Women, Minorities, and Low Income Groups Voted Democratic

After the American Century

The Democrats lost badly in the House, but hung on to the Senate, as predicted here yesterday. (Indeed, while results are still coming in, it appears that I was nearly 100% correct.) Is there any silver lining for the Democrats? Yes. Women favor the Democrats by a sizeable margin, often as much as 15% more than men. Had only women been voting, the Democrats would have won the Senate seats in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

Likewise, African Americans voted Democratic by overwhelming margins, with typically 20% or less for Republican candidates. Asian Americans also tended strongly to suport Democrats, as did Hispanic Americans, who typically voter 2-1 against the Republicans. These three minorities are all growing, and will have more potential voters each year, The states where they are most numerous, notably California, will be even more bastions for the Democrats than they are already.

Republicans would have won even more seats if only those who made more than $50,000 year had been allowed to vote, or if only those over 40 had voted. In short, Republicans are in some danger of becoming the party of white, old people. You would think this group might want better and less expensive medical care, so part of this constituency could be won over to the Democrats if the new medical system proves a success.

To put this another way, Democrats did best among young people, and also with highly educated people, i.e. those with an MA or a PhD. As the population gets more education, if would seem, they will likely become Democratic voters. 

So, despite the defeat, there are positive signs. The Democrats will need to discover and promote better candidates that can appeal to these demographics.

US Mid-Term Elections: A Typical Result Likely

After the American Century

The media hype about these midterm elections has been devoid of historical memory. One breathless journalist after another has been proclaiming that a vast change is taking place. In fact, this midterm election looks much like those of the past.

Typically, the part occupying the White House loses seats in both the House and the Senate at every midterm election. Between 1842 and 1990. only one sitting president managed to win seats, and that was Roosevelt in 1934 after his spectacular early successes in the New Deal. Otherwise, in that 150 year period, EVERY president lost. Even popular presidents like Eisenhower and LBJ suffered big losses in the midterm elections of 1958 and 1966. Eisenhower lost 48 seats in the House and 13 in the Senate. Johnson lost 47 in the House and 4 in the Senate. So, should Obama lose roughly the same number of House seats, as now projected, he would be in good company.  Note also that Clinton lost 52 seats in the House in 1994, FDR lost 71 House seats in 1938, and Reagan lost 8 Senate seats in 1986.

Perhaps the media have lost track of this pattern in US elections because it did not hold true twice in recent memory. First, in 1998, Clinton did not lose any Senate seats and gained a few in the House. But since he had lost so many seats in 1994 and not gotten so many of them back in 1996, this was less a victory than it might appear. Second, in the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush (who received less than half the vote in 2000), was able to terrify the nation into supporting their president. That was a special circumstance, to say the least, and in 2006 the midterms were "normal" again, as he lost 30 House seats and 6 in the Senate.

One other typical pattern of midterm elections is also running true to form: the races are tightening as we near election day. Races that Republicans seemed likely to win have become ties in several states. Few now think the Republicans will be able to regain control of the Senate, though it does seem they have a good chance to retake control of the House. This could lead to grid-lock in Washington (as in 1995-96), but then again, gaining control of the House might force the Republicans to develop detailed policies again, rather than simply working to obstruct.

I do not regard this election to be anything unusual in the history of American politics. I do not even think the Tea Party is all that significant, since its members are almost all people who would vote Republican anyway.  Given huge secret campaign contributions and lots of media attention, they nevertheless do not seem to be changing the overall pattern very much. US elections are mostly decided by the one-third of the voters who are in the middle, and  they waffle from one party to the other on a regular basis. Unhappily, many of this group are not deeply analytical and appear to have historical memories that stretch only back about three or four years, at best. The beconomy, specifically, their own situation, is the main issue for such voters. With unemployment high, growth sluggish, and lots of foreclosures, this economy would be hard on any incumbent president.

In nine days we will know the results, but the statistical pattern suggests that Obama and the Democrats are not about to suffer anything more than the typical rebalancing inflicted by voters on the incumbents. Why should anyone familiar with American politics think that the nation had suddenly become liberal, or that the Democrats could expect to hold on to 59 Senate seats? Expect the Republicans to regain the House by a small margin, while the Democrats hold on, barely, to the Senate. 

Republican Demonology: Return of the Paranoid Style in American Politics

After the American Century

The Republicans are a party possessed, a party that has rediscovered the paranoid style that periodically rears its illogical head in American politics. Such paranoia is not new but tends to emerge at moments of historical transition such as the 1830s/1840s, when the US confronted the sectional crisis and industrialization.

A paranoid fear of change also was a strong undercurrent in the politics of the 1920s, when millions joined the KKK, not just in the South but all sections of the US. Nor was the Klan the only expression of paranoia during those years, which also saw immigration restriction, Prohibition, and the anti-evolutionary "Monkey Trial" in Tennessee.

The paranoid style reappeared again in anti-communist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s. Sometimes labeled McCarthyism, this movement briefly was dominant in the halls of Congress. McCarthy was convinced that communists had infiltrated everywhere and were about to destroy the nation. He warned of "a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man."

Today, the paranoid style is alive and well, personified in the often incoherent rhetoric of Sarah Palin and the "Tea Party" groups who are convinced that the US is about to succumb to totalitarianism (the Democrats) and/or socialism. The danger is emerging that the Republican Party as a whole may fall into the pit of paranoid delusions. This did not happen in the 1950s, in good part because President Eisenhower did not make common cause with Senator McCarthy. Ike was fundamentally a sane person and a centrist in politics.

But there are signs that the Republicans of today lack Eisenhower's sensibilities. Leaders of the Republican Party have made statements in recent days suggesting that they have achieved a hallucinatory consensus among themselves.

Consider the image used by the Repubican Natinonal Committee to raise money for the November 2010 elections. It shows Nancy Pelosi against a background of red flames with the caption "Fire Pelosi." It looks very much like they want to burn her at the stake as a witch. (This image was removed sometime after I wrote this words, to be replaced by an image of Pelosi looking rather manic with a raised fist.)  Sadly, Arthur Miller is not around to comment on the original image, but perhaps we will see a revival of his still very pertinent play about the Salem Witchcraft trials, The Crucible.

In the image Pelosi looks threatening, both arms raised, fists clenched. Republicans are encouraged to see her as a demon from hell. But it seems to me that the Republicans are projecting their own fears, that they themselves are possessed, and that they face the danger of political damnation.

It seems that the United States cannot entirely escape its origins in the seventeenth century.