DiStefano - The next realignment: how Americas parties crumble, and why its happening again

Published 2019 by Prometheus Books

The Next Realignment: Why America's Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next. Copyright 2019 by Frank J. DiStefano. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: DiStefano, Frank J., 1973- author.

Title: The next realignment : why America's parties are crumbling and what happens next / by Frank J. DiStefano.

Description: Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, 2019. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018045604 (print) | LCCN 2019000834 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633885097 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633885080 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Political partiesUnited StatesHistory.

Classification: LCC JK2261 (ebook) | LCC JK2261 .D576 2019 (print) | DDC 324.273dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045604

Printed in the United States of America

Americans are alarmed about their country's politics, and for good reason. Each week that goes by brings another stunning event in a long ongoing trendthe gradual but consistent shattering of one assumption after another about how politics in America works. With each new surprise and with each norm broken, American politics becomes progressively angrier and more unsettled. Americans no longer know what to expect next from their government. New movements keep butting into the public square and more and more of the unwritten rules that governed American politics for decades are falling away. Increasingly worried about their future and their country's future, many people are anxious. They should be. America's parties are in the process of breaking apart and everything we think we know about how its politics works is about to change. We're preparing for the next realignment.

Political realignments are part of a cycle built deep into the political structure of the American republic. They're much like earthquakes that occur on known fault lines in the earththe places where two of the continental plates floating over the planet's surface rub against each other. We can't predict exactly when a quake will happen but, because quakes are part of a long naturally occurring cycle, we know how they will happen, why they will happen, and approximately where they will happen. We watch the pressure build for years as massive tectonic plates grind up against each other. As they press, their hooks and grooves inevitably catch and tear. All the while, the people who live on these floatingcontinents go about their lives. People go to work, buy groceries, and play in the park, forgetting all about the powerful force slowly building underneath their feet. One day, the pressure becomes too much. The two great plates rip past each other, rending the earth above. Structures topple, bridges fall, and the landscape is reconfigured. In a moment, lives get disrupted and the entire shape of the earth is changed. Then, the pressure gone, the plates rest comfortably once more. With time, people forget it even happeneduntil the cycle repeats and it happens again.

Having lived our entire lifetimes inside a stable part of a larger cycle of destruction and rebirth, we mistakenly believe the world we know has always existed and will last, unchanged, forever. In fact, this stable system of two parties built around familiar ideologies is now in the process of collapse. That's why American politics has become so turbulent. That's why new movements and ideas have been crowding uncomfortably into the national debate. That's why America's parties are struggling with feuding coalitions no longer willing to put aside their differences for a common agenda. That's why it's been so long since anything important in government has gotten done, leading to the never-ending complaints about how American politics is broken. The next realignment is coming. It will reorder everything we think we know about America. That's what this book is about.

WHAT'S A REALIGNMENT?

For the entire life of virtually everyone alive today, American politics has meant the same old war between Democrats and Republicans. As far back as we all remember, the fundamental battle lines of American politics haven't changed. Democrats have championed the ideology we call New Deal liberalismthat expert-driven reforms can create national progress to benefit ordinary Americans and the least well off. Republicans have championed the ideology we call modern conservatismthat the Democrats' agenda of New Deal liberalism is big government, violating liberty and undermining the nation's virtue. The specifics of this never-endingwar have changed from time to time, as political warfare moved from field to field. Issues, policies, and political leaders have come and gone. States painted red on political maps shifted over time to blue, while blue-colored states became red. Yet as far back as most of us remember, Republicans and Democrats have each essentially represented the same ideologies, attracted similar coalitions of people, and advanced consistent agendas of ideas. It wasn't always thus; nor will it ever be.

Just on the other side of our historical memories lie other versions of major American parties unlike anything we've ever known. These parties were neither liberal nor conservative in the way we now use those terms. They united coalitions of people who, to our minds, come from opposite poles of the political spectrum. In fact, America has had five distinct sets of political coalitions over its history, each completely unlike the others. During their long reigns, these parties would sometimes win and sometimes lose. Demographic groups, or even entire bases of support, might switch allegiance with the ebb and flow of issues and candidates. Ideologically, however, each party during each era remained consistent, invoking the same principles and promoting the same ideology. Then, over a short period of time, each of these stable party coalitions burst and two new coalitions emerged from the chaos. Some parties outright collapsed, as with the traumatic disintegration of the Whigs or the sad whimpering away of the Federalists. Some parties the people cruelly abandoned, such as the Depression-era Republicans. Some became infected with new people and ideas, like the Democratic Party that a populist third party captured in the late 1800s. Whether by collapse or renewal, when the upheaval ended America had two major parties that stood for different principles, attracted different coalitions, and advanced different agendas than their predecessors. American parties change in sudden and catastrophic bursts.