· Obama’s election in 2008 put progressives in charge of The Establishment, including the government. The highly partisan passage of the Affordable Care Act kicked off the dissolution of the Sixth Party System and moved the United States into the Seventh system.
· Looking at corporate propaganda, there can be no doubt who The Establishment is in 2021 – the progressive left. Progressives no longer control the government, but they do control the colleges and corporations that promote their definition of virtue.
· The political demise of the Republicans is a fantasy. In reality, they stand well positioned for a final ideological battle.
Note: This note was sent to Premium Plus clients on 25 June 2021. I don’t plan on making this a dumping ground for old notes, but there are certain themes and concepts that I feel need to be covered. New readers are entering an ongoing conversation with existing clients that, in some cases, has been going on for more than a decade.
Everything that is old becomes new again, or so the saying goes. The saying definitely applies to American politics and the way the nation interacts with its political parties. Many political commentators have claimed that the structure of the electorate has changed in a manner unprecedented in post-war politics. Former President Trump is frequently named as the initiator of change or as an opportunist riding a wave of change, but this view is wrong in this writer’s opinion. Rather, it was the “Obama Wave” that paved the way for a change in The Establishment, not a change in the voters. This note examines the structure of U.S. politics and the implication of that structure for political outcomes in the 2020s.
The first point that needs to be addressed is that neither Obama nor Trump created or destroyed anything in American politics. The forces at work and the issues being fought over are the same issues since the Progressive movement entered U.S. politics in the 1880s. Indeed, the Constitutional debates that take place around the issues being fought over are the same debates taking place since before the U.S. Constitution was drafted. There are four primary factions in the U.S., as shown in Diagram A below.
Standing opposite from each other are ideologues with mutually inconsistent worldviews, the secular globalists and the evangelical nationalists. In the middle are the bulk of the American public. Moderates fall into two loosely defined groups, ‘College-educated Professionals’ and ‘Non-college Labor’. Economically, the former can be viewed as benefiting directly from technological advancement and global trade while the latter receives only indirect benefits. Socially, their moderate views allow them to live together relatively harmoniously – as was the case during the twentieth century.
In the U.S., in recent decades, the term progressive has increasingly been used interchangeably with leftist, but the term itself is politically and socially neutral. Regardless of their specific political views, progressives want to change the structure of society and conservatives want to stabilize it. Another important, but frequently misused, term is ‘The Establishment’. Establishmentarianism is the idea that a nation should be bound together by a set of common values and beliefs, backed by government authority. In promoting the shared values, the government can deploy the financial, cultural, and symbolic resources of the nation. The Establishment picks a set of set of values and beliefs that define ‘virtue’ and then encourages virtue among the population.
For the entirety of the twentieth century and spilling over into the first decade of the twenty-first century, The Establishment was Protestant, capitalist, and nationalist. As shown in Diagram B below, the nationalist evangelical portion of the electorate was culturally conservative and held effective control of The Establishment for many years, but control was starting to change hands. Standing against the nationalists were the anti-establishment progressive left, which had become economic allies with the labor movement. Then came Obama.
Of course, Obama did not create the change in the country’s political alignment, but his charisma was strong enough to put his progressive allies in control of the Democrat party and, in 2009 and 2010, control of the government. The progressives’ plan to transform American society required controlling mass media, educational institutions, and the government. Before 2009 they only controlled two of the three.
Critical race theory has been the dominant strain of thought on U.S. college campuses for two generations. Graduates of those schools have gone on to work at and now control the tech companies that are the mass media of today, more on that below. The point is that by capturing mass media and higher education, Democrats had all the elements necessary to become “The Establishment”. Progressive virtues are racialism, redistributionism, and globalism.
Until 2009, progressives never held enough political power to do anything big, so they were viewed as a sideshow. Then came Obama. The progressives had great plans to remake society, and they started with healthcare. In the minds of many voters, the passage of the Affordable Care Act made progressives The Establishment (Diagrams B and C).
The progressive definition of virtue is not the dominant definition in the country by any means, so they struggle with a population that holds a different set of beliefs. The Tea Party and Republican dominance in the 2010 congressional elections laid bare the American populace’s disapproval of the of the progressive worldview. Progressives still run the Democratic party and control the ideological transmission mechanisms of The Establishment, but they do not have the political power they held in 2008 and 2009. With the progressives filling the role of The Establishment the role of anti-establishment goes to the evangelical nationalists, by default.
New Faces, Same Old Show
We enter the story in 1932, when FDR assembled the powerful New Deal coalition of voters - the Fifth Party system. Black voters moved to the Democrats and the party retained its evangelical nationalist base. The Republicans were left with business interests in the northeast, anti-communists, and Midwestern farmers (Diagram D). However, the Republicans were able to caucus with conservative southern Democrats to form the powerful Conservative Coalition in Congress. Despite their power in Congress, conservatives were constrained by a series of liberal presidents and liberal state governments.
In 1964, Barry Goldwater took center stage during his unsuccessful run for the presidency. Goldwater shifted the conversation towards the Republican party marketing itself to the evangelical nationalists. That process of voter rearrangement was completed with Nixon’s forty-nine state victory in 1972, when the Sixth Party system started. The Republican party was now split between a liberal moderate wing representing the business community and a social conservative wing. Nixon’s blowout win in 1972 happened because he could speak to both wings of the party effectively. Nixon’s victory started the process of bringing members of the labor faction into the Republican coalition (Diagram E).
The transition to the Seventh Party system began with the passage of the Affordable Care Act and was completed with Trump’s victory in 2016 (Diagram F). It is also worth noting that each of the party systems ended with a huge Republican victory where union households defected (Chart 1). These are Nixon’s “Silent Majority”, Reagan’s “Reagan Democrats”, and Trump’s “Deplorables”. Each time, Democrats were shocked and deeply offended, then they branded the Republican winner as the epitome of evil.
An Establishment Rejected
The balance of political power during Fifth Party system was decided tilted towards the Democrats, but the social balance of power was held by conservatives in the Republican and Democratic party. By the end of the 1960s significant social changes had taken place, culminating with the Great Society legislation of the Johnson administration. The Democratic party had moved towards social liberalism (as opposed to political liberalism) and concentrating on winning the votes of southern blacks who had moved to northern cities. The shift in focus by Democrats drove ethnic whites (Italians, Irish, etc.) and social conservatives to abandon the Democrats in favor of the Republicans. Nixon’s landslide win announced the completion of the transition to new party coalitions.
The first cracks in the Sixth party system were caused by the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, which triggered a landslide of victories for Republicans at the state level (Chart 2). Each party became more ideologically homogenous. Since the country tilts towards social conservatism, the result was a shift in power to the Republicans. However, the prosperity of the 1990s and 2000s kept the cracks from growing too much. Then came Obama, and the Democratic party’s shift towards secular progressivism.
During the Clinton and Obama presidencies the Democrats lost political power that, unlike prior periods, was not reversed when a Republican became president (Chart 3). In Congress, the shift towards Republicans has been trending up since the 1960s and topped out when both houses of Congress were evenly split (Chart 4). The biggest changes since Clinton’s election have taken place at the state level where Republicans have won control of more than half the state legislatures and governorships (Chart 5). Republicans have unified control of the legislature and the governorship in 23 states while Democrats hold unified control in only 15 states. The upshot is that Republicans will dominate the redrawing of districts for the House of Representatives because that is handled separately by each state. Winning back lost seats in the House and state elections will be harder for the Democrats than it was in the prior decade.
Changing State Loyalties
The dramatic change in party loyalties can be seen in the state legislatures of deeply socially conservative states (Chart 6). The state legislatures of Arkansas and Alabama were 100% Democrat until the mid-1980s (Chart 7). Those states, along with West Virginia, slowly started shifting away from the Democrats in the mid-1980s, but the party-maintained control of all three states for the entirety of the sixth party system. Then came Obama. Party control in the most conservative states definitively shifted towards the Republicans when voters realized the progressives had become The Establishment.
Moderate states provide a good weathervane for political sentiment in the U.S. (Chart 8). It is interesting that the slide of Democratic control in the Missouri state legislature began sliding when Clinton was elected and bottomed out at 30% after the ACA was passed. Also interesting is the change in the pattern of control of Iowa’s state legislature, which had been shifting towards the Democrats. Then came Obama and the Democrats lost twenty percentage points of their share of seats in Iowa’s legislature. States considered progressive had heavily shifted towards the Democrats by the time Obama entered office, but after Trump’s election another lunge towards complete Democrat control of the state legislatures took place (Chart 9).
Welcome to the Machine
As discussed above, the role of The Establishment is to pick a set of values to label as virtuous and then work to have the populace accept the chosen definition of virtue. One good way to check on which political faction controls The Establishment is to see who large corporations pay homage to. Corporations are by definition politically neutral because they are not a person. Helping The Establishment, whoever that might be, is the most profitable option. Looking at corporate propaganda, there can be no doubt who The Establishment is in 2021 – the progressive left (Diagrams G and H). Progressives no longer control the government, but they do control the colleges and corporations that promote their definition of virtue.
Of course, progressive control of colleges is nothing new and the corporate sector is neutral so they can swing the other way when power shifts. What has changed is progressive control over the gatekeepers to the world – big tech. If big tech decides to de-platform you, there are few remedies. The big tech companies, when acting in concert, have the means to make someone an un-person in a way that is new to our society. Regulating the tech companies became much more popular among Republicans and Independents in 2020 (Charts 10 and 11). Democrats, however, are fine with things as they are.
This writer believes the Seventh Party System is not done adjusting and that black voters will diversify their party support with socially conservative back voters moving to the Republicans. Many black voters are highly religious, and only twenty-nine percent of black Democrats are self-described liberals (Charts 12 and 13). As the Democrats have absorbed college graduates inculcated with progressive virtue, the party has moved away from black voters. Then, there is the soft racism of low expectations, a hallmark of progressives. Diagram I below is taken from a tutorial put out by the Smithsonian for white people on things not to assume about minorities they talk to. These tips are typical of critical race theory propaganda, but too open to be published so they were taken down. Note that the poster says that minorities are not able to handle cause and effect relationships. Who are the racists?
The adage that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time is one of the major factors driving the emergence of the Seventh Party System. White college graduates are eating up progressive virtue espoused by The Establishment, but minorities – the supposed beneficiaries of progressive largesse – are rejecting it. Far from running to Biden for the safety from the “chains” of Republicans, all races except white increased their share of votes that went to Trump (Chart 14). Accordingly, Trump gained ground for Republicans in inner cities and held rural territory (Chart 15). Only the suburbs, filled with white college graduates, fled from Trump. That is especially the case for male college graduates. The reality is that white guys with college degrees put Trump into office and they took him out four years later. You certainly will not hear that from The Establishment. Who are the liars?
This is Still America
Right now, the cool kids in America are talking about higher taxes, reallocation of political power, and “equity”. But this is still America, and the cool kids are cool because they either have plenty of money or market to those who do. White people with college degrees are more than happy to go to marches and hold their fist in the air, but good luck trying to take away their Tesla (Chart 16). An interesting possibility for the Seventh Party System would be for college-educated voters to become the “silent” class rather than union members. Employees of corporations give up their right to free speech at work, online, and anywhere there is a camera rolling – which is everywhere. They cannot speak out, but they can vote their conscience and their brokerage account.
Conclusion
Obama’s election in 2008 put progressives in charge of The Establishment, including the government. The highly partisan passage of the Affordable Care Act kicked off the dissolution of the Sixth Party System and moved the United States into the Seventh system. Lyndon Johnson’s defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 was the initiator for the movement into the Sixth Party System. That realignment was not completed until Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection in 1972. A huge win by Trump could have served the same purpose, but he lost. That means the final alignment of the new system has not been set.
The progressive wing of the Democrats holds significant power through its control of two out of three parts of The Establishment. As a result, they can make a lot of noise, but they have a hard time selling their message to outsiders and cannot use government coercion. The political demise of the Republicans is a fantasy. In reality, they stand well positioned for a final ideological battle.
The open question remains, “Will the fighting stop with Trump gone?”. This writer argues that it will not because he was a reaction to a social problem, not the cause. The cause of the social discord is the expansion of political participation to include large tech companies. There is not yet a political solution that integrates the social force of the tech companies into the political system of the country. Progressives in the establishment are angry that their messages about virtue are meeting resistance, and many others are angry about utility companies de-platformed anyone they dislike. By establishing themselves as necessary for society to function and as a politically destabilizing force, the tech companies have set themselves up to be regulated as utilities. That is a necessary step towards normality, but it is not sufficient.
Even with the tech companies regulated, it will take a Republican landslide to reinstate the evangelical nationalists as controlling The Establishment. Alternatively, the college graduates that moved to the Democrats might have irrevocably taken the progressive definition of virtue to heart. In that case, Democrats will become the party of the overclass and the Republicans the party of the underclass, including working-class blacks. Only time will tell.
Related Notes
“Shifting Coalitions in U.S. Politics” of 10 December 2020
“The Political Economics of Student Loan Forgetfulness” of 19 March 2019
References
Huntington, Samuel. “Political Order in Changing Societies”, Seventh printing, 1973.
McConnell, Michael. “The New Establishmentarianism”, Chicago-Kent Law Review, April 2000.
Packer, George. “The Four Americas”, The Atlantic, April 2021.