Over on Substack before Tuesday's election I was remembering the anniversary of Obama winning the 2008 election. I argued that the current anti-democratic, white nationalist Republican Party has its origins in that time. The 2007-2008 economic collapse helped undermine belief in Reaganomics, even among conservative voters. Trump figured this out, and won Republican support while giving out free money during COVID and assailing free trade. Sarah Palin's "Real America" talk in 2008 was a harbinger of the future.
As the Republican Party has become the party of populist nationalism, it has come to rely on a shrinking demographic of aging white people, many of them living in declining rural and Rust Belt areas losing population. This has made it necessary for Republicans to tilt elections and use the non-democratic institutions in our system to maintain power. It's why they try to suppress votes and aggressively gerrymander. It's why they managed to rig the Supreme Court to overturn reproductive rights despite winning the presidential popular vote only once since 1988. The electoral college allowed them to put in two losers of the popular vote with disastrous consequences this century.
Writing two days after the election, I now see that the Republican agenda is even more unpopular than I first realized. In red Ohio voters decisively approved of voting rights and legal weed. An anti-abortion Republican challenger for the governor's mansion went down in flames in red Kentucky. Virginia Republican governor Glenn Youngkin's attempt to get control of the state legislature ended in embarrassment after he floated a 15 week abortion ban "compromise."
This is part of a larger and longer trend. In many states with Republican state houses, voters have passed ballot initiatives to overturn laws passed by Republican legislatures. Voters have approved Medicaid expansion, raises in minimum wage, and abortion rights. In my home state of Nebraska, voters have approved an initiative to be put on the next ballot to overturn a law diverting money from public to private schools. In some of these states gerrymandering has all but eliminated free and fair elections. Tuesday night's referendums, which circumvent gerrymandering, show why.
Intriguingly, there also appears to be a significant number of people who vote for Republicans while voting against some of their core priorities when given the chance. If Democrats can solve this riddle, they have the chance to make big gains in places assumed to be hostile territory. For a long time conventional wisdom said that opposition to abortion explained why so many voters in red states could disagree with Republican economic policy yet for politicians who prioritized the interests of the wealthy. The recent abortion referendum votes show this is not the case at all. Perhaps the core issue is actually white resentment, perhaps not. As Andy Beshear illustrates in Kentucky, it is not impossible for Democrats to do well in red states while still governing as Democrats and not Mancin-style Republican Lite.
Just as Donald Trump changed the older political coalitions with his focus on nationalism, abortion has the chance to reorient things in another direction. Basic assumptions are changing. Opposition to abortion, unions, higher wages, LGBTQ rights, and public educators are not winning issues anymore. The Reagan era was a long time ago. A normal political party would react by moderating their positions, but I expect the maximalist current version of the Republican Party will just double down on diluting the people's voice. After all, the people who vote against them aren't "real Americans."
No comments:
Post a Comment