Bi-Weekly Discussion - Understanding the "Great Realignment"

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Here's the link to the event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85078293887?pwd=N0R3UFhoakM1ZW9xckhQclRTV29Pdz09

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THE "GREAT REALIGNMENT": WHY DO POLITICAL PARTIES CHANGE - AND HOW ARE THEY CHANGING NOW?

INTRODUCTION:

As some people may remember, this meetup was originally entitled "Can Metamodernism Depolarize Our Politics?" This was going to be a follow-up to Rebel Wisdom's "Final Campfire" event yesterday, since Rebel Wisdom was a UK-based group based around promoting the philosophy of "metamodernism" - essentially a fusion of the best parts of traditionalism, modernism & postmodernism progressivism. Unfortunately, as I delved into this political philosophy, it quickly became apparent that's a quasi-mystical New Age movement that has its roots in Ken Wilber's "Integral Theory" and the idea that human society will be transformed when a critical mass of people adopt a more enlightened mindset reached through a mix of meditation, embodiment practices & psychedelics. They've borrowed their philosophy of history from the psychologist Clare W. Graves "emergent cyclical theory" and have tried since the 1990s to look for various "third way" political movements that could herald the coming of the Metamodern Age. Unfortunately, this sounds far too similar to other debunked political prophecies like Hegel & Marx's dialectical theories of history, as well as Charles A. Reich's book "The Greening of America" (1970) that predicted the hippie counterculture would overthrow industrial capitalism, and William Strauss & Neil Howe's "The Fourth Turning" (1997) that predicted Millennials would become the next "Greatest Generation" and rescue America from some crisis in the 2000s.

I jettisoned the old title for this meetup when I decided to take a more mainstream scholarly approach to the issue of how & why political realignments occur, and focus less on dreams of what we'd ideally *like* to happen and more on what's likely to happen given what we've seen in the past and where current trends appear to be leading us.

In the 1st section, we'll look at what history & political science can tell us about political realignments. A lot of this will reference the six "Party Systems" of American history - for reference, they are:
(1) First Party System: Federalist & Jeffersonian Eras (c. 1792-1824)
(2) Second Party System: Jacksonian & Whig Eras (c. 1828-1854)
(3) Third Party System: Civil War/Reconstruction & Gilded Age (c. 1854-1890)
(4) Fourth Party System: Progressive Era (c. 1896-1932)
(5) Fifth Party System: New Deal & Cold War (c. 1932-1976)
(6) Sixth Party System: Reagan Revolution & Post-Cold War (c. 1980-2016?)

In the 2nd section, we'll look at how recent shifts in European politics, particularly the rise of demise of center-left & center-right parties and the rise of the far-right & Green parties, mirrors some of what's happening on this side of the Atlantic and what this suggests about global trends that transcend the unique aspects of America's history, demographics & presidential (rather than parliamentary) system.

In the 3rd section, we'll look at recent speculations over whether or not a third party or independent candidates could appeal to enough disaffected voters to become electorally successful and transform American politics.

In the 4th section, we'll look at recent speculations over how the "Great Awakening" (the leftward shift of white liberals on racial & gender issues) and Trumpian populism are changing the Democratic & Republican parties in fundamental ways, perhaps enough to cause long-lasting changes in both parties bases and platform that would herald the beginning of a so-called "Seventh Party System".

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

In Feb. 2018, we had a meetup entitled "Political Science & Political Myths". For our discussion of party realignment, some of the empirical observations from political scientists listed in Section 1 are relevant to today's discussion:
- Even while Americans have become more partisan, most people have little political knowledge and often lack coherent policy preferences.
- Instead of focusing on policy, most voters are attracted to charismatic public figures & politicians, and tend to adopt whatever policies that person advocates. As their allegiance switches from one leader to another, voters' stated policy preferences will fluctuate.
- Duverger's Law means a two-party system is almost inevitable in a "First Past the Post" electoral system, because people don't want to feel they've "wasted their vote" by voting for a third party candidate.
- Political scientists are divided on whether or not moderate polarization is beneficial. Some think it enables "responsible party government" - i.e. voters can try out different policies by electing different parties and see what works. Others think voters are too myopic and too poor at attributing causation to hold incumbent politicians retrospectively accountable for the economy or general well-being.
- The "true independent voter" who evaluates the candidates and the issues, above the political mudslinging, and makes an informed choice is mostly a myth. Most registered independent voters in America are closet partisans that vote for the same party again & again. And unfortunately, people who are less partisan tend to be less likely to vote.
- People vote and join political movements & parties based on group identities. The most salient group identity for a person is not always what you might expect. For example, when white Southerners began to gradually shift from the Democratic to the Republican party in the 1960s-80s, both pro- & anti-integration white Southerners joined at about the same rate. It was apparently their identity as Southerners, not as anti-integration racists, that was most salient & influential for them.
- People generally do not choose group identities based on their opinions; rather, partisanship & group identity shape opinion. To the extent that people retain opinions that aren't the norm for their party, they tend to rationalize this away by assuming their party is actually closer to their opinion that it really is.

Back in Dec. 2021, we had a meetup entitled "Can We Depolarize Politics?" In the 1st section, we looked at the various factors causing affective & ideological polarization among voters, and in the 2nd section we looked at the polarization of the politicians in the two major parties on the national level. One of the important takeaways is that many plausible-sounding drivers of political polarization (e.g. geographical sorting, social media algorithms, gerrymandering, campaign donations & lobbying, closed primaries, the two-party duopoly) are empirically suspect.

Back in Feb. 2020, we had a meetup entitled "How Do Generations Affect Politics?" We talked about the priming effects that major events can have on young people's political views which they tend to maintain into later life, and how this lines up with the physicist Max Planck's observation that "science advances one funeral at a time' - i.e. change does not occur because individuals change their minds, but rather because successive generations have different views. Thus, as older people die off, the views of the younger generation become predominant.

Way back in Aug. 2016, we discussed the growing conflict between nationalism & globalism and the way in which it looked like this might shift the political alignment of our two major parties. In particular, we discussed Michael Lind's article "Trumpism and Clintonism Are The Future" where he predicted the GOP would turn into a right-wing nationalist/populist party with protectionist trade policies & support for social spending restricted to the middle & working classes (not the underclass or non-citizens), and the Democrats would turn into a center-left cosmopolitan party with policies friendly to both international business and a coalition of minorities & immigrants.

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DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over why political parties & their platforms change over time and whether we may be in the middle of a major shift right now. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about about 51 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. As you can see, I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussions. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

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I. WHAT CAN HISTORY & POLITICAL SCIENCE TELL US ABOUT HOW POLITICAL PARTY SYSTEMS & PLATFORMS CHANGE OVER TIME?

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1. Frank DiStefano, "The Cycle of Political Realignments: How American Political 'Party Systems' Actually Work" (video - 17:11 min.)

• Becky Little, "How the ‘Party of Lincoln’ Won Over the Once Democratic South: Democratic defectors, known as the 'Dixiecrats,' started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called 'Southern strategy.'" (History)
• John Wood Jr., "The Party Switch ‘Myth’" (Areo)
• Carl Davison, "The U.S. ‘Six-Party System,’ Version 5.0 - We can best understand the major political parties in the U.S. as constantly changing coalitions with no firm commitment to program or discipline." (Convergence)
• Lee Drutman, "How Democracies Revive: History tells us the future will be different — but how?" (Niskanen)

II. WHAT DOES THE RISE OF POPULIST PARTIES IN BOTH EUROPE & THE U.S. SUGGEST ABOUT GLOBAL POLITICAL TRENDS?

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2a) Sheri Berman, "The Decline of the Left and the Rise of Illiberal, Populist Politics" (video - 5:20 min, start at 0:47)

2b) Takis S. Pappas, "The rise of modern populism" (video - 6:21 min.)

• Stephen Davies, "The Great Realignment: Understanding Politics Today" (Cato)
• Henry Farrell, "The Hollowing Out of Democracy [by Neoliberalism]" (Cato)
• Sheri Berman, "U.S. Democrats Can Learn From the European Left’s Failures - The demise of center-left parties across Europe is a warning to Democrats focused on divisive cultural issues rather than bread-and-butter economics." (Foreign Policy)
• Benjamin Mueller, "How Labour’s Working-Class Vote Crumbled and Its Nemesis Won the North - The Labour Party’s devastating defeat in an ex-stronghold has grave consequences for a party: Its two wings — older and working class and urban and educated — appear to have irreconcilable differences." (NYT)
• Matthew C. Rees, "Millions of French Voters Held Their Noses and Voted for Macron to Defeat Le Pen: Understanding the messy realignment in French politics and what might come next." (Bulwark)

III. COULD INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES OR A THIRD PARTY REVOLUTIONIZE POLITICS IN MODERN AMERICA?

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3a) The Atlantic, "Why Can't Third Parties Take Off?" (video - 3:28 min.)

3b) Vox, "How to break the two-party hold on American politics" (video - 3:17 min.)

• Patrick Dunleavy, "Duverger’s Law is a dead parrot. Outside the USA, first-past-the-post voting has no tendency at all to produce two party politics" (LSE)
• Christopher Klein, "Here’s How Third-Party Candidates Have Changed Elections: America’s two-party political system makes it difficult for candidates from outside the Republican and Democratic parties to win presidential elections." (History.com)
• Genevieve Weynerowski, "Unity 2020: A Tragicomedy - Bret Weinstein’s dual-candidacy experiment is hopeless. So why is he doing it?" (Medium)
• David Jolly, Christine Todd Whitman & Andrew Yang, "Most third parties have failed. Here's why ours [i.e. the Forward Party] won't." (Wash. Post)
• Seth Masket, "A third party could be successful. But probably not this one [i.e. Forward Party]" (Wash. Post)

IV. SEVENTH PARTY SYSTEM: ARE TRUMPISM & THE "GREAT AWOKENING" REALIGNING AMERICA'S TWO MAJOR PARTIES?

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4a) Aspen Institute w/ Reihan Salam, "Did the [Republican and] Democratic party shift?" (video - 5:27 min.)

4b) The Hill w/ Richard Hanania, "The Myth Of A Working Class Republican Party" (video - 11:42 min.)

• Perry Bacon Jr., "The U.S. has four political parties stuffed into a two party system - This reality becomes clear if you set aside the catch-all labels 'Democrat' and 'Republican'." (Wash. Post)
• Matthew Continetti, "The Working-class GOP: A Muddled Concept" (AEI)
• Jonathan Chait, "How to Make a Semi-Fascist Party: The hostile, paranoid, and increasingly authoritarian path ahead for American conservatism." (NYMag)
• Maddie Sach, "Why The Democrats Have Shifted Left Over The Last 30 Years" (538)
• Monica Potts, "Why Democratic Appeals To The 'Working Class' Are Unlikely to Work" (538)
• Ronald Brownstein, "Are Latinos Really Realigning Toward Republicans? Tidy narratives about changing electoral outcomes often miss key data points." (Atlantic)
• Jennifer Victor, "The clockwork rise of Donald Trump and reorganization of American parties" (Vox)
• Lee Drutman, "Moderation, Realignment, or Transformation? Evaluating Three Approaches to America’s Crisis of Democracy" (AAPSS)

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