. Right now, they’re the party of big, progressive change and the party of the status quo.
The voters they have gained since 2016, particularly in the suburbs, aren’t eager to fundamentally alter things. A large part of what has driven them away from Republicans is Trump presenting himself as a wrecking ball. College educated voters are largely doing well in their own lives. What they want is stability and predictability, not chaos and revolution. That’s why Democrats becoming reliant on them puts a low ceiling on any grand ambitions the party’s left-wing has. Sooner or later, those differences will have to be reconciled.
Working class versus middle and upper class
What makes Democrats being the party of college educated voters strange is that it runs counter to how most Democratic elected officials have seen themselves for decades. Democrats have long viewed themselves as the party of the working class. Lately though they have been doing worse with those voters.
Most Democratic elected officials, pundits, consultants and writers lament that and yearn for the days of The New Deal. That’s a fine sentiment, but this is a very different time. I don’t celebrate Democrats becoming less of a working class party, but I’m not lamenting it either. I think it would be great to be the party of all classes, but that’s not a thing and never has been.
The biggest problem with being the party of the working class is they aren’t reliable voters. That’s something Democrats learned during the Obama years and is something Republicans are learning now. That’s why I think the trade the parties have made since 2016 has been mostly good for Democrats.
To be clear, I’m using working class and non-college educated interchangeably. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing depending on how working class is defined (income, education, type of work, etc.). That said, any definition will likely include the overwhelming majority of non-college educated people.
Like I said earlier, a major benefit of being the working class party is that most people didn’t go to college. In some states and districts, that number is very high. Having strong support from non-college educated voters can provide an advantage in presidential elections and can turn some states from purple to blue/red and vice-versa. The best example of how Republicans have benefitted from making gains with those voters is Iowa.
The biggest downside of being the party of the working class is that the party relying on them is often at a disadvantage in non-presidential elections because they have lower turnout. Michigan is a good example of that. This piece in The New Yorker on Gretchen Whitmer is great and I highly recommend it. One thing it briefly mentions is the impact of the trade Republicans have made since becoming the party of Trump.
Macomb County and Oakland County are both right outside of Detroit. The former is heavily working class while the latter is much more college educated. Trump made gains in Macomb while he lost ground in Oakland. In 2016, he eked out a win in Michigan and in 2020 lost it by just three points. Based on that, it can be argued that the trade is worthwhile given how much better he did in Michigan than every Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
That analysis is incomplete though. As The New Yorker piece notes, in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, voter turnout among those Trump made gains with in Macomb was much lower. In Oakland, voter turnout remained fairly high. Republicans were effectively trading reliable college educated voters for unreliable non-college educated voters. Whitmer got elected governor twice in part by running up very high numbers in Oakland. She also won Macomb, but it was much closer.
Looking at the full picture, the trade hasn’t been even. Democrats are the ones coming out on top. The advantage Republicans got in presidential elections isn’t that big while the disadvantage they have in other elections is substantial. It also doesn’t help that, by becoming the party of Trump, the state Republican Party has become Trumpy and gone completely insane.
What happened in Michigan has happened in some other states since 2016. In presidential elections, many midwestern states have been close, but otherwise Democrats have killed it. Pennsylvania is one example of that. Democrats have also done better in Arizona and now hold most statewide offices there. They have also made big inroads in Georgia and have turned whole swaths of suburban Atlanta from solidly Republican to solidly Democratic.
Parties don't have many teeth
Debates within parties over what they should be about and stand for are almost always going on and never ending. They rarely have an obvious answer and there is no mechanism to enforce it even if there is a consensus. Contrary to how parties work in parliamentary systems, there is no single Democratic or Republican Party. Parties themselves are very weak and have no official leadership.
Party organizations can help recruit candidates and raise money, but that’s it. Candidates are almost always chosen in primaries by voters. Candidates run their own campaigns and, technically, when they’re in office, they can do what they want. The seats they hold are theirs, not the party’s.
Parties can have their own platforms regarding where they stand on issues, but that’s all they are. They’re not binding on candidates. To the extent platforms have any use, it’s providing a window into what party officials, delegates and other elites are thinking. As far as what party rank-and-file voters think, platforms give no indication at all. Very few people are even aware of party platforms’ existence.
Party discipline can be enforced, but it’s much harder since the party doesn’t control individual House and Senate seats. Someone can get elected as a Democrat/Republican and then switch parties once they’re in office. That doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does the parties can’t do anything about it until the next election. An elected official is free to vote however they want regardless of what their party supports.
I think the current configuration of the parties is mostly good. I say that because I’m a committed Democrat and I want them to win elections. Since they’ve been doing that, I’m largely happy with where things are. When that changes, which it will sooner or later, I won’t be happy and will reassess things.
We don’t yet know what kind of effect the current coalitions and issues like abortion and democracy will have in a presidential election. As far as I can tell, most of those who write about politics think the dynamics of 2016 and 2020 will repeat, but I’m not convinced of that yet. Abortion and concerns about democracy may have altered the political map in ways that didn’t apply in 2020.
I would argue they have done to politics what the pandemic did to the economy. That is to say they have changed things in such a way that what was thought to be impossible is now very real. Normally, the party in the White House would be losing badly when the president has an approval rating where Biden’s is now. That is not what has happened, just the opposite.
That doesn’t mean Democrats will kill it in November. It may wind up meaning nothing, but call me highly skeptical. As I have said before, the laws of political physics are on vacation. Maybe I need my eyes checked, but I see no obvious sign now that they’re coming back and, no, polls showing Biden losing to Trump now are not a sign of it. Anyone trying to predict what will happen in November based solely on extrapolating trends from 2016 and 2020 onto 2024 is missing a lot.
Non-presidential elections matter, too
One thing I find lacking in so much of the commentary about elections is that it tends to focus on presidential elections to the exclusion of everything else. Presidential elections certainly matter, don’t get me wrong, but they only happen once every four years. Plenty of other elections happen in between.
Depending on the issue, those other elections matter even more. For most people, the huge majority of things that impact their lives happen on the state and local level. With respect to one of the biggest issues today, abortion, the major battles are being fought on the state level. A huge majority of state and local elections happen in non-presidential election years. For example, 36 states hold their gubernatorial elections in midterm years and another 5 hold theirs during odd numbered years.
During the Obama years, and to a lesser extent during the Trump years, many Democrats became so obsessed with the presidency that they forgot about everything else. Democratic Party groups dedicated to state level elections withered on the vine for most of the 2010s. From 2010 to 2016, Democrats lost nearly 1000 state legislative seats.
The situation has thankfully changed and those groups are doing much better and getting way more attention. A big part of the success Democrats are having now on the state and local levels is attributable to their gains with college educated voters. For example, Pennsylvania last year held elections for many county offices and school boards. In suburban Philadelphia, which is home to some key counties, Democrats killed it across the board. Turnout was much lower than it will be in November and those who showed up were disproportionately college educated.
Sorry to the working class champions out there, but they seldom vote in those kinds of elections. The gains Democrats have made with college educated voters is why I’m fairly optimistic about Texas’ future. I don’t know that it will flip this year and I’m not going to make any predictions, but stranger things have happened.[i] The reason I’m more optimistic than I was a short while ago is where the parties are making gains.
Democrats are rapidly gaining suburban places like Plano, which is right outside of Dallas. Republicans are rapidly gaining places like McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley. Why is that a good trade for Democrats? Because Plano always votes. McAllen might vote in presidential elections (at a low turnout rate), but that’s basically it. The places where Democrats are ascendant vote regularly and have more people while the places where Republicans are ascendant are the opposite.
To be sure, while Republicans have made gains with working class voters, plenty still support Democrats. Conversely, while Democrats have made gains with college educated voters, plenty still support Republicans. The gains each party has made with those respective groups are significant, but are a long way from winning every one of them. It’s important to remember that.
We’ll have to see what happens in November before we can get any idea where the two parties will go. Right now, it’s Democrats who are struggling the most to determine their future because the Republican Party is 100% about Trump, Trump and Trump. As soon as Trump is gone, Republicans will go through an identity crisis of their own.
[i] Not one person on planet earth thought in February 2020 that Georgia would simultaneously elect a Jewish and black Senator.