On the first day of the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, I was quoted in the lead story of the Wall Street Journal as saying that Walter Mondale’s nomination represented the last hurrah of his wing of my party.
“The Last Hurrah” is Edwin O’Connor’s classic political novel, in which Frank Skeffington, his fictional mayor, lost his re-election bid because he could not keep up with changing times.
Needless to say, my quote was not well received at a convention about to anoint Mondale as its candidate for president. But that November, I was proved right. Mondale’s landslide loss — he lost 49 states to President Ronald Reagan — triggered the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council that spawned the New Democrat political movement.
Eight years later, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, the first New Democrat candidate, became the first Democrat elected to the White House in 16 years. With one exception, Democrats have won the popular vote in every presidential election since.
Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are the embodiments of Frank Skeffington in American politics today. They represent the last hurrah of a political coalition forged more than half a century ago that no longer speaks to or for a majority of voters in an America that has dramatically changed racially, ethnically and culturally in the last three decades.
That’s why so much of President Trump’s re-election campaign is focused on suppressing the vote of growing minority constituencies. And, it’s why McConnell and Graham are fighting so hard to rush the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a Justice on the Supreme Court through the Senate.
It’s all about clinging to power. They are desperately trying to hold on to the last vestiges of power of a dying electoral coalition – a coalition that is less and less able to produce popular vote victories at the ballot box with each political cycle.
The Republican coalition was forged in the late 1960s as the New Deal coalition ran out of steam. Starting with Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, Republicans won five of six presidential elections. Twice they won 49 states. Only Jimmy Carter’s narrow victory in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal kept them from a clean sweep.
So powerful was the GOP’s national coalition that in the three landslide elections in the 1980s, Republican candidates won a higher percentage of electoral votes than any party’s candidates had won in three consecutive elections since the advent of modern parties in 1828.
The Congressional vote, in large part because of the power of incumbency, lagged behind presidential voting. But during the 1980s, Republicans began building strength in the House and Senate, and in 1994, they won control of both Houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Notably, Mitch McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984 and Lindsey Graham to the House in 1994.
That Republican coalition was nearly entirely all white – white Southerners who were former Democrats, white urban ethnics (the so-called Reagan Democrats), and whites in suburban and rural areas. It included large majorities of white Christians, regular church goers and evangelicals.
Educationally, the Republicans ran strongest among non-college white voters. Regionally, they dominated the Southern and border states and sparsely populated small rural states of the heartland and Mountain West where voters were nearly all white, many without college educations, and predominately Christian.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the national electorate was about 90 percent white. So as long as they won a significant majority of white voters, Republicans could dominate presidential elections. As late as 1992, 88 percent of voters were white and most of the rest African Americans. Too few Hispanics voted in 1992 to register in the exit polls.
But, beginning in the early 1990s, our country began to change demographically, becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, less white, less religious, and more educated. In the next quarter century, the electorate changed dramatically. By 2016, according to CNN exit polling, just 71 percent of the electorate was white, 12 percent African American, 11 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian. This year the white vote will likely be below 70 percent for the first time.
Citing the work of demographer William Frey, political writer and analyst Ron Brownstein chronicled the impact of that change in a recent piece on the CNN website. In today’s America, he writes:
- Young people of color make up about 45 percent of millennials, nearly 49 percent of Generation Z and represent a 51 percent majority of the younger generation behind them.
- Among adults younger than 30, only 29 percent identify as White Christians, well below the nation overall (around 43 percent) and only half the number among the nation’s seniors 65 or older.
- Adults under 30 are also the best-educated generation in American history.
But because of the small state bias of the Electoral College and the Senate, those institutions have not kept up with the pace of change.
As a result, Trump and the Republican-led Senate were, Brownstein writes, “put in power almost entirely by the parts of the country most insulated from these changes – states with few immigrants, more White Christians and relatively fewer college graduates. Fully, 26 of the 30 states Trump won rank among the 30 states with the smallest share of immigrants, according to census data; those same states elected 45 of 53 Republican senators.
“Likewise, 43 of the 53 Republican senators were elected by the 29 states in which White Christians, according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, compose at least 47 percent of the population,” he continues. “Those same states accounted for 25 of the 30 states that Trump carried last time. The patterns are similar when ranking states by their share of college graduates. After this election, Republicans may hold none of the 24 Senate seats in the 12 states with the most college graduates.”
In part, because of those demographic changes, the Democrats reversed their fortunes in presidential elections. Starting with Bill Clinton’s victory, their candidates have won the popular vote six times in the last seven elections – and once the votes are counted in 2020, it will be a record setting seven of eight. Never before in American history has a party won the popular vote seven times in less than nine elections.
President Trump is the second president in the last three to be elected while losing the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won it by 2.1 percent, a greater margin than John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Think about this. In the 25 presidential elections in the 20th century, no president won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. But in the five elections in this century, that has already happened twice. Although the Democrats have won the popular vote in four of those five (80 percent), they have only held the White House for eight of those 20 years (40 percent).
Judge Barrett, if confirmed, will be the third justice in three years nominated by a president who lost the popular vote, confirmed by Senators representing a minority of voters.
If polls are correct, after November 3, there is a good chance that will change, and both the president and the Senate majority will once again be elected by a majority of American voters. But with Justice Barrett seated, the Supreme Court, the third branch of our government, will continue for a decade or more to reflect the views of voters in the country we used to be, not the diverse country we have become.
President Trump is campaigning blatantly to undermine our democratic electoral process and to intimidate minority voters to discourage them from voting. And, in state after state, Republicans through executive and legislative actions and through the courts have tried to follow his lead, to make it harder for all Americans, particularly minority Americans, to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. They are hoping against hope that if they can suppress the vote enough, their declining coalition can survive for just one more election cycle.
The President will almost certainly lose his fight for re-election — I believe he will lose in a popular vote landslide. Senators McConnell and Graham may survive their own re-election campaigns next month, and they will likely succeed in confirming Judge Barrett. But for all three, 2020 will be their last hurrah. The power that came from a dying Republican coalition is slipping from their grasps. And, once it’s gone, it’s not likely to return anytime soon.
Al From is an adjunct professor at the Krieger School at Johns Hopkins University. He is founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of The New Democrats and the Return to Power, featured in the documentary film, Crashing the Party.
John Dean says
Excellent analysis. Thank you for writing this.
Michelle Ewing says
You call this extremist, left-wing, agenda-driven diatribe an analysis?! Try fact-checking and stop drinking the Kool-aid. Trump may not win the popular vote, but thankfully our Founders put in place an electoral system that has worked for over 200 years. A radicalized popular vote scheme would not only incentivize voter fraud, but destabilize our already fragile Union. The true undermining of our electoral process has been undertaken by the Democratic party long before Trump came into office, and clearly will continue long after he exits.
John Dean says
Yes, I do. I appreciate you disagree with the article, but I found it well-researched and reasoned.
Jack Fischer says
One doesn’t know where to begin separating the wheat from the chaff in Mr. From’s delighted romp through the Republican Party There is some of both.
But the view of an experienced political operative such as himself, reducing the Supreme Court to little more than a third political branch of our government, is appalling on several levels.
Tom Alspach says
Appalling Jack? Really? What was appalling was the five Republicans who appointed Bush president in 2000. The Supreme Court has been nothing but a political body since then, John Roberts’ occasional efforts to reverse that perception notwithstanding. And I am sure you are comforted by the fact that far right Republicans (is that an oxymoron?) and religious zealots will now control the SC for decades to come.
And by the way, there is no “Republican” Party anymore (family values? fiscal restraint? free trade? tough on Russia?). There is only the cult, the Party of Trump, that could not adopt a platform in August and instead just proclaimed that “ we enthusiastically President Trump’s America First agenda”. No platform, no principles, only whatever Trump tweets.
Jack, it is so disappointing that you can still support all this.
Tom Alspach says
Appalling Jack? Really? What was appalling was the five Republicans who appointed Bush president in 2000. The Supreme Court has been nothing but a political body since then, John Roberts’ occasional efforts to reverse that perception notwithstanding. And I am sure you are comforted by the fact that far right Republicans (is that an oxymoron?) and religious zealots will now control the SC for decades to come.
And by the way, there is no “Republican” Party anymore (family values? fiscal restraint? free trade? tough on Russia?). There is only the cult, the Party of Trump, that could not adopt a platform in August and instead just proclaimed that “ we enthusiastically support President Trump’s America First agenda”. No platform, no principles, only whatever Trump tweets.
Jack, it is so disappointing that you can still support all this.
Jack Fischer says
You assume wrongly, Tom. My criticism of Mr. From’s apparent view of the Supreme Court as a political rather than a legal body was meant simply as that. Reading my short piece again you will find neither an endorsement of Mr. Trump nor of Republican Party leadership.
I imagine I will be one of many conservative Americans unwilling to pull the lever for Mr. Trump but reluctant to vote for the frail Mr. Biden with the far left Ms. Harris waiting anxiously in the wings.
Barbara Denton says
The democrats are nothing but consistent in continuing racial division among the electorate. We may have the most college educated voters ever in this Country, but their educations are far weaker than a college graduate 25 years ago.The same goes for K-12 at the secondary level. I am searching for this so-called coalition of President Trump, Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham. For the first two years of the Trump administration a RINO Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan along with other RINOs in the house totally weakened his Presidency and did little to nothing to start cleaning up the mess left by the Obama/Biden administration. He has battled through 4 years of fake Russian collusion, 90 to 95% negative coverage by the MSM and swamp critters in the huge Federal Bureau bureaucracy refusing to do what their bosses ordered. Do not forget the fake attempt to remove him from office over a phone call to the President of the Ukraine.
President Trump did not run for President to make a fortune at the public’s expense. He loves this Country and wants the best for its people. No one would have taken the treatment he has taken if that were not the reason. He donates his salary back to government projects that are underfunded. He has done more in his 45 months in office than Obama/Biden did in the 8 years they spent ruining our Country. Unemployment was its lowest for Whites, Blacks, Latinos and Asians prior to the Chinese virus invading our Country.
It is an outright lie to say that the President and other Republicans are trying to keep anyone from voting in this election. They are trying to prevent voter fraud most of which will occur with mail-in voting. The last minute change to voting by many swing states shows that the Democrats are going to do anything to win this election. If you want safety, freedom and your bill of rights secured you need to vote for President Trump.
Hugh (Jock) Beebe says
An extreme example of data-free, closed minded, confirmational-biased thinking.
Michelle Ewing says
God forbid Conservatives utilize their First Amendment rights. You, Mr. Beebe as well as Mr. From, are perfect examples of the Democrat intolerance currently on full display for the American people. Thankfully Mrs. Denton is free of data from CNN, open-minded to the facts and avoids the common pitfalls of Democrat group think.
Stephen Schaare says
Dear Mr. From, Would you please explain to me, and our other readers, your obsession with race? White this, white that, bad. I would never vote on the basis of race. I vote for the person I feel, believe, will do what is best for these United States.
Voter suppression? You have proof, evidence? Please submit.
With our litigious society, you believe voters are being turned away from their polling place? Really?? Surveillance is everywhere. You must realize this. Oh, may I presume you recognize Stacey Abrams as the Governor of Georgia? You actually believe the victory gap of 52,000 votes was due to a “poll tax”? Physical turning away of minority voters? Please, return to this planet.
For good or ill, I am a white person,and you have no clue for whom I will be voting on Nov. 3rd. Thank you
David Montgomery says
I am trying very hard to figure out what makes you so happy about this, other than sheer partisanship. Are you proud of Democrat senators trotting out anti-Catholic prejudice that would make the KKK proud? Rioters across the country being encouraged by Democrat mayors and excused by Democrat pundits? A Presidential candidate who says the voters have no right to ask whether he will pack the Supreme Court? (Jack Fischer makes a good point about your odd belief that the Supreme Court is another partisan legislative body). Likewise Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates who flipflop on fracking? A Vice Presidential candidate who lies so blatantly about Lincoln that the Washington Post calls her out? Democrat governors who shut down church services while leaving everything else open? As to your predictions, I fall back on Mark Twain: “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” See you in January.
Stephen Schaare says
Michelle, David, Nicely done. Excellent comments by many. My heart is lifted on this Wednesday. Thank you all.
Tom Alspach says
Stephen, re: your request for evidence of voter suppression, surely you jest. Where to begin? How about just today?
Three Trump lackeys on the 5th Circuit just upheld the Texas governor’s order that there will be only one absentee ballot drop box per county. So the Democratic leaning Harris County, with some 4 million people, gets one absentee drop box, while each of the far right leaning rural counties with only a few thousand residents, or less, gets the same. Pretty clear what is going on, and other examples abound, but aren’t featured on Fox news, so that may explain why you need to ask the question.
jim says
Kind of strange given that From was one of the dems who fought to leftist lurch of the party in the 80s and yet here we are with a dem party far to the left of anything we have seen and From is supporting them….very strange