The Democrat’s Dilemma

​In America, political parties are coalitions of often disparate groups geographically dispersed over a continent. The United States, after all, is not a country or nation-state as understood in a conventional sense. What was once a modest-sized confederacy hugging the eastern seaboard grew rapidly into a consolidated imperial regime spanning the continent, from sea to shining sea and beyond. Indeed, we are not a country but a continent and the dominance of coalitions in the make-up of our two political parties reflects this. The broader and deeper a party’s coalition, the greater power and influence it wields over time. The paradox is that this very source of power and influence is also the source of instability. American party politics is not merely about coalition building, the more difficult part is how to keep the coalition together.


The emergence of party politics takes us back to England in the early 1700s. The Stuarts have been sent packing by the Parliament, Queen Anne, daughter of King William and Queen Mary, left no heir, leaving England’s political elite with the choice of inviting back the Stuarts for a second restoration or casting about for something that looked like a legitimate claimant to the throne. They invited German speaking Elector of Hanover to ascend the throne of Britain, thus creating a dilemma. The Whigs, who were the party in power, stood for Protestant ascendancy in the kingdom and legislative supremacy of Parliament. The power base of the Whig party was the coalition of merchants and financiers who favored protective tariffs, certain parts of the rural gentry, and various anti-French and anti-Catholic elements. The raising of George I to the throne brought them into power. The failed Jacobite rising of 1715 enabled the Whigs to purge numerous Tories from political offices high and low, the Anglican church, and the army. Ironically, these events and the subsequent institution of one-party rule by the Whigs tied the party to the fortunes of the House of Hanover which being foreign and German speaking did not enjoy much favor among the people of the realm.


Robert Walpole, leader of the Whigs and essentially the prime minister (in all but name), and his successor and Henry Pelham—the two dominated the British political scene from 1719 to 1757—came up with an ingenious solution to winning at least the favor of politicians and the influential to the new Hanoverian monarchy, bribery. Offices, grants, subsidies and other forms of filthy lucre were showered upon important or influential members of parliament, and those outside of government, to win support for the government’s agenda. Walpole may have disliked George I (the feeling was mutual), but he was close to the Prince of Wales, and besides, politics has little to do with affection. Walpole’s party, for better or worse, was tied to the fortunes of the Hanoverian’s until the last and failed Jacobite rising of 1745-46. Nothing could address interparty divisions, doubts about the Hanovers, or wavering loyalty of important politicians and financiers like a well-placed bribe.


Such a policy had its critics. Country Whigs, Country Tories such as Lord Bolingbroke, and the authors Trenchard and Gordon railed against the influence of party and corruption in the political life and institutions of England. They did not receive much of a hearing in England, but they did great influence the colonists in America and supplied them with powerful rhetorical tools to bind a large number of colonists in a war for independence. Such American ideas (now lost) as a fear of standing armies in peace time, detestation of entangling foreign alliance, and a distaste and dread of parties had their origins in the thought of the Country party of the early eighteenth century. Americans were especially draw to the conception of Court and Country politics, that politics was a deadly battle between well placed urban elites and the common people of the countryside the court was hoping to fleece or use for their own ends.


The sheer size and diversity of the early American federal republic caused the emerging parties of Federalists and Republicans to be parties of coalitions. Indeed, any party hoping to achieve national status had to embrace coalition building among groups across the entire country. One of the many causes of the Late Unpleasantness was the Republican party’s good fortune to build a regional coalition that threatened to dominate all three branches of the Federal government and further destabilize an already precarious political situation. Perhaps the most impressive feat of coalition building occurred with the Democrats of the 1930s. Southern whites and urban blue-collar workers of the Northeast were a mainstay of the party, but they were soon joined by African Americans, college educated urban elites, left-leaning progressives, academia and an often discounted but crucial element, government workers. The coalition was broad and deep, its great legislative victories were the New Deal and the Great Society, but because it was broad and deep the coalition proved precarious over the long haul. By the early 1990s, Southern whites had abandoned the Democrat Party in large numbers and white, blue-collar workers were no longer a reliable component of the coalition. Bill Clinton and his advisers, in a stroke of political genius, reached out to financiers, government contractors, and emerging technical industries redirecting the Democratic coalition toward capital and technological know-how.


What has resulted in the last thirty years is a Democrat coalition largely unmoored from its New Deal roots. A “typical” Democrat is college educated, employed by big tech, finance, in education, or in government and a dweller in urban or suburban areas. They look a bit like the yuppies who began their adult life as idealistic hippies and ended up on Wall Street and in the Republican Party. Academia of all levels remains supportive but is now more radicalized than ever and is peddling diplomas and degrees whose rising expense no longer match their economic utility. Government workers and contractors remain attached to the party, as do many racial minorities—though President Trump made some inroads here particularly with Hispanics. What kept the party competitive and often in power since the 1990s was an enormous amount of transfer payments to the coffers of their supporters. Financial and corporate interests were given NAFTA, globalization, the repeal of Glass-Steagall and other goodies. Tech companies were given huge federal and public education contracts and grants for their wares. Government workers were given compensation and job security unmatched by the private sector for similar work. As the Democrats were courting the rich and powerful, they continued to engage in the rhetoric of freeing the oppressed—whoever they may be. Rhetorical messages extolling the Democrats’ concern for working families were mixed with an aggressive defense of transexual rights for minors and virulent attacks on the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech. At the very best, this was mixed messages, at worst it was incoherence.


As the Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken, once opined, “When they tell you it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” The great grift that is the federal government began to be exposed long ago under David Stockman, Paul Craig Roberts, and the other then Young Turks of the Reagan administration. Later in the last few years, Catherine Austin Fitts, former undersecretary at HUD and Mark Skidmore, professor of economics at Michigan State University found that “undocumented adjustments” to the budgets of just two departments, HUD and DoD, amounted to 21 trillion dollars over the period 1998-2015. The icing on the cake was a change to accounting rules for the federal government found in FASAB Statement 56 authorizing the federal government to maintain secret books and present the public with “modified” financial statements. Elon Musk’s whiz kids at DOGE have uncovered a staggering amount of waste, fraud, and corruption that would certainly bring a blush to the cheek of Walpole.


Republicans are as guilty as the Democrats for this situation, many have profited handsomely from the grift as their colleagues across the aisle. Both parties, however, face different prospects. The Republican coalition is changing, is populist, is ant-elite or nouveau elite and is committed to reform. Old hands such as Mitch McConnell are either set to retire soon, or like Lindsey Graham, they swallow hard and go along with the reform agenda. The country club Republican will soon go the way of the dodo, and RINOs will be relegated to only the most competitive districts and states. This is not an easy transition for the Republicans, but they will manage as the very capable Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff, is most likely overseeing the process.


Republican struggles with coalition realignment pale in comparison with the Democrats’ situation. The Democrats are now the Court party, they have been placed in the position of defending a status quo that is deeply unpopular with most Americans. (I suspect this also is Susie Wiles’ doing.) The two traditional pillars of the party, Southern whites and white, blue-collar Americans have bid their final vale to a party whose response to their social and economic concerns has been name-calling and the advice to learn coding or take up painting. Donors are reportedly fleeing the party, and the polling for both President Trump’s approval and Democrat appeal is disastrous. Prime Minister Robert Walpole may have view corruption as the necessary lubricant to move the wheels of government, for the Democrats it has become their raison d'être.