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An Opportunity to Rebuild the Democratic Coalition of the '30's [1]

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Date: 2025-03-03

If there is a silver lining in the firehose of chaos coming from the Administration and the complete abdication of their constitutional authority by the republican Congress, it may be this—a seismic realignment of our two political parties on a scale not seen since Nixon’s “southern white strategy.” The president and Republicans in Congress have created an opening for Democrats to regain the kind of majority that Democrats held simultaneously in both the House and Senate for 46 years between 1933 and 1981.

There have arguably been two great political realignments since the establishment of the republican and democratic parties. The first occurred in 1860 when the nascent republican party successfully elected Abraham Lincoln as President. The northern states generally opposed slavery and supported the maintenance of the Union. The economy of the South relied heavily upon slave labor, so much so that it decided Lincoln’s election was an existential threat to their state’s rights, leading them to secede from the Union. After the defeat of the South the predominantly northern state R’s sought to establish the legal infrastructure to move away from slavery and bestow rights upon a class that had known none. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, abolishing slavery. Then in 1867 and 1876 Congress passed two Reconstruction Acts. As a result, during Reconstruction over 600 African Americans were elected to state legislatures and 16 served in Congress.

From Reconstruction until 1932, African Americans largely supported the Republican party based on its history of abolishing slavery and supporting Reconstruction. But the white southerners remained largely democratic, still stinging from the accomplishments of Lincoln and his successors. In the election of 1928, R’s had a popular vote margin of +17.4% and Herbet Hoover won 444 electoral votes. The Democratic candidate, Al Smith, won 87 electoral votes from Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina. The election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and the subsequent adoption of his New Deal with large public works projects, financial reforms and regulations intended to both soften the effects of the Great Depression and create governmental agencies to protect citizens simply solidified the D’s hold on the South. Relevant to today, among the laws Roosevelt successfully championed are the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Social Security Act of 1935, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. And among the agencies created under Roosevelt that still exist today are the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Crop Insurance Program, (FCIP), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The second Great Realignment of the parties arguably began at the 1948 Democratic Convention, when a young mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphry, fought successfully for the inclusion of a civil rights provision in the party platform. The provision called for a federal anti-lynching law, the abolition of poll taxes, and the desegregation of the armed forces. The Mississippi delegation led a walkout of the convention joined by many other Southern Democrats. Wanting to preserve Jim Crow laws and white supremacy, they held their own convention and nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for President. He garnered more than 1.1 million votes in the 1948 election, winning 39 electoral votes from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The “Dixiecrats” largely returned to the fold until 1968. Yet despite the Democrats controlling both the House and Senate for nine out of ten of the following two-year cycles between 1948 and 1968, race and civil rights continued to fester. In 1954 the Supreme Court issued the Brown v. Board of Education decision that prohibited racial segregation in schools and other public facilities. Much of the South refused to accept this decision and fought instead to maintain segregation. But the straws that broke the proverbial camel’s back were the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The vote on the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the House was 152 D’s for and 96 against while 138 R’s voted for the bill and only 34 against. In the Senate, 46 D’s voted aye and 21 voted nay while 27 R’s voted yes and only 6 voted no. The partisan split on the 1965 Voting Rights Act simply reinforced the tectonic shift underway. In the House, 217 D’s voted yes, 54 voted no, and 111 R’s voted yes and 20 voted no. In the Senate, the realignment was even more evident. 49 D’s voted yes, and 17 voted no, while 30 R’s voted yes and only one voted no. Simultaneously, protests against the Vietnam War and “race riots” in large urban cities began to spread. And then came Nixon.

Much has been written about Nixon’s “southern white strategy.” In its simplest terms, Nixon and his campaign recognized that racial animus remained a driving force in the South, as evident by the votes in 1964 and 1965. They also capitalized on a sense of fear about change, crime, social upheaval, and opposition to the attempt to stamp out the creep of Communism in Vietnam. Nixon’s advisors told him the number one issue in the nation was “crime and disorder,” leading to Nixon establishing a public image as the “law and order” candidate. The 1968 election showed the final disintegration of the political order that had governed the Country since 1860. Nixon won Florida, North and South Carolina, Virgina, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. And third-party candidate George Wallace swept Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia. In the South, democrat Hubert Humphrey won only Texas, the home of Lyndon Johnson.

I would argue that since 1968, the political realignment has remained relatively stable. The South reliably provides R’s with the majorities of their House and Senate members while the original northern colonies, the Great Lakes states and the west coast provide the bulk of votes for democrats. Undergirding these partisan divides are the policies that have generally guided each party during the last 60 years or more. The republicans largely favor limited government, fiscal conservatism (e.g., tax cuts), constitutional conservatism (which has evolved into “originalism”), free market capitalism with limited regulation, free trade, gun rights, increased military spending, school prayer, opposition to labor unions, and reduced environmental regulations. The R’s have also staked out a series of social issues such as opposition to abortion, same sex marriages, transgender rights, and comprehensive sex education. R’s also oppose single-payer health care and welfare programs, believing they encourage laziness and dependence on government. And R’s oppose any gun control, affirmative action, illegal immigration, teaching of critical race theory, and “wokeness.” But just as the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist; the R’s greatest trick has been to convince the economically disadvantaged and those without college education that the Republican Party serves their interests. The great political oxymoron is that those who are most reliant upon and in greatest need of government services and programs reliably vote for those who seek to reduce or destroy those same programs. For example, funds from the federal government make up over 30% of Kentucky’s overall revenue, 29.8% of Louisiana’s revenue, 27% of West Viginia’s revenue, and 22.9% of Texas’s revenue. In contrast, only 17.7% of New York’s revenue and 14.5% of California’s revenue comes from the federal government.

The current administration has chosen to jettison many fundamental republican principles. It’s prior tour of duty saw the greatest deficits of any predecessor’s four years and the beginnings of an abdication of America’s role as the leader of the free world. We abrogated or withdrew from international agreements and treaties and turned our eyes inward. And corporations and the wealthiest Americans received a massive tax cut. But this current administration has gone much farther to the point it is actively considering withdrawing from NATO and the United Nations and threatening possible miliary force to place Greenland and Panama under U.S. ownership and control (with Gaza to follow). It seeks to vastly reduce government spending and the government workforce to pay for its massive tax breaks for millionaires and corporations. At the core of DOGE is the desire to break the government and the programs people rely upon so they can then argue that the government is simply incapable of providing social services or foreign aid. They seek to fundamentally alter the relationship between the federal government and the people. And for a party that has strenuously fought against the stereotype of being the party of old, rich white guys, the administration is packed with old, white billionaires and the richest man in the world is our unelected co-president. The last six weeks has proven that the Republican Party has lost its bearings and free floats in the turbulent sea of Trump’s fevered brain.

Therein lies the opening for the Democratic Party. We have a chance to reclaim the kinds of voters that created the great majorities following the New Deal. But to do so, we must change the current perception of the Democratic Party. In the last election we fell into the R’s trap of arguing social issues like support for transgender athletes and DEI as if they were the top of the list of issues impacting America. And we stumbled without a coherent message on immigration and the border. We spent far too little time on the basics. What does it mean to be a democrat? What do we believe in and what kinds of policies do we support? Why should Joe Sixpack vote for democrats?

In a subsequent post I hope to set forth some ideas for reclaiming the moral high ground and articulating a set of principles and policies that can easily be seen as benefiting all Americans. A government by and for the people “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

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