{"id":168,"date":"2004-11-18T10:42:58","date_gmt":"2004-11-18T15:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=168"},"modified":"2004-11-18T10:42:58","modified_gmt":"2004-11-18T15:42:58","slug":"what-happens-if-the-democrats-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"What happens if the Democrats collapse?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written several blog essays recently<br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/esrblog\/index.php?m=200409#154'>[1]<\/a><br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/esrblog\/index.php?m=200411#163'>[2]<\/a><br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/esrblog\/index.php?m=200411#164'>[3]<\/a><br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/esrblog\/index.php?m=200411#167'>[4]<\/a><br \/>\npondering the deep trouble the Democratic party is in.  I believe,<br \/>\non current demographic and political trends, that their problems<br \/>\nare going to get worse and might actually prove terminal &mdash;<br \/>\nespecially if the Republicans have the strategic sense to run Condi<br \/>\nRice for President or Vice-President in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to rehearse all their problems here.  Instead I&#8217;m going<br \/>\nto try to think through some scenarios for what U.S. politics might look like<br \/>\nafter a Democratic-party collapse, and discuss why I think they are<br \/>\nplausible or implausible.<\/p>\n<p>The common premise for all of these scenarios is that the Democrats<br \/>\ncollapse or split into warring factions once they discover that they<br \/>\njust cannot win elections any more.  The party breaks apart along the<br \/>\nDemocratic Leadership Council vs. hard-lefty split that&#8217;s been the<br \/>\nmain axis of tension within it since the 1980s.  The variables are<br \/>\nabout what happens to the left-wing and centrist\/DLC factions<br \/>\nafterwards.  I&#8217;m taking for granted that the handful of<br \/>\nZell-Miller-like conservative Democrats left in congress would jump<br \/>\nthe aisle to the GOP.<\/p>\n<h3>Case Gray: Republican Triumph<\/h3>\n<p>In this scenario, the left faction runs off to the Greens and<br \/>\nminor Red parties such as the Socialists.  The centrist\/DLC types go<br \/>\nRepublican or exit politics.  This one is a recipe for really<br \/>\nlong-term Republican-party dominance, with the Greens retaining some<br \/>\ndegree of clout in a handful of coastal cities and university towns;<br \/>\nit&#8217;s the Karl Rove wet dream.<\/p>\n<p>I rate this one moderately likely, and I&#8217;m not happy about that.<br \/>\nIt has benign possibilities, but it has fairly ugly ones too.  Which<br \/>\nwe get depends on whether small-government conservatives or the<br \/>\nReligious Right get the upper hand in the GOP&#8217;s factional struggles.  The<br \/>\nformer seems more likely (especially since all those ex-Democrats will be<br \/>\npulling against the Religious Right).  But the latter possibility is<br \/>\nactually fairly scary.<\/p>\n<p>At the worst-case end, we&#8217;d end up in the theocratic U.S. of Robert<br \/>\nHeinlein&#8217;s <cite>Revolt in 2100<\/cite>.  Mind you I think this is<br \/>\nhighly unlikely, and the widespread lefty panic about it seems to me<br \/>\nto be mainly hyperventilation and hysteria &mdash; they&#8217;d have<br \/>\nyou believe it&#8217;s happening <em>right now<\/em>, whereas I see a decade<br \/>\nor more before the threat could become acute.  But it remains an outside<br \/>\npossibility.<\/p>\n<p>The more likely long-term outcome would be that the Republicans themselves<br \/>\nsplit along small-government vs. cultural-conservative lines.<\/p>\n<h3>Case Green: Green Party Triumph<\/h3>\n<p>The Democratic-left refugees run more to the Reds.  Greens get some<br \/>\nof them, but absorb a larger cohort of the centrist\/DLC refugees and<br \/>\nevolve into a stronger and less left-wing party as a result, one with<br \/>\nprospects to increase its mass appeal.  In effect, they become the<br \/>\nsuccessor party of the Democrats and the familiar Democrat\/Republican<br \/>\nseesaw resumes, with the Greens out of power most of the time.<\/p>\n<p>I rate this one very unlikely.  The problem is that if it were<br \/>\npossible for the DLC to come up with a new, centrist platform and stem<br \/>\nthe long-term decline in their base, this scenario (dump the lefty<br \/>\nmoonbats and reposition) is exactly the scenario they&#8217;d be engineering<br \/>\n<em>themselves<\/em> as a means of institutional survival.  Since they<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t seem to be able to manage it, I doubt the Greens (who are even more<br \/>\nRed-infiltrated than the Democrats) could either.<\/p>\n<h3>Case Gold: Libertarian Party Triumph<\/h3>\n<p>The left runs to the Greens and Reds.  The centrist\/DLC types join<br \/>\nthe Libertarians.  Small-government-Republican types drift to them, a<br \/>\nprocess which accelerates as it gradually weakens the holdouts inside the GOP.<br \/>\nAt equilibrium, the Libertarians effectively replace the Democrats while<br \/>\nthe Republicans become more and more a hard-right party of evangelicals<br \/>\nand nativists.<\/p>\n<p>The key to Libertarian success in this scenario is gun owners.<br \/>\nThis is the largest single captive bloc in the Republican voter base<br \/>\nat 50% of American households, one no less a politician than Bill<br \/>\nClinton has identified as the swing group in the 1994 election and<br \/>\nsubsequent Democrat disasters.  The Libertarians succeed by prying<br \/>\nthem loose from the Republican base.<\/p>\n<p>As a libertarian and a gun owner, this is the one I&#8217;d most like to<br \/>\nsee.  However, I rate it unlikely.  While I believe libertarian ideas<br \/>\ncould be much more effectively marketed than they are, the LP has<br \/>\nproven almost comically inept at actually doing so.  Post-9\/11, its<br \/>\nisolationist foreign policy is a non-starter as well; I do not think<br \/>\nAmericans will buy this until they perceive that the threat of Islamic<br \/>\nterror has been broken.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m, frankly, skeptical that the LP can overcome its own history<br \/>\neffectively enough to grasp this opportunity.  But I&#8217;d love to be<br \/>\nwrong about this.<\/p>\n<h3>Case Red: Reds Triumph<\/h3>\n<p>This is Michael Moore&#8217;s wet dream &mdash; a major comeback for American<br \/>\nMarxism.  It only happens if the Angry Left turns out to have been correct<br \/>\nabout the DLC\/centrists sabotaging their efforts to tap a huge pool of<br \/>\nnaturally leftist voters.  After the centrist\/DLC types have faded from the<br \/>\nscene or gone to the GOP, one of the Red parties successfully markets<br \/>\nitself not just as a replacement for the democrats but in a way that<br \/>\npeels off a significant part of the Republican voter base.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve listed this one for completeness.  I think it&#8217;s wildly<br \/>\nunlikely, because I think the Angry Left&#8217;s belief that it can become<br \/>\nthe vanguard of a mass movement is a drug dream.  I don&#8217;t believe<br \/>\nthere is any group in the majority-Republican voter base that is<br \/>\nvulnerable to a Marxist pitch, so even if they cornered all of the<br \/>\nDemocrat base they&#8217;d still be in a minority position.<\/p>\n<h3>Case Blue: New Centrists<\/h3>\n<p>The lefty refugees dissipate themselves among the Reds and Greens.<br \/>\nThe centrist\/DLC types either keep the Democratic rump or boot up a<br \/>\nnew party that abandons the socialist-economics and identity-politics<br \/>\nside of the Democrat platform, fights the War on Terror hard, and<br \/>\nremains strongly liberal shading towards libertarian on other social<br \/>\nissues. The result is, in effect, a new party of classical liberalism<br \/>\n&mdash; the Barry Goldwater Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>As in Case Gold, their key tactical move is to peel gun owners out<br \/>\nof the Republican base.  Over time, small-government Republicans drift<br \/>\nover from the GOP, which goes harder-right in consequence.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays I think this one is more likely than Case Gold.  The key<br \/>\nto it may be the blogs, in which I see a kind of pro-War-on-Terror<br \/>\nlibertarian centrism emerging as a new political force.  The blogs<br \/>\nhave been far more successful than the Libertarian Party at creating a<br \/>\nmovement with mass appeal, quasi-libertarian attitudes, and enough<br \/>\ninfluence to have already arguably scuttled one presidential campaign<br \/>\n(Kerry&#8217;s, over Rathergate).<\/p>\n<p><p>Case Blue is different than Case Gold in that the new centrist<br \/>\nparty is not tied to libertarian ideology and pursues a<br \/>\nneoconservative foreign policy.  This is the future in which &#8220;Glenn<br \/>\nReynolds for President!&#8221; doesn&#8217;t sound crazy.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written several blog essays recently [1] [2] [3] [4] pondering the deep trouble the Democratic party is in. I believe, on current demographic and political trends, that their problems are going to get worse and might actually prove terminal &mdash; especially if the Republicans have the strategic sense to run Condi Rice for President&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=168\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What happens if the Democrats collapse?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}