Tea leaves in Connecticut

Major political realignments in the United States occur irregularly and usually in response to a single issue or two, rather than reflecting a broad philosophical change in the body politic (after all, we are a fairly conservative people). Slavery was such an issue, as was the condition of the new industrial working class, the Cold War, and civil rights for African Americans. The political trenches that form concerning these issues are then typically locked into place until a new issue evolves and supplants the previous dispensation, which, by such time, is usually on its last legs anyway, as decades-old coalitions grow fragile and fall apart.

The last major political realignment in the US began in—of all places—the Cow Palace in San Francisco in July 1964, when Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Goldwater’s victory marked the beginning of the end for the northeastern Republicans who had largely owned the Republican Party for the previous 100 years.

Goldwater’s rise within the Republican Party signaled the parallel rise of a new conservatism whose main features were virulent anti-communism, pro-business libertarianism, and active anti-New Dealism, among other things. Over time, of course, the newly emergent conservatives added religious conservatives to their coalition, particularly as American evangelical Christians sallied forth into politics after the Scopes Monkey Trial had silenced them for nearly 50 years.

The first fruits of this revolution—if one wants to call it that—were bitter. Goldwater’s 1964 bid for the presidency ended in a drubbing, as he won all of six states: his home state of Arizona and the Solid South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana), and although Goldwater lost the election, his campaign managed an electoral first—a Republican had carried the South for the first time since Reconstruction.

The southern states voted on the single issue of civil rights, and Goldwater’s stance against the 1964 Civil Rights Act endeared him to southerners who erstwhile voted in a solid bloc for the Democratic Party. Grudges are not easily put away down south, and the fact that the Republican Party was the party of invasion, of wartime destruction, of Lincoln, &tc., meant that from the end of Reconstruction to 1964, the South was in effect a one-party state ruled by the Democrats. In fact, for a long time, the year 1964 became a kind of coded language down south. If one was a Republican before that year, he was suspected as a carpetbagger, an agent of Yankee interests and commerce. Goldwater made it possible to be Republican down south without the stigma, and this shift was largely based on racial politics, something that the Nixon campaign learned well and exploited in subsequent elections.

Of course, Goldwater himself was not exactly a poster boy for segregation. He had voted numerous times in the Senate for smaller packages of civil rights, but fell out with civil-rights supporters over what he considered measures far too broad and coercive in the 1964 legislation. But southerners were desperate for a major-party champion and easily overlooked Goldwater’s libertarian streak. Goldwater had other ideas, of course, but none of them gained traction, as evidenced by the sea of blue on the electoral map.

The observer of 1964 could be pardoned for missing the significance of the election, despite the South’s newfound affection for Republican politicians. After all, it was a landslide that left Goldwater’s national reputation in tatters. He was viewed by the center of the political spectrum as a reactionary fusspot. His Republican colleagues from New England viewed him with suspicion. Of course, 20 years later, these would be the same northeastern Republicans purged from the party by the newly ascendant conservatives who followed in Goldwater’s footsteps.

As an aside, it is a realignment seen in microcosm by looking at the three generations of Republican Bushes involved in national politics: Prescott Bush, the über-WASP, investment banker, US Senator representing Connecticut, pro-business, socially moderate, even progressive at times, and considered a political enemy by southern conservative Democrats; with George H. W. Bush, the Bush clan became based in the Deep South while maintaining strong ties to New England, and while GHWB adhered to many of his father’s moderate positions, he also struck an electoral deal with the Reaganites (it was either that or be locked out of Republican politics) bringing him within the orbit of the Party’s newer, stronger wing; and then there is the current President Bush, identified almost solely with Texas and seen by many conservatives as the true heir to Reagan and Goldwater. This transformation of Bush family politics neatly coincides with the larger transformation of the Republican Party post-World War II, from that dominated by New England patrician blue bloods to one held captive by southern rednecks.

As with an avalanche that sends a sheet of snow cover barreling down the mountainside, it’s difficult to know precisely when, or if, the tipping point will be reached in national politics that shifts the balance of power completing a major realignment. In this latest example, it took 30 years for conservatives to go from Goldwater’s nomination to their gaining a legislative majority. But in politics, as in Newtonian physics, every event has a reciprocal, opposite event, and this knowledge has led some political observers to be watchful concerning the next realignment, what it might look like and when it might begin. We are, it would seem, due.

Such guesswork is, of course, a fool’s errand, mere political astrology, not least because actual realignments are hastened or stalled according to actual events—the Great Depression, World War, and (dare I say) massive terrorist attacks, and anyone who can foretell these things would likely be better rewarded in Las Vegas than Washington, but where clairvoyants fear to tread, pundits rush in.

Many folks have been tempted of late to view Ned Lamont’s victory in the recent Democratic primary in Connecticut as a sign of impending realignment, a fundamental shift in the power structures supporting the Democratic Party. For example, The New York Times previewed on its web site last week an article by Matt Bai that will appear tomorrow in the newspaper’s magazine. The article, titled “What Are the Lieberman Foes For?” attempts to draw a parallel of sorts between Ned Lamont’s Blogger Rebellion against the Democratic party and the rise of the so-called Reagan Revolution in the 1970s, culminating in Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980, or as Bai states it, “There are, in fact, some compelling parallels between this moment in Democratic politics and the one that saw the ideological cleansing of the Republican ranks three decades ago.”

Bai’s article makes some interesting points, but I feel his analogy would have been better served by backing up about 15 years and examining national party politics of the mid-1960s, for that is where the real changes occurred that would then play out over the next few cycles, ultimately putting Reagan in the White House. Instead, Bai draws a parallel between a nascent political movement (The Blogger Rebellion) and a mature one (Reagan Republicans). The better analogy centers not upon Ronald Reagan, but Barry Goldwater. And even then, we are a long way off from Ned Lamont’s victory having any national relevance whatsoever. The state of Connecticut has not been representative of national politics since about 1798, so to become too giddy in suggesting that a Connecticut Democratic primary election is the harbinger of things to come is to make a mountain of a molehill.

Further, Bai criticizes the Lamont campaign for its paucity of ideas, suggesting that, where the ‘new’ conservatives of the 1960s and ‘70s sought to put forth a coherent political philosophy, Lamont—and by extension, his supporters—has little to offer, or as he states it:

“If history were to repeat itself, this outpouring of new liberal passion would portend trouble for the party’s establishment candidates in 2008 (especially one possible candidate whose last name happens to be Clinton). But there is at least one crucial difference between insurgents of the 1970’s and today. When Bell ran for the Senate in 1978, he was so obsessed with his plan to slash taxes that he went to the extraordinary length of bringing in Arthur Laffer, the renowned conservative economist, to draw his famous Laffer Curve at a news conference in Trenton. By contrast, Lamont’s signature proposal as a primary candidate—and the only one anyone cared to hear, really—seemed to be the hard-to-dispute notion that he is not, in fact, Joe Lieberman. He offered platitudes about universal health care and good jobs and about bringing the troops home but nothing that might define him as anything other than what he is: an acceptable alternative.”

Bai’s article is a strange one, putting forward an idea and striking it down all in the same motion. Bai seems to want Ned Lamont to be that liberal knight who overturns the existing order, and then criticizes him for not living up to his standards. The hard truth may be that the Lamont campaign has simply done what parties in opposition typically do—they define themselves against the policies of those in power. This is neither good nor bad, but as Bai seems to intuit, such a stance is not likely to be the stuff of major political realignments. At this point, however, it’s not even a given that Mr. Lamont will be seated in the 110th Congress when it convenes next year. In short, there has been too much talk too soon concerning Mr. Lamont.