AHC: Democrats and Republicans remain Big Tent
- Thread starter AndyWho
- Start date
The Dems are still big-tent, its just that the New Democrats and Obama Liberals are prominent.
The GOP on the other hand. Prevent Goldwater in 1964.
The GOP on the other hand. Prevent Goldwater in 1964.
They really aren't, not anymore. Name one prominent elected Democrat who can truly be called (by American standards) a conservative. Well, besides maybe Mark Pryor...
So essentially, we need to prevent the demise of the Rockefeller Republicans. And at the same time keep more of the Boll weevil-style Southern Democrats (there are still some, but mostly only in state government still.)
I get the impression that a lot of this north/south polarization (recall the once-'solid South' for the Democrats, while New England used to be a Republican stronghold) was spurred on by the Civil Rights movement, the Republican 'Southern strategy' and the eventual political realignment. Perhaps if we had a different Barry Goldwater, in which he was somehow persuaded to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964? (Which may be slightly ASB.) Or else the Republican party stays moderate to liberal on the topic of civil rights (the moderate north wing of the party stays in control on this subject), avoiding the Southern Strategy-based campaigns of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan?
I get the impression that a lot of this north/south polarization (recall the once-'solid South' for the Democrats, while New England used to be a Republican stronghold) was spurred on by the Civil Rights movement, the Republican 'Southern strategy' and the eventual political realignment. Perhaps if we had a different Barry Goldwater, in which he was somehow persuaded to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964? (Which may be slightly ASB.) Or else the Republican party stays moderate to liberal on the topic of civil rights (the moderate north wing of the party stays in control on this subject), avoiding the Southern Strategy-based campaigns of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan?
DTanza
Banned
Zell Miller, Heath Shuler, John Barrow, Sanford Bishop, Mike McIntyre, pretty much the entire Blue Dog Coalition...
The Democrats are a big tent party with a significant conservative faction. The Republican Party has just gone so far-right they've made Barry Goldwater look like a radical Marxist.
It depends on how you define conservative. Right-wing conservative? Eh, probably not.
But there are a handful of Democrats, mostly from red states, who, thirty years ago, would be considered Republican. But because the party has moved so far to the right, it would be illogical for them to share core beliefs with a great deal of modern conservatives.
Take Jim Matheson, congressman from Utah. His voting record suggests he's pro-life - receiving a 30% rating from NARAL. He's consistently voted against budgets that raise the deficit. He voted for the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. He voted against the Fiscal Cliff because 'it raised taxes'. He opposed the ACA. Pushed the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act. Opposes gun control. Opposes marriage equality.
In California, he'd be a Republican.
Do the conservatives have a very loud voice in the Democratic Party? No - but they have a far bigger voice and role than liberal Republicans.
The Democrats remain the Big Tent Party - much to the dismay of many liberals.
Zell Miller has been retired for nearly a decade now. Plus, even if I were accept the premise that every single Blue Dog was pretty much a conservative (and I'm iffy on Loretta Sanchez and Mike Michaud), I would then point at that they make up well less than 10% of the Democratic House caucus, whereas the Republican equivalent, the Main Street Partnership, has dozens of members in the House.
Eh, not really.
While it comes across on the internet as a bit petulant, Vultan's got a bit of a point. It's true that the blue dogs have been largely culled in the last few election cycles. They're barely a force anymore. They're still around as a faction, which is more than you can say for the last of the liberal Republicans, so the Democrats are certainly *more* big tent than the GOP, but they've been out of favor since 2010.
That said, the mainstreet alliance isn't really made up of liberal Republicans. They're moderate by Republican standards, meaning still significantly on the right side of the US political spectrum, whereas the blue dogs straddle the center.
So anyway, about the challenge, I am a bit stumped. You would have to do something to change attitudes on race, which is the main reason we've had this drifting apart of the parties. How do you do that?
That said, the mainstreet alliance isn't really made up of liberal Republicans. They're moderate by Republican standards, meaning still significantly on the right side of the US political spectrum, whereas the blue dogs straddle the center.
So anyway, about the challenge, I am a bit stumped. You would have to do something to change attitudes on race, which is the main reason we've had this drifting apart of the parties. How do you do that?
Both parties are heavily in the pocket of Wall Street and corporate interest groups. More so than in the past, even.
Neither party is big tent by any real definition.
The big tent parties existed when the party bureaucracy itself was important to political organizing and fund raising. Ward captains were extremely important to get out the vote, and their ability to do so gave them control of the party.
While parties did have certain established positions, parties served as a means to unit various interest groups based on identity rather than ideology. Thus there were liberal and conservative factions in both parties, and to get enough votes at conventions to write party platforms and what not, people had to compromise.
This all changed.
The rise of television advertising allowed candidates to go outside the party bureaucracy by appealing directly to voters. Conventon delegates increasingly were chosen by primaries instead of by the political machine thanks to reforms. Finally, activists in both parties changed the rules for conventions so that instead of people becoming delegates by serving the party, they would represent special interests instead. In the GOP conservative groups did it against the East Coast Establishment. In 1968, activists in the Democratic Party changed the rules so that delegates were no longer elected, but instead had to fit a prescribed diversity quota. Thus in 1972 the elected Illinois delegates were rejected outright in favor of people no one had voted for.
The end result is that both parties became more rigid ideologically.
Both parties are controlled more and more by the members on the left or right, alienating moderates much less people of opposite persuasion.
The idea that the Dems are a "big tent" party is particularly bizarre to me. Sounds like wishful thinking. Under Clinton and the New Democrats, the party finally moved to the center and became more inclusive, but that all eroded during the Bush years as the Left became energized. The Democratic Leadership Council doesn't even exist now. And one is far more likely to find a Republican voter who is pro-abortion than a Democratic voter who is pro-life.
The big tent parties existed when the party bureaucracy itself was important to political organizing and fund raising. Ward captains were extremely important to get out the vote, and their ability to do so gave them control of the party.
While parties did have certain established positions, parties served as a means to unit various interest groups based on identity rather than ideology. Thus there were liberal and conservative factions in both parties, and to get enough votes at conventions to write party platforms and what not, people had to compromise.
This all changed.
The rise of television advertising allowed candidates to go outside the party bureaucracy by appealing directly to voters. Conventon delegates increasingly were chosen by primaries instead of by the political machine thanks to reforms. Finally, activists in both parties changed the rules for conventions so that instead of people becoming delegates by serving the party, they would represent special interests instead. In the GOP conservative groups did it against the East Coast Establishment. In 1968, activists in the Democratic Party changed the rules so that delegates were no longer elected, but instead had to fit a prescribed diversity quota. Thus in 1972 the elected Illinois delegates were rejected outright in favor of people no one had voted for.
The end result is that both parties became more rigid ideologically.
Both parties are controlled more and more by the members on the left or right, alienating moderates much less people of opposite persuasion.
The idea that the Dems are a "big tent" party is particularly bizarre to me. Sounds like wishful thinking. Under Clinton and the New Democrats, the party finally moved to the center and became more inclusive, but that all eroded during the Bush years as the Left became energized. The Democratic Leadership Council doesn't even exist now. And one is far more likely to find a Republican voter who is pro-abortion than a Democratic voter who is pro-life.
Agree 100%. Also, in order to understand what killed the big tents, one must understand what politics looked like in the era of big tents.
80 years ago, there wasn't one party that was conservative nationally and one party that was liberal nationally. Rather, we had a bunch of regional parties that almost randomly arranged themselves into national parties. There were conservative Democrats and liberal Democrats duking it out in the South, progressive Republicans and conservative Republicans in the Upper Midwest, and liberal urban Democrats and conservative rural Republicans in the Lower Midwest, to name a few.
A big factor in killing this system was the New Deal. With the New Deal, the federal government became larger and more powerful than ever before and issues that previously would have been local were now national. Once this happened, it was inevitable that the two parties would align themselves along support for or antagonism towards the New Deal. That this took a few decades was just a formality, big political shifts take a long time.
Also, I just want to shoehorn my favorite political quote in American history:
-Senator William Borah, 1936. People have been claiming that the GOP has recently been "hijacked by radicals" for a very long time indeed.
Fix gerrymandered districts....more competative districts means more moderates and a bigger tent
Gerrymandering is as old as the country itself. It isn't helping the current climate of political polarization, but it is not the cause of it.
Gerrymandering is hard to kill because unless it's racially motivated, it's completely legal. It also affects both parties about equally(various computer-drawn projections show purely non-gerrymandered districts altering the current balance of power no more than 7 seats either way). It's also hard to identify and legislate against: Gerrymandering is like porn, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
In order to stop this, you'd need a broad bipartisan national consensus against gerrymandering and an intense popular movement to do something about it(Everybody outside of Congress is against gerrymandering, but who cares?)
Also, the nascent polarization(as opposed to the related but not identical ideological sorting of the parties that happened a few decades ago) has more to do with The Big Sort and how lots of people(myself included) are now voluntarily choosing to live in ideologically homogeneous communities.
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My two cents
As many have said, the big problem confronting the US and politics is that
all political fights are local but reacting to national issues. It's diluted the effect of local kingmakers and wardheelers to bless local candidates but also created candidates pitching to an audience that doesn't live in their district for $$$.
The Big Tent idea speaks to the need for a national organization funding/organizing campaigns for national contests in Congress in President.
It became a badge of which policies you supported back home and worked up the ranks in a state branch of whatever party paying your dues as to whether you were presidential timber or not.
Anyhow, what would change current politics?
As many have said, the big problem confronting the US and politics is that
all political fights are local but reacting to national issues. It's diluted the effect of local kingmakers and wardheelers to bless local candidates but also created candidates pitching to an audience that doesn't live in their district for $$$.
The Big Tent idea speaks to the need for a national organization funding/organizing campaigns for national contests in Congress in President.
It became a badge of which policies you supported back home and worked up the ranks in a state branch of whatever party paying your dues as to whether you were presidential timber or not.
Anyhow, what would change current politics?
- FPTP needs to die an early death. We need proportional voting and runoffs
- Citizens United desperately needs a reversal.
- As has been said, Congressional districts need to be population-based, not trying to split folk along economic and ethnic lines
Will Kürlich Kerl
Banned
And in order to get rid of that, you need to go back to the early 20s and try to prevent the Great Depression.
In the 1970's Republicans in the Senate included Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, Ed Brooke, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Lowell Weicker, Mark Hatfield, John Chafee, Robert Stafford, and John Heinz--all of whom were considerably to the left of any Republican in the Senate today (including Susan Collins).
In the 1970's Democrats in the Senate included James Allen, John McClellan, James Eastland, John Stennis, Herman Talmadge and others who were to the right of any Democrat in the Senate today (including Joe Manchin). Even Harry F. Byrd, Jr., though an Independent, caucused with the Democrats.
This doesn't mean there are no ideological differences within each party but the range of views is certainly narrower than it once was. I was struck how in the GOP presidential debates for the 2012 nomination, *all* the candidates described themselves as pro-life on abortion and *all* of them (including Huntsman) said that they would reject a 10-1 deal for spending cuts and tax increases. There were differences among them, but they were not as great as those between Reagan and Ford in 1976, let alone Goldwater and Rockefeller in 1964. And the same is true of all plausible GOP presidential candidates for 2016, from Cruz to Christie. Likewise, the differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008--or even between Hillary and, say, Elizabeth Warren in 2016--are small compared with the 1972 Democratic race which featured George McGovern, Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson, and George Wallace.
Right. The problem is that once you have the mass national media provided by television networks, all the cotroversial issues become nationalized.
I will say I knpw quite a few pro-life Democratic voters. The problem is that most come from working-class backgrounds. The pro-choicers are more motivated, and more affluent. And that makes them more attractive to Democratic candidates as voters and activists. They're more willing (outside a few Midwestern cities) on average to put in the investments in time, talent and treasure.
Exactly. No way for Frank Church to be variously pro-choice or pro-life depending on where he is in Idaho.