The Road Divides
Two possible futures couldn't be more different
While I’m away, I’m featuring posts with relevance for today’s political events that newer subscribers may have missed. Today’s article offers background on how we arrived at the stark choice we face in this year’s election.
Readers of this site know that political realignment is the overarching framework I use to make sense of our chaotic politics. My fundamental assertion is that the Reagan era is over, the casualty of massive generational change in cultural attitudes and political preferences, but we remain in a protracted political war over what will replace it.
There are stark generational differences in attitudes, values, and lived experiences that divide people roughly age 40 and younger from their older neighbors. In the aggregate, Millennials and Generation Z are more multicultural and secular, and hold more progressive cultural and economic attitudes than Baby Boomers and Generation X. Every year these younger generations become a larger share of the electorate and acquire more political power. As emerging generations, they are poised to determine the direction of the country, threatening traditional power and privilege arrangements that favor people who are white, male, straight, and Christian.
Several years ago, we reached a flashpoint when the younger generations approached political parity with their elders and set off the dramatic reaction we now call Trumpism. It is hardly surprising that the country descended into political chaos when the emerging generations began posing an electoral threat. Like intense storms developing along a meteorological frontal boundary, the greatest disturbances take place where one air mass collides with another.
But generational change is slow, while reactionary politics moves quickly. This makes our political moment uncertain. It is not clear whether the emerging majority will establish itself before the reaction against it can take hold.
Prior to the 2016 election, I felt there were four possible directions the country could take, built around different approaches to economic and social justice issues, and based loosely on what prominent political figures were offering:
Neoliberalism: Defined by a devotion to policies that downplay (or promote) economic inequality, this was the prevailing response by Democrats to Reagan conservatism. Pair it with support for social justice policies that acknowledge (but may not take action to address) the concerns of a diversifying America and you have a version of Bill Clinton’s “New Democrats” or Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “stronger together” presidential message.
Right-wing Populism: This was the guiding message of the 2016 Trump campaign. It’s easy to forget that Donald Trump ran for president against the Democratic and Republican parties, advocating both a reactionary nationalism (“Build the wall!”) and a promise to make government work for ordinary people (“Drain the swamp!”), complete with initiatives typically advocated by the left like universal health care and a massive job-creating infrastructure plan.
Corporate Nationalism: This was the reality of the Trump presidency. Trump brought reactionary nationalism to the White House but ditched the populist economic ideas in favor of tax cuts for corporations and the super-rich. The result is a reactionary corporate nationalism which has supplanted conservatism as the prevailing vision of the Republican Party.
Progressive Populism/Democratic Socialism: This is where the energy has been in the Democratic Party for the past several years. Combining support for diversity with opposition to economic inequality, progressive Democrats promised a break with the policies of neoliberal Democrats and Reagan Republicans. Their ideas propelled Bernie Sanders to surprising success in the 2016 primaries and made Sanders and Elizabeth Warren contenders for the 2020 nomination.
By 2021, these four options had narrowed to two, with right-wing populism discarded and neoliberalism discredited. If there was a window for a realignment behind the populist politics of the right, it was shuttered by Trump’s single-minded support for policies that lined his pockets and by his decision to let congressional Republicans set economic policy during his administration. Had Trump decided to make good on his campaign rhetoric and embrace a Sanders-esque economic agenda while indulging his nativist impulses, he would have thoroughly scrambled prevailing party alliances.
This probably would have resulted in political catastrophe, with congressional Republicans unwilling to tolerate Trumpism without the tax cuts. We will never know if it would have resulted in a right-wing realignment or in total collapse of the right because Trump had no intention of pursuing a direction where there was nothing in it for him personally, and in the aftermath of his presidency the political space no longer exists for anyone else to try.
So too is neoliberalism seemingly off the table as a viable option. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat and Joe Biden’s primary campaign struggles as the candidate of the Obama restoration were early clues that the Democratic electorate had soured on an approach that may have made sense during the Reagan era, when Democrats needed a way to win over a center-right electorate and nudge politics to the left, but grew less relevant as the Reagan consensus disappeared.
By the time it became evident that Biden was going to be the nominee, he had recast himself as a bridge to an undefined future, tilting away from the neoliberal politics that defined his long career. True to that pivot, as president he has promoted the most progressive domestic agenda in generations in response to the interwoven crises he inherited, seeking (with varying levels of effort and success) to take on economic inequality, global warming, and racial injustice. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that he has morphed into Elizabeth Warren, but only a bit. The future he’s preparing provides a comfortable home for the progressive politics of the Democratic left.
If this were a normal realigning period, Biden’s progressive vision would stand in contrast to a bleak and discredited corporate nationalism and would take root over time as the dominant ideology of an emerging political era shaped by liberal Millennials and Generation Z. However, very little is normal about this moment. Republicans have shown no interest in yielding power to the emerging majority and have been unwilling to do the hard work of reinventing themselves to compete in the marketplace of twenty-first century ideas (you can read more about their dilemma here). They remain devoted to the reactionary politics of corporate nationalism that appeals to a shrinking population of racially aggrieved whites and a tiny, wealthy elite, and therefore are struggling to win national electoral majorities.
It is hardly surprising that the country descended into political chaos when the emerging generations began posing an electoral threat.
So Trump and the party he co-opted became invested in finding ways to maintain power by hacking away at the pillars of the democratic system. Republicans became more open in their longstanding commitment to disenfranchising opposition voters, and they remain dependent on a former president who encouraged an insurrection to hold on to his office. The final weeks of the last administration leave little doubt that if given a second chance, Trump would use the levers of federal power to cement lasting minority rule and his party would support it.
We have arrived at a place where one of two major political parties is invested in holding power autocratically as their ability to win national elections through democratic means slips away. Their success would mean the republic is no longer resilient enough to handle a natural change in political currents of the sort we have seen every two generations or so since 1800.
It falls to President Biden and the only political party still invested in democratic norms to prevent this from happening. This puts the pressure on Biden to press the electoral advantages of his nascent coalition. Republicans have fallen victim to an anti-MAGA majority in three consecutive election cycles, but it will take an unambiguous fourth straight defeat to prevent the party from disabling the emerging electorate and holding power through extra-democratic means.
Only the unambiguous failure of MAGA politics will get Republicans to consider separating from their nativist base and doing the hard work of redefining themselves as the center-right opposition in a realigned party system. Unless and until that happens, we continue to face the risk of corporate nationalism imposed by an autocratic minority.
