No, it is not inevitable that their “south will rise again”:
Why are the left’s public demonstrations more impressive than its voter turnout? Because there are a whole lot of Democrats in the large population centers where such demonstrations are generally held. People can join a protest simply by getting on the subway; it’s an easy show of force.
But there are a lot of small towns in America, and as Sean Trende and David Byler recently demonstrated, those small towns are redder than ever. Effectively, the Democratic coalition has self-gerrymandered into a small number of places where they can turn out an impressive number of feet on the ground, but not enough votes to win the House. Certainly not enough to win the Senate or the Electoral College, which both favor sparsely populated states and discount the increasingly dense parts of the nation.
The Senate map in 2018 is brutal for Democrats. If Democrats want to get their mojo back, they’re going to need to do more than get a small minority of voters to turn out for a march. They’re going to need to get back some of those rural votes.
To do that, they’re probably going to have to let go of the most soul-satisfying, brain-melting political theory of the last two decades: that Democrats are inevitably the Party of the Future, guaranteed ownership of the future by an emerging Democratic majority in minority-white America. This theory underlay a lot of Obama’s presidency, and Clinton’s campaign. With President Trump’s inauguration on Friday, we saw the results.
Why was this such a bad theory? Let me count the ways.
I hope that the shock treatment of Trump will ultimately result in at least one party with actual liberal values, as opposed to the divisive, violent, race-baiting mess that is the modern Left that has largely hijacked the Democrats.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Yes, if the economy grows during Trump’s presidency, his opposition will dwindle.
[Update a few minutes later]
This related piece on the Democrats’ plight is from a couple weeks ago, with a bonus Space Shuttle analogy (not sure how apt it is).
[Late-morning update]
Trump’s revolution has been a long time brewing:
As Amity Shlaes shows in her 2008 book The Forgotten Man, that term, which Franklin Roosevelt applied to the man on the breadline in the Great Depression, “the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,” more properly applies to those unhappy-if-silent taxpayers who funded the New Deal’s social-welfare schemes. And these are the forerunners of the Tea Partiers, another key class of Trump voter: the widow on a fixed income whose property-tax payment helps house a public-sector retiree comfortably but whose inexorable rise is making her own paid-off home unaffordable; the retiree whose IRA savings the Great Recession eroded or who can no longer get an adequate income from safe bond investments, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policies; the small businessman or farmer ruined by undemocratic government regulation lacking even the pretense of due process; the ex-soldier abandoned by a dysfunctional Veterans Administration; the parent disgusted with public schools that impose ideologies she abhors on her children, while leaving them inadequately educated; and all those sincere believers in God or traditional values whom Obama dismissed as clinging desperately to outmoded pieties, as the arc of history, which the elite professor-president claimed to understand and direct according to his politically correct enlightenment, swirled them down the drain.
Honestly, it seems to me that it’s been brewing my entire adult life.
The media is in for a big surprise. They think they’ve got Trump in their sights like that hunter in the first Jurassic Park when the second velociraptor suddenly appears at his side.
As far as recent protests go, I think Beck’s “Restoring Honor” in 2010 has been the most impressive. Unfortunately the media’s stronghold on the truth was tight enough for people not to know it.
But that’s all changed now. It’s truly enjoyable to see the media pratter on as if they still had relevance and in complete denial that their attempts to beat Trump failed miserably.
Rand,
If I had to take my bet, I’m expecting the pendulum to swing back towards the Dems. Just like Obama pissed off and animated the right during his first two years when Dems controlled the govt, Trump and the GOP are overreaching and pissing off Dems and independents today. Not sure if they’ll piss people off fast enough for Trump to become a one term wonder, or if he’ll take 8yrs to destroy the GOP’s position like Obama destroyed the Dem’s position. And if he goes all Smoot-Hawley protectionist, he may even put the GOP in the back seat for a generation like Hoover did.
I’m not saying that 100% of his policies are awful (I’m sure there’s at least a few I would agree with), just that his most dangerously stupid ones are bad enough that they’ll likely more than outweigh any good he does around the edges. Especially if he destroys international trade through his economic illiteracy.
~Jon
We’ll see. He’s limited in his ignorance by what Congress is willing to go along with. It will be particularly tough in the Senate.
Especially if he destroys international trade through his economic illiteracy.
People like to focus on the stick but ignore the carrot. His main focus has been on saying he wants to create better conditions for business in the USA. If that happens, then he wont need the stick of extra taxes on goods made by American companies overseas. I really dislike the concept of punitive taxation and it isn’t even needed. A big problem is that most of the regulatory hurdles are put in place by city and state governments.
Trump and the GOP are overreaching and pissing off Dems and independents today.
You make an excellent point and I agree with it. Also consider that he is peeling off Democrat constituencies. He won because Democrats in WI, PA, and MI voted for him. He is making plays for most of the Democrats factions. Who knows whether his policies will be successful but if they are…
Why are the left’s public demonstrations more impressive than its voter turnout?
Part of the reason is that Democrats view protesting as a social activity like going to church or joining a rotary club. Protesting isn’t a sign of massive societal discontent for them as much as it is a sign that they need to do something for entertainment and social interaction. Its an ordinary and regular activity. There are weekly protests that they can attend.
Republicans, or even libertarians, don’t view protesting the same way. The Tea Party protests were significant because they were motivated to do something that they ordinarily wouldn’t do.
She makes a good point about misreading demographics but misses the biggest part, that Democrats think skin color determines ideology. There is a sort of biological fatalism in how they think ideologies exist.