Standoff ONE Old America Versus New America On November 8, 2016, American voters did an astonishing thing. They elected a president of the United States who most voters--61 percent!--did not think was qualified to serve as president. How did that happen? How did we get from John F. Kennedy to Donald J. Trump? A little more than fifty years ago, the United States started on a great political journey--in two opposite directions, part of the country to the right and part to the left. This is the story of where we are now and how we got here. It''s the story of the country''s journey and my own personal journey as I covered it. It''s the story of two political movements that first emerged in the 1960s.
The New America is the progressive coalition of groups whose political consciousness was stirred in that decade: African Americans, young people, working women, gays, immigrants, educated professionals, and the nonreligious. What holds the coalition together is a commitment to diversity and inclusion. That commitment provoked a fierce backlash in 2016. In fact, a conservative backlash has defied the New America for more than fifty years. The backlash came from the Old America--mostly white, mostly male, mostly older, mostly conservative, mostly religious, and mostly nonurban. In 2016 the Old America rallied to the theme "Make America Great Again." It was a call to restore the America they feared was being swept away by a tide of political correctness. The two movements collided under President Barack Obama.
Within weeks of Obama''s inauguration on January 20, 2009, a right-wing opposition movement broke out in the form of the Tea Party. Republicans rode that anger to power in Congress, gaining control of the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Within one day of Trump''s inauguration, a backlash broke out on the left with a massive spontaneous Women''s March on Washington that drew throngs of supporters in cities across the United States. Using the Tea Party as a model, Democrats hope to ride anger on the left to power. The right and the left started their journeys at the same place: 38 percent. That''s the vote that Barry Goldwater got in 1964 and George McGovern got in 1972. The Republican presidential vote peaked with Richard Nixon in 1972 (61 percent) and Ronald Reagan in 1984 (59 percent). The Democratic presidential vote rose to a bare majority with Jimmy Carter in 1976 (50.
1 percent) and then took thirty-two years to reach a majority again. Whereupon a new backlash quickly set in on the right. As of 2017, the Democratic Party had less clout in national and state governments than at any time since 1928. Things started out pretty bad for Democrats. In 1972 a Democratic operative recounted the story of how George McGovern''s campaign manager had called a Democratic congressional candidate in Ohio. "I have wonderful news for you," the campaign manager said. "Senator McGovern is coming to campaign in your district." "That is good news," the local candidate responded.
"But I''m afraid I''m going to be in Florida, visiting my mother." "Wait a minute," McGovern''s campaign manager said. "I haven''t told you when he''s coming." "It doesn''t matter," the Democratic candidate replied. "Whenever he shows up, I''ll be in Florida visiting my mother." Democrats were forced to accommodate to the conservative ascendancy. Bill Clinton, who fashioned himself a "New Democrat" and a proponent of "the third way," got elected in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote. The presidential vote was split three ways that year, with Independent Ross Perot getting 19 percent.
Clinton''s coattails were unimpressive. Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives in 1992. It was the first election following a census and redistricting. Redistricting always puts incumbents--mostly Democrats in 1992--at a disadvantage because they are forced to compete in an unfamiliar electorate. The contours of Clinton''s 1992 victory were different from anything Democrats had won with before. Democrats may have nominated two southern white Baptists for president and vice president in 1992, but the Clinton-Al Gore ticket fared worst in the South. It was the only region of the country where George H. W.
Bush led Clinton (by 2 points). Among whites born in the South--the base of the pre-1960s Democratic coalition--Bush ran 19 points ahead of Clinton. Clinton''s vote--weakest in the South, strongest on the East and West Coasts--did not look like the Democratic votes that had elected Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. It resembled the votes the Democrats got when they nominated liberals such as George McGovern in 1972 and Michael Dukakis in 1988. That''s why 1992 was a breakthrough for Democrats: it was the first time they won with a vote that looked like the New America. But it was still not a majority. Clinton narrowly missed a majority when he was reelected in 1996 with 49 percent. (Perot was on the ballot again.
) Al Gore carried the popular vote in 2000, but it was not quite a majority (48 percent). John Kerry in 2004? Same thing: 48 percent and no victory. The breakthrough finally came in 2008 when Barack Obama won with a solid majority (53 percent), the highest percentage for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson. Even so, you could argue that the 2008 Democratic vote was inflated by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. What if there were no crisis? That''s why Obama''s reelection in 2012 came as such a shock. Obama was reelected with a majority (51 percent) despite a sluggish economic recovery. The New America came out to protect its president. And to prove that its coming to power was not a fluke.
However, 2016 was an even bigger shock because Trump''s primary and general election victories were unexpected. First, he staged a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. The 2016 Republican primaries were expected to be a showdown between the party establishment (former Florida governor Jeb Bush) and Tea Party conservatives (Texas senator Ted Cruz). Trump beat them both. He did it by activating a populist following of working-class white voters who had been trending Republican since Richard Nixon but had never won control of the party. Trump rallied his supporters with crude populism: anger at the political establishment and opposition to the global elite. The Trump movement and the conservative movement formed an alliance. Trump used conservatives to legitimize his rise to power.
Conservatives wanted Trump in the White House to sign whatever legislation the Republican Congress passed (and keep his mouth shut, which he refused to do). The Trump movement is the latest manifestation of resistance by the Old America. The gradual and halting rise of the New America faced resistance every step of the way. Two years after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. Resistance sprang up in the 1995 government shutdown. A violent antigovernment backlash materialized in resistance to a search and arrest warrant by a religious sect in Waco, Texas, in 1993 and in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The Clinton impeachment was an attempt to delegitimize the first president who embraced the liberal values of the 1960s. The recount of Florida''s votes in the 2000 presidential election between Governor George W.
Bush and Vice President Al Gore is still seen by many Americans as a plot to steal the election by reversing the will of the voters. In 2009 President Obama faced a Tea Party rebellion within weeks of taking office. Obama also had to contend with a concerted effort to delegitimize him by challenging his birth, his religion, and his Americanism. The resistance showed no signs of slowing down after Obama was reelected. The most direct challenge to the New America came in 2016. Donald Trump''s resistance movement spurned diversity and inclusion as "political correctness." The conservative movement remains dug in largely as a result of de facto political segregation. In many red states and districts, Democrats are noncompetitive, and Trump supporters are a significant force in Republican primaries.
It''s a standoff. Democrats try to reassure themselves that demographic trends are in their favor. The percentage of working-class whites is declining, while the country is seeing growing numbers of minorities, young people, working women, highly educated Americans, and people without a religious affiliation. But there''s a downside for Democrats. Demographics is long, politics is short. In 2016 politics clearly favored Republicans. So what happened? A Democratic resistance movement sprang up for the purpose of doing to President Trump the same thing the Tea Party did to President Obama: oppose everything the president tried to do. The result has become the new normal in the United States: gridlock and dysfunctional government.
Gridlock and Public Opinion The potential for gridlock is built into the US constitution. The Founders set up a complex and ungainly system with two houses of Congress, three branches of government, and competing centers of power in the federal government and the states. The idea was to limit power. The result is a constitutional system that works exactly as intended. Which is to say, it doesn''t work very well at all. As president after presiden.