Between Two Majorities | The Cordray Administration

[The_Doctor]

12:04 AM EST

Judith: "Final projections for the House of Representatives peg the Democratic majority as having crested at 300 to 308 seats, while the GOP will seat 128 to 135 members of the House."

Note: The next post will probably wrap up the remaining states and the 2 Senate races in ND and MS.

[The_Doctor]

3:00 AM EST

Bill: "We have some final results. Mississippi first. The Democrats have pulled off a stunner in Mississippi, on the back of the increasing African American vote and a share of the white working class vote. It's an amazing reversal for Mississippi Democrats."

MISSISSIPPI - 99% of precincts reporting

Cordray/Castro (Democratic): 623,153 - 50.14% - WINNER
Pence/Haley (Republican): 599,912 - 48.27%
Independent (Others): 19,761 - 1.59%

Totals: 1,242,826 | Margin: 1.87%.

MISSISSIPPI - 99% of precincts reporting

Tony Yarber (Democratic): 639,237 - 50.69% - WINNER
Chris McDaniel (Republican): 616,159 - 48.86%
Others (Independent): 5,675 - 0.45%

Totals: 1,261,071| Margin: 1.83%.

[The networks now hear projections out of North Dakota]

In the state of North Dakota, the Democratic nominee for United States Senate has eked out a narrow 1% win. John Grabinger has defeated GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer in the state of North Dakota, with all precincts reporting.

North Dakota - 100% of precincts reporting

John Grabinger (Democratic): 181,406 - 49.20% - WINNER
Kevin Cramer (Republican):  180,115 - 48.85%
Others (Independent):  7,190 - 1.95%

Totals: 368,710 | Margin: 0.35%

The Senate majority will now sit at 59 Democratic, with two independents affiliating Democratic, so 61, and 39 Republicans. The House, at this hour, is at 296 Democrats, and 128 Republicans, with 11 races undecided.  

Judith: "Governor Cordray has also carried the states of South Carolina, Kansas, and Louisiana, we can project. And Nebraska's electoral vote out of Omaha has gone Democratic, so we are projecting that the final tally will be 478 Rich Cordray, 60 Mike Pence."  

Note: Please remember - light colors denote close race, normal decent margins, and dark, heavy landslides.

[The_Doctor]

Final results here at this Google Documents sheet. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iBGFBuF6a5Ayk6Q_SHeVx6YrDm5TAK4azsJhbR7JtnQ/pubhtml)

Does anyone know how to make it look like you're viewing a non-editable spreadsheet like they do for Congressional districts and presidential results, like how David Wassserman does it?

Ted Bessell, God of the West will provide you with your gubernatorial results too and legislatures, if he feels up to it. He was also responsible for the Senate results, so thank you very much to him.

And I'm wrapping up the write up of the election today, as well as meta discussion of the crisis/Cordray, inauguration and epilogue tomorrow.

[The_Doctor]

President-elect Cordray’s Victory and Why

December 2024 -- Columbus, Ohio. Political earthquakes are rare and when they come around, they raise questions about why they happened. The Republicans, so dominant in 2021, was now reduced to being a deep minority party far beyond what they had suffered in 2008. The Cordray victory, unlike the Obama 2008 victory, had been national and touched every region of the United States. The pockets of resistance, as such as they were, would not be as unified and cohesive as Obama’s opposition would be. President-elect Cordray had taken 57% of the popular vote, winning by nearly 16%. President Barack Obama had won by nearly 8%, so the Cordray victory was almost double the Obama margin. The new Democratic majority was different in many ways and a culmination of several trends that had accelerated over the past few decades.

66% of the electorate was white; 34% was non-white. 44% of the white vote had gone Democratic, while 54% had gone Republican. Of that breakdown, 38% of the white vote was college educated, and 28% blue collar. The Governor had lost the college educated vote 52-46%* and the non-college educated vote 56-41%, with the white working class a substantial improvements over the 2016 and 2020 Democrats (the 2016 margin had been an yawning 37 points; in 2024, it was a better 15% deficit). Among the minority vote, he carried African Americans 92-7%, Latinos 84-14%, Asians 77-21%, and others 71-28%.  Among women, he had won 58-40%, and won men 52-46%.

Added up, you could see why he made inroads into the South while keeping the Democratic coalition intact. The working class whites, the core of the Republican Party, had swung hard to the Democrats, after the crisis. They had always been vulnerable, given how much they relied on the government but after the crisis, they had re-bridged their loyalties to the Democratic Party. Their fathers and grandfathers had voted Democratic and it had taken the Sanderization of the Democratic Party to bring them back to their ancestral party. Their anger at the national Republicans' failure had helped propelled Cordray to victories in Kansas, Montana, and Georgia.

Take it by region.

In New England, Cordray swept the region, cleaning up among college educated and non-college educated whites alike. He took back Maine and New Hampshire with hefty margins as voters fled the GOP in droves. In New York, he dominated the city, tied in the suburbs outside, and ran a decent 45% in upstate New York, to take 64% of the vote.

The Mid-Atlantic states had been interesting. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the suburbs provided much of the Democratic heft but the Democrats reclaimed Erie County and other white working class counties that had trended Republican. Again, these voters had given the GOP an opportunity to help their lives and they had been failed.

In the South, stretching from Virginia to Texas (which was kind of also a Western state), Cordray had assembled a coalition of emergent minorities and working class whites and some college educated whites. The minority vote had been growing in the South, and they helped flip South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, with an assist in Arkansas and Louisiana. But enough white working class (federal) Republicans who had loyally voted GOP deserted the party in enough numbers that West Virginia and Arkansas flipped. West Virginia had been a 1% Democratic victory, as white working class voters had struggled with their choices. In the end, economics won out.

Mississippi earns special comment. Minorities had been 43% of the vote in 2008, and what had broken the lock was the de-polarization of whites. Working class whites, accustomed to voting Republican for cultural reasons, now chose economic reality and voted their interests accordingly. Combined with the minority vote, they swung Democratic.

Texas and Florida deserved their own mention. The Dallas and Houston metropolises had delivered huge margins for the Democratic ticket, as did Austin. So did South Texas, full of Latinos. But what helped substantially was that working class whites had fled the GOP and helped deliver the state to the Democratic ticket. In a sense, white working class voters were providing that final boost that made the difference between a 53% and 57% win for the Democratic ticket. In Florida, Miami, Palm Beach, and the I-4 corridor united to give the Democrats the win, but north Florida surprised the country by going only 53-46% Republican.  

The Interior West proved generally Republican, except in Kansas. A civil war between the moderate and conservative wings of the party had finally ended the GOP dominance in the state. Moderate white Republicans fled the GOP and voted Cordray/Castro over Pence/Haley, propelled both by an anger about the rightward turn of Kansas Republicans and the national GOP. Montana, who had voted for Clinton in 1992 and came within 2% of voting for Barack Obama, this time caved and gave Democratic Rich Cordray their three electoral votes.

Out west, nobody was shocked by the Sunbelt anchoring itself firmly to the Democratic Party. Latino voters and liberal whites had assembled (with some working class whites helping out) to give the Democrats the win in Arizona. Every other Sunbelt state had gone Democratic in 2016, so they weren't a shock.

Nobody was surprised, either, by the Pacific Coast. Full of angry resisting white liberals and in California, minorities, they were solid locks. Alaska had been trending Democratic for a while and the landslide propelled them over the edge.

The President-elect had done something different from his predecessors, which made an interesting sort of sense when you thought about it. His two Democratic predecessors had created "minority" coalitions that accepted the Reaganite paradigm of neoliberal social conservatism. Barack Obama had run as a foe of gay marriage in 2008 and catered to the upscale wine class Democrats that defined the Democratic Party between 1992 and 2024. These Democrats were so powerful, precisely, because of the era's Republican (neoliberal) lean. Bill Clinton had done something similar, but on a more ideological level (accepting Reagan neoliberal and socially conservative ideas). With the white working class culturally Republican, Democrats had needed to rely on the white college educated set to win their votes. They were socially liberal but far less forgiving on taxes and economics.  

This was highly similar to what Eisenhower and Nixon had done. They assembled working class coalitions that started with accepting the FDR Democratic hegemony. Nixon, in particular, had picked the white working class Democratic loyalties by appealing to cultural resentments. But both Eisenhower and Nixon operated as "minority" coalition presidents, reliant on generally Democratic voters for their victories. Likewise, Clinton had been reliant on Reagan Republicans to win the White House, and so was Obama (to a lesser extent).

President-elect Cordray had reconfigured that alignment. By campaigning as a strong populist on the Bernie Sanders model, he deliberately chose to not to cater to white wine track social liberals first and chose to go after Sanders-Trump voters. The President-elect had been shaped by his work in Ohio and at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be far less accepting that working class whites would simply be ceded to the GOP. But one consequence was that the white college educated vote (the wine track vote) didn't swing as hard Democratic as the blue collar vote did. In many ways, the Democratic Party, in reasserting its Jeffersonian-Jacksonian identity as a working class coalition party (and shedding its upscale identity), was changing the composition of the voters who pledged allegiance to it. It should also be noted that the white college educated electorate had become more diverse as it had grown bigger, so there was less of a "liberal" mindset associated with it.

The new Democratic majority - like in 1932 - was a hodgepodge of the old coalition and the new coalition. Like all great Democratic coalitions, they were messy. They married diverse, warring groups that hated each other and yet were united in a desire to advance the country's working class interests. The national landslide had covered up future divisions in the North and among the upper class liberals. But the GOP, moored in the Southern evangelical culture, was unable to take advantage of this and having lost their core working class whites, they were helpless.

Unlike the 1932 and 1800 majorities, the new Democratic majorities had minorities and working class whites on an equal footing and equal partners. Minorities had been junior partners in the 1932 coalition and weren't allowed to vote in 1800. Now, the new coalition - fraught with frustration and uneasy alliances, much as the 1932 coalition had been - would propel the new President to embrace their cause.

President Cordray, like Franklin Roosevelt before him, would have to balance the nation's capitalist system with the new technology and the new economy. It would be a balancing delicate act that married government intervention with free market economics and socially conservative sensibilities with a new tolerant mindset. As the nation watched, it would be up to President Cordray to navigate the country he now led.

House Democrats, in particular, were watching. They had won in white working class districts across the country. And if the President delivered on his promises, they would become an entrenched majority.

As President-elect Rich Cordray prepared to take office, a realignment had occurred - and it was a realignment that asked more questions than it answered about where the country would go.

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* I know, 55-43% Democratic. I was a bit off in my original calculations. Sorry about that. It fits with the GOP eventually drawing on these college educated white voters (who are obviously higher income) to regain power in the future. Everything else, I think, is pretty similar to the prologue.

[Blackacre]

A few interesting observations from this map:

1. Between this election and 2020, MIMAL has voted in unison twice in a row now.
2. Cordray had some strong appeal in the South that we haven't seen since Bill Clinton. He actually won Appalachia! Tennessee seems to be the odd one out, though. (And Alabama, though it's not in Appalachia.) This is the region that swung to Bush and stayed in the GOP column after him.
3. He hasn't improved as much in the HRC-swinging suburbia as you would think. His Georgia win is more narrow than any other win, including Texas, Missouri, West Virginia, South Carolina, etc. It's significantly less Democratic here than NC is. With that in mind, that also means his Texas win probably came from different places than we would expect.
4. Pence's best region was the interior/mountain west, where he won Oklahoma, Nebraska (save NE-2), Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Dakotas.

There's also no indication just from this election that the Reagan era is over. Obama won big in 2008, and I'm sure we all thought the Reagan era ended then, but 2010 happened. The 2026 Midterms are going to be the real test; if Dems gain like in 1934, (or at least, hold their losses to a minimum) then it'll be clear we've hit a sea change. But we'll just take your word for it that 2026 isn't like 1994 or 2010

[The_Doctor]

ELECTION 2024 META - Part I

For the second time, Flying Spenster has made mincemeat of my intended plans, but in a good way (as usual). His post responding to election night 2024 was pretty thoughtful and I thought it was a great way to address and respond to it in a meta post.

So let’s get to it. Please pardon my rambling.

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I didn’t think of that. But yes, he did. Tennessee is the odd one out because I wanted to keep a few Southern states Republican to show that the transition isn’t complete. But if you look at Reagan’s map in 1980, the South is very close across the board and in transition from the Democratic Solid South to the very GOP South. Now it’s transitioning back. But before I get to that, let’s talk about Appalachia.

First, you’re absolutely right. Reagan won Appalachia, so did Bush 41. But Clinton re-made it into a battleground region - but W. cemented it for the GOP for a generation. “God, guns, and gays” was the GOP slogan in the region, along with winning white southerners’ tacit acceptance of neoliberalism. If you know anything about the South, it is arguably the most populist region in the country. Given the GOP’s neoliberal agenda, you should be a bit surprised that the region has stuck GOP for so long on the federal level. But we’re getting to that.

Let me sidetrack for a second. When I first wrote up the timeline in November, to be plain, I planned for a upper class wine track Democratic majority aligned with minorities. That was the original plan but a few things changed my mind.

Bernie Sanders ran for President. And if you listen to Trump voters in Appalachia they routinely called Bernie their second favorite political outsider. There was a lot of hate for Hillary precisely because they saw her as an establishment figure aligned with a … neoliberal agenda. That interestingly fits in with what we know about Appalachia post-recession - a region hit hard by the crash, poor, and angry about it. So why would the Democratic Party - if it’s going in the direction of Bernie - cater to white collar white liberals making $50,000? The Democratic majorities in the past, as I’ve said, were centered in the working class and why would the old neoliberal Democratic coalition stand, given Bernie’s run?

So when Cordray runs for President, it’s as an unabashed populist. He’s been Governor of a state that includes Appalachia, he’s been involved with populist issues and causes on the national level. And if you look at Rich Cordray’s 2006 election victory for State Treasurer, take a look at where he does best. Yup, his best region is in Appalachia and the Democratic counties. In his 2010 defeat, he still does well enough - he wins Jefferson, Belmont, and Monroe counties. He wins Perry and Hocking counties too, where Obama lost in 2012 even as he won the state.

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=39&year=2006&f=0&off=8&elect=0
https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=39&year=2010&f=0&off=9&elect=0

So he’s a fit for Appalachia. And by 2024, the Sanders effect on the Democratic Party is so pronounced it has shifted tonality, ideology, and emphasis. And the region shifts to Trump because of how they believe the Democratic Party is more aligned with neoliberal causes than Donald Trump; they hope Trump will reverse that neoliberal agenda. But when Cordray comes along after eight years of Trump and Pence basically towing the line on the neoliberal agenda, Appalachia shifts again towards Cordray. He’s the Bernie Sanders of 2024, the electable Democrat who says a lot of the same thing Bernie does.

So, the Democratic Party regains its historical identity, not as a upscale modern San Francisco - Silicon Valley - Philadelphia centric party but a party centered in the urban areas and the working class areas that have made it a great majority party.

That brings me to your third point.

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Really good catch here. Georgia is intensely polarized, if you look at the 2004 and 2016 exit polls, they are a mirror image. Cordray makes some inroads with the whites as evidenced by his 54% win but whites and minorities are intensely polarized. Minority growth is why Georgia has steadily become more Democratic over the last twelve years (2004-2016).  In Virginia, he carries 59% of the vote, but Cordray’s margins in North Virginia aren’t as lopsided as you’d think they’d be. He does significantly better in the Southwest area that voted for Trump but if you notice under the headlines, North Virginia is roughly 3-4% better for him than it was for Clinton. His margins in Southwest Virginia are 10% better than Clinton’s in 2016. In North Carolina, he does like, 8 points better than Clinton but only runs 5% better than Obama in 2008 (and 6% better than in 2012).  The Raleigh and the Research Triangle are big wins for Cordray but he makes the biggest growth in areas that are receptive to Governor Roy Cooper in 2016. Think Jackson County, in North Carolina, that voted by 11 points for Trump, Romney by 4 points, but went to Roy Cooper by two points. New Hanover county, casting 110,000 votes, goes Trump by 4 but Cooper by 5. But Cordray outruns Cooper 2016 in the area nearest Appalachia that fits the profile.

The populist bent of Cordray means that the wine track Democrats are going to endorse him given the times, but it’s a far cry from the technocratic Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that offered reasoned technocratic solutions to the problems of the age. Cordray is very much a populist reformer who has technocratic tendencies but he’s a populist with a sledgehammer to the system. This gives the wine track rich voters that voted Democratic a little pause and while they go with it for this President, down the road, they start rethinking about what it means to be a Republican and if it’s so bad after all. But that's beyond the scope of this timeline.

As I’ve pointed out, the wine track Democrats might simply be the equivalent of union Eisenhower - Nixon Republicans. They’re there because the minority party needs to coopt some of the majority’s agenda and supporters to win. When the Democrats move into the majority, they're kind of less crucial.

I haven’t mapped Texas, honestly, and I would need to do some research on areas I’d think Cordray win in Texas. Castro definitely helps, the Latino growth helps, the millenial vote helps, but there’s also pockets of working class white voters that swing towards Cordray that helps flip Texas.

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They also happen, interestingly enough, to be among the least populist states in the country. They're more of a libertarian brand. Technocratic, moderateish in the Dakotas, and less wedded to populist ideology. I’m surprised Trump did as well as he did in these states given - but it could’ve been a Clinton thing that they were voting more against than for Trump.

And the last point …

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Very astute. The Reagan era is over, but it will take a while for people to grasp that. When Reagan was elected, a lot of people thought the New Deal era was having a hiccup. I don’t think they recognized Reagan as a transformational president until Bush 41 was elected and Bill Clinton had to adapt to win in the post-Reagan landscape. It kind of took till the 1994 Revolution to make it clear to the country that we were in a whole new ballgame.  

I’ll cover the midterms in the epilogue; but a little background on this. The Republicans have been so ideological and polarizing that they can’t just simply turn on a dime in 2026. After 46 years of relying on a Southern evangelelical base and a neoliberal donor base and white collar support, they are the vulnerable ones in 2026 (they won a lot of 2020 races) and they are going to be caught flat footed. Now, if the Republicans had been a lot more flexible like Tip O’Neill had been in 1981 against Reagan, I wouldn’t necessarily tell you the ‘26 midterms after Cordray’s term would be brutal for them. But it’s precisely because of the GOP’s behavior dating to 1992 - of intransigent opposition and a relentless campaign to maintain support among the evangelicals and the neoliberals - that the GOP is unable to adapt to the brand new era. They’ll spend the first two years trying to make Cordray’s life hell but they’ve miscalculated on that front too. The Democrats are well aware of the GOP playbook and are very, very insistent that it will never happen again. They’ve seen two Presidencies undermined (Clinton and Obama’s) and they don’t want it to happen again.

The other reason this is a realigning election is interesting. In my view, the GOP has foreclosed winning by large margins given how polarizing they and their narrow base. Also, Cordray has broken into Appalachia and stolen a lot of federally inclined GOP voters. They’re not going to be won back that easily by the GOP. They’ve rejected neoliberalism, starting with Trump and they’re not interested in the GOP’s faux populism. Too much economic damage has been done.

 

[Blackacre]

Thanks for the Meta post! I'm going to be annoying though and add a final point of analysis

For a while when reading this, I had wondered why you chose to focus mainly on Pence rather than Trump, while having Trump be written off through the 25th amendment. At first, I thought it was simply a reskin of your original version with Walker. But clearly I wasn't seeing the big picture. Trump's specter still hung over the 2024 election.

When Trump left office, Pence and the Republicans abandoned what he brought to the party: populism. The 2020 electorate, in the moment, seemed willing to celebrate a return to normalcy in the GOP and the nation. But the populist fervor that brought Trump to power in 2016 was not the same forces that brought Reagan and the Bushes to power. The GOP didn't realise this, didn't govern with any eye to the emerging populism, and Democrats seized the opportunity and took the mantle of populism that Trump left behind.

The contrast between the two populists of 2016, Trump and Bernie, is immense by this point. Trump took over the party, won a single victory, collapsed, and was tossed aside. Bernie lost the primary but continued to force the party to take a good look at progressive populism. The Dems went halfway with Brown in 2020, but all the way with Cordray. Trump won the moment, but Bernie won the future.

The original plan you had, a Democratic coalition built on wine-track liberals and minorities, (instead of the WCW/minorities one we're seeing here) might have played out had Trump stayed in power and redefined the Republican Party. It also may have been shorter-lasting or otherwise not been a true realignment. Cordray's win happened because Pence threw Trumpism out of the GOP, and Dems became the only populist game in town.

(You know a TL is really good when so much interesting meta talk comes from it )

[Mike Thick]

Gubernatorials:

Delaware:
Matthew Townsend (D): 293,528 61.01%
Ken Simpler (R): 178,060 37.01%
Others (I): 9,526 1.98%
Margin: 24.00%

Missouri:
Nicole Galloway (D): 1,594,316 52.37%
Mike Parson (R): 1,335,243 43.86%
Others (I): 114,771 3.77%
Margin: 8.51%

West Virginia:
Doug Reynolds (D): 391,000 51.63%
Patrick Morrissey (R): 347,985 45.95%
Others (I): 18,326 2.42%
Margin: 5.68%

North Dakota:
Joe Morrison (D): 180,882 46.06%
Brent Sanford (R): 206,762 52.65%
Others (I): 5,066 1.29%
Margin: 6.59%

Indiana:
Scott Pelath (D): 1,456,465 49.07%
Susan Brooks (R): 1,458,543 49.14%
Others (I): 1.79%
Margin: 0.07%

Montana:
Angela McLean (D): 251,942 47.40%
Tim Fox (R): 266,187 50.08%
Others (I): 13,394 2.52%
Margin: 2.68%

North Carolina:
Anthony Foxx (D): 2,972,051 58.07%
Daniel Soucek (R): 2,066,340 40.36%
Others (I): 80,380 1.57%
Margin: 17.71%

State Governmental Control:

90% - Governor's party trifecta
50% - Split Legislature
30% - Unified Legislature against Governor's party

Color, of course, corresponds to the party of the Governor. I imagine that the Democrats came close to flipping another chamber or two in places like Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas, Indiana, or even Kentucky, but despite their victories there they didn't have enough influence on the redistricting process in 2020 to crack the gerrymanders. Alaska is split with a Democratic State House, a Republican Senate, and a centrist Independent Governor.

As everywhere else, Democratic victories have been widespread in both 2023 (Democrats flipped Kentucky with Andy Beshear and Mississippi with Jim Hood) and 2024. Democrats control 37 of 50 Governorships -- nearly three in every four-- and have full control of the Government in 28 of those states.

Side note: when I was doing internet stuff to prepare this, I accidentally combined my two favorite Atlas timelines and Googled "Between New Majorities"

[The_Doctor]

Thanks for the Meta post! I'm going to be annoying though and add a final point of analysis

For a while when reading this, I had wondered why you chose to focus mainly on Pence rather than Trump, while having Trump be written off through the 25th amendment. At first, I thought it was simply a reskin of your original version with Walker. But clearly I wasn't seeing the big picture. Trump's specter still hung over the 2024 election.

When Trump left office, Pence and the Republicans abandoned what he brought to the party: populism. The 2020 electorate, in the moment, seemed willing to celebrate a return to normalcy in the GOP and the nation. But the populist fervor that brought Trump to power in 2016 was not the same forces that brought Reagan and the Bushes to power. The GOP didn't realise this, didn't govern with any eye to the emerging populism, and Democrats seized the opportunity and took the mantle of populism that Trump left behind.

The contrast between the two populists of 2016, Trump and Bernie, is immense by this point. Trump took over the party, won a single victory, collapsed, and was tossed aside. Bernie lost the primary but continued to force the party to take a good look at progressive populism. The Dems went halfway with Brown in 2020, but all the way with Cordray. Trump won the moment, but Bernie won the future.

The original plan you had, a Democratic coalition built on wine-track liberals and minorities, (instead of the WCW/minorities one we're seeing here) might have played out had Trump stayed in power and redefined the Republican Party. It also may have been shorter-lasting or otherwise not been a true realignment. Cordray's win happened because Pence threw Trumpism out of the GOP, and Dems became the only populist game in town.

(You know a TL is really good when so much interesting meta talk comes from it )

I generally agree with everything except the red, and this is an important thing to note. Trump is the product of anger within the Republican base at economic and cultural forces that they believe are keeping them down. Put aside the legitimacy of these concerns; they feel them, clearly.

The Trump coalition's problem is that they're a coalition of a moment, not a long standing grievance. Trump won with 46% of the vote, indicating that he didn't have the power to build a lasting coalition that would be able to withstand political forces and other events. In lacking that legitimacy, and the narrowness of that win, Trump is finding that he's boxed in by the Reagan Revolution's rules.

These include for example -- here's a prime example. When Trump first won the nomination, he started talking like a populist, talking about how the minimum wage was too low and campaigning in California and whatnot, as well as arguing his tax reform would include taxes for the rich that would go up after negotiations. After a while, it became clear to him that this was all so incompatible with the Reagan neoliberal coalition (either donor/voter base or both) that he was forced to drop that strategy and rhetoric and pivoted to a populist-lite rhetorical strategy.

Now as President, Trump is attempting to assuage his populist base with the Muslim ban, deportations, and pledges of an infrastructure package. The one thing about the infrastructure package, it's very populist and is resisted by Capitol Hill Republicans, who ran ahead of him. Trump lost the popular vote - cannot be emphasized enough - and thus has limited political capital and clout. Slowly, the system is Reaganizing him as it did Obama and boxing him in. He doesn't have the capital or the political coalition or mandate to overturn Reaganism. So, in the end, I think Trump will prove a dud but a warning shot across the bow to Repulican elites. If Trump isn't impeached or 25thed, or whatever, he may end up so Reaganized that the base he has may turn on him in anger (or Pence, or whoever).

So I don't think Trump has the political ability to transform the GOP on a permanent basis.

So, I think that leaves Bernie as the guy who rewrites the Democratic Party. And the whole shift back to the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian-Rooseveltian majority model that denotes Democratic majorities.

[Blackacre]

So what you're saying is Right-wing populism (at least, Trumpist populism) simply isn't compatible with Reaganism long-term, and that this wouldn't change even if Trump had a full term in office.

[The_Doctor]

So what you're saying is Right-wing populism (at least, Trumpist populism) simply isn't compatible with Reaganism long-term, and that this wouldn't change even if Trump had a full term in office.

Correct. Remember, Reagan was a very neoliberal president. He signed amnesty, was the ideological father of NAFTA, and ran on Social Security being a Ponzi scheme in 1976 (before quietly giving that up in 1980). The Reagan Revolution was a revolt against the overreach of government in many ways. While it had a populist flavor it was intensely neoliberal. Reagan advocates for spending cuts in 1981 and backs Paul Volcker's anti-inflationary measures.

Bush 43 cuts taxes, tries SS reform, goes overseas to Iraq to bring freedom to them, and signs boatloads of free trade deals.

The only remotely populist thing about them was their rhetoric and social conservatism. The populist backlash against Bush 43 is one of the motivations for voting Trump, kinda, in the Republican primaries.

I think at least that but what do you think the case for long term Reaganism and populism is?

[Blackacre]

Okay, makes sense.

But considering the direction 2024 ended up going, looking back on 2020 suddenly becomes a bit strange. I get the national mood favouring Pence over a populist Dem, and Brown picking Mallow shows him only going halfway toward Cordray populism, but considering what you said about Appalachia and what Cordray's coalition would be in 2024, it's surprising that there wasn't any D trending in West Virginia or Missouri or Arkansas then. Not enough to flip those states, but something to note nonetheless, maybe even a tight Senate race or a later-than-usual Presidential call, a small rumble that doesn't mean much for the moment but would be a key indication of what was to come. In the same vein as Pennsylvania almost being the tipping-point state in 2012, as well as the midwest trending GOP that year.

Bush won the South in 2000 and 2004 because he, while not a populist outside of tone, rooted himself politically in Southern Republicanism. Pence was Midwestern, and not a populist. Or was the economic condition at the time solid enough for that region to give Pence a pass? I know you said you put less thought into 2020 than 2024, so no worries if you don't have a solid answer there

(my only other gripe with your 2020 was that Pence was soooooo close to being the first Republican to win without Ohio But then again, considering where you think the parties will go from here, it's possible the 2036 GOP path back to power would have to exclude Ohio anyway)

edit: didn't see your question until after I made the rest of the post. You may be right about Trump. There is something binding Trump together with the GOP, though, and that's cultural conservatism. Anti-immigration, varying degrees of racism, those elements of right-wing populism. Whether that's enough to hold a winning party coalition together, well, I don't think it is. The GOP still needs an economic platform, and Trump's level of populist rhetoric coupled with a traditionally GOP tax plan, for instance, wouldn't be a good combination.

There's also the fact that Trumpism came alone. Congressional Republicans aren't of the populist mould, even the ones from the South. The difference between the two parties when it comes to populism is that Trump won with it on the national stage, but there's more within the Democratic Party that could foster it; even wine-track liberals could stomach progressive populism in the short and medium-term.

However, I don't think populism will truly leave the GOP under Trump if he serves a full term. We might see a scenario where the Dems have wine-track liberals and minorities, the GOP has the remains of the Reaganite coalition, (the remaining neoliberals, war hawks, evangelicals) and populists are split; Appalachia would become a swing region in this scenario. These swing populist voters would basically end up deciding whether economic or cultural populism is preferable, and that might not be an easy answer. It would only be later that the populists consolidate into a single party and everyone else reacts. This wouldn't be unheard of, after all, in the Roosevelt era liberals and conservatives existed in both parties, and yet the New Deal coalition was, for a time, a coherent and functioning coalition.

Sorry for the rambling, hope I'm making sense

[Frodo]

After the 2022 midterms, did the incoming Democratic Congress move to permanently restrict the power of the President, or do we still have an 'imperial presidency' when President-elect Richard Cordray is inaugurated?

[The_Doctor]

After the 2022 midterms, did the incoming Democratic Congress move to permanently restrict the power of the President, or do we still have an 'imperial presidency' when President-elect Richard Cordray is inaugurated?

Really good question.

Nope, the imperial presidency still continues apace. Power, when freely gifted, doesn't easily get relinquished and the executive branch continues its march towards becoming ever more powerful. When Obama took over, he didn't relinquish powers Bush had taken on and Cordray sees no reason to surrender power to Congress.

The ever evolving issues of the 21st century and the rapid pace of technology in combination with how an issue can suddenly mushroom in a matter of hours runs opposite Congress's deliberative pace and so the executive branch continues to take on power, especially in the national security realm. Since the Democrats have replaced the Republicans as the national security party, they've also increasingly become the "strong executive branch" presidency.

The Democrats are kind of hypocritical but this is common place for majority parties to value the strength of the executive branch to quickly execute their agenda. The GOP was pretty executive branch authority oriented from 1980 to 2024 (except when the Democrats were in power) and now the Democrats have shifted from being libertarian-esq to a more muscular bunch of liberals.

[Mike Thick]

Here are some belated primary maps.

2024 Presidential Primaries:

Democratic Party:

Governor Richard Cordray (D-OH) (Nominee)
Governor Andrew Cuomo(D-NY)
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Governor Tyler Olson (D-IA)
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Senator Mark Warner (D-VA)
Senator Jared Polis (D-CO)
Governor Kate Brown (D-OR)
Former Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA)
Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)
Former Governor Martin O'Malley (D-MD)

Republican Party:

President Mike Pence (R-IN)
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

[The_Doctor]

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Hmm, I was going for a 1928/1932 feel. This is pre-crisis GOP and post-crisis GOP. I see no reason the GOP would splinter in 2020, the cultural conservatives who are poor don't yet see a reason to buck the Party. What I was aiming for in 2020 was not to show the shift in the national trends but to show the shift in the Democratic Party, with Brown taking the helm.

I mean, my mentality was that these guys don't see a reason to shift. They voted Trump, they voted Bush, they voted Reagan. They've had this transactional relationship with the GOP that as long as the economy is somewhat OK, their social issues and cultural conservatism is good enough for them to vote GOP. When the crisis hits, they reevaluate that relationship. In that vein of thought, I was trying to also demonstrate that Bernie isn't necessarily a guy who would have won either, given the trends of the time.

Crises, remember, force reevaluation of loyalties and shifts in majority coalitions. This isn't just a trend thing, this is a huge shift. But maybe you're right and I should've recalibrated more appropriately. It's something to ponder really, as we see reality playing out (if this all goes down).

Did we see in '76 the big shifts that would happen in '80? Or '28 going into '32? It's a sea change, but maybe you're right. I might have not done my homework as well as I should have. I'll mull it over.

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No, I like that you put this much thought into connecting 2020 and 2024. I'd argue the economic conditions were stable enough as I said in the previous paragraph that cultural conservatism still reigns for a while.

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TBH: Ohio is my mistake. I had meant to make Ohio a +10 to +12% GOP state, but then whoops, realized that Brown was from Ohio.

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It could all survive absent a major crisis. I agree. I think that as long as the economic conditions and political conditions remain (relatively) stable, the GOP will probably maintain its majority. It's when either craps the bed that things could get really bad.

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Agreed.

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It's plausible; I'd need to think about it. It's just ... I have this skepticism that the GOP is a plausible populist party. It's composed of big corporations who depend on neoliberalism to thrive economically. I feel Trump is a minority within the GOP and while a powerful one, the ideology isn't sketched out or coherent.

As for populists cohering, it did happen, you're right. It became the Democratic Party by 1912, but they used to be Teddy Republicans + liberal progressives. They joined and took over the Democratic Party throughout the Wilson times (one famous such figure: FDR)

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Not at all, you think this out really well. Makes me annoyed I didn't pick your brain when doing 2020 and 2024.

[brucejoel99]

Alaska is split with a Democratic State House, a Republican Senate, and a centrist Independent Governor.

Just curious: who's the centrist Independent Gov. of AK elected in 2022 if Bill Walker was first elected in 2014 & AK has a term limit?

[Blackacre]

Regarding 2020: Looking back, it could honestly go either way. Looking at 1928 there doesn't seem to be much foreshadowing to suggest what would happen a scant 4 years later. 1976 is a different story. There's both immediate term and long term stuff going on there. In the immediate term, there was the strong Republican trend of the west, where Reagan would build his base of support and indeed where Reagan's ghost seems to survive post-Cordray. However, it's tough to separate the noise from the forehadowing there. Long-term there was the Southern Strategy of 1968 and 1972, which continued in 1980 and onward. I feel like this is what makes the swings in 2024 more surprising than 1980. The gains Nixon made carried over to Reagan. The gains Obama made in 2008 are not at all part of Cordray's coalition.

Having said that, I must have forgotten about the crisis because that does change things. It's an economic crisis on a different level than the Great Recession, and more importantly, it happens before the parties choose their nominees. Which means that the Dems could have seen the opportunities open up in the South where none existed before and jumped at it with Cordray. Has the crisis been of a different sort, an extension of the Obama coalition might have taken root instead.

However, it's at this point that I should also mention 2022. This is in the midst of the crisis, a crisis that would deliver the South to the Democratic Party, and yet the GOP sweeps southern senate races and governorships. However, there's probably a handful of in-universe reasons why this is the case. The campaign infrastructure might not have existed yet in the South after years of GOP domination, causing Democrats to field bad candidates. Plus, Cordray's wins in much of the South were still narrow.

Basically I waayyy overestimated the actual evidence of foreshadowing major sea changes in the presidential election prior to the big realignment. And you didn't exactly give detailed results for every state in 2020 as far as I know, so who knows, maybe there were some Dem trends in the South that year after all

As for the topic of populism in the GOP, while it is the party of big corporate interests and neoliberals, cultural conservative was arguably an equal partner in the coalition under Bush. A minority party GOP could still have a quasi-populist wing using that cultural conservatism, while either being fiscally moderate or just staying hush on economic issues. It would be similar to a lot of the socially moderate Dems from the South and West, like McCaskill or Tester. Press the right buttons on the right issues and you don't really need to be the complete package as a candidate.

Having said that, I think the coalitions you created for the Cordray era make perfect sense. I think it's perfectly plausible that the populists move en mass to Dems after the situations you've created, rather than being fractured. Note how I said that the GOP could retain some populist/cultural conservative elements if Trump serves a full term. That's for a few reasons that would diverge from your timeline. One, the GOP wouldn't be able to rid itself of Trumpism without a speedy exit for Trump himself. With Pence taking over, the party could go full neoliberal and shed its right-wing populist components, but otherwise, the GOP would be wedded to Trumpism probably around the time of the crisis. Trump staying around also opens up the possibility that the crisis could heavily involve him, or more to the point, be him. If the crisis is Trump's incompetence and corruption, the Democratic coalition would necessarily have to leave out some of his core, some of the cultural conservative right-wing populists. With an economic crisis and Pence as its face, all that changes.

Since Trump was 25th in 2019, all the possible crises centered around Trump were taken off the table. Given the crisis Pence had to deal with, the resulting realignment makes perfect sense. What's interesting to me is that there are multiple ways this realignment could happen, depending on the future of Trump, the nature of the crisis, and the Democrat who crafts the new coalition.

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That means a lot to me TBH for whatever reason I didn't actually get around to reading this until you had already completed 2020. I really wish I had, (though binging through it was fun, I'll admit ) and honestly if I had started reading this earlier I would have been doing this shtick of mine for most if its run

edit: all this is also giving me pause for how I should handle my own TL. Right now it's focused mainly on the Democratic primary process, but since so much interesting stuff here came from you looking at the big picture, I'm inspired to incorporate some of that into my own work going forward

[Mike Thick]

Alaska is split with a Democratic State House, a Republican Senate, and a centrist Independent Governor.

Just curious: who's the centrist Independent Gov. of AK elected in 2022 if Bill Walker was first elected in 2014 & AK has a term limit?

Current State Representative Jason Grenn.

[jojoju1998]

President Cordray......

We should nickname the new Coalition since Roosevelt and Reagan had one.


The Cordray Coalition !

[The_Doctor]

Election 2024: Meta Part II

And here we come to the end of the story. It's been over 100 stories, covering 2014 to 2024, the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Michael Pence. (And briefly, the Walker candidacy before he was re-written as Trump). It's been mostly ... I like to think ... accurate. I'll be watching this timeline to see how much of it actually is true. If a lot of what I think is going to happen happens, the next ten years will be very much an epochal period in American history, the kind of which we see only once every few generations. That, of course, is the period leading up to a realignment and the realignment itself. In American history, we've seen it only three times - 1845 to 1860, 1928 to 1932, and 1964 to 1980; periods where one party and one ideology was thrown out for the other and a new course set for the subsequent generation (and the generation beyond that).

So, I thought about it but I've decided not to chronicle the Cordray Administration. The simple truth is that this timeline was designed to talk about the transition between the libertarian neoliberal socially evangelical Republican majority to the secular technocratic populist Democratic majority. That, I feel, has been the core of this story and everything has revolved around that. Given that, I think it would be beyond my brief to talk about what the Democrats actually do in their time in power. I'll write a sort of epilogue, of course, and we'll cover some of what President Cordray does.

But the other reason that daunts me from covering the new majority is that ten years is hard enough to guess at. We're looking at an Administration that will last until 2032 and the amount of events, information, and world altering situations that could happen is infinite. In a way, I'm glad Trump won, because if Clinton had won and this timeline went to 2028, it would have been much harder to forecast what would have happened over twelve years instead of just eight.

Now, why the crisis? This was a tough one. I guess, again, history. Let’s do a run down. In 1845-1860, the agrarian Democratic majority, rooted in the South, implodes because of slavery and the rapidly industrializing North. These twin issues (particularly slavery) threaten the Democratic Party until it implodes. In particular, slavery was the underbelly of the Democratic majority dating to its founding. Jefferson called it the “firebell in the night.” Lincoln’s Republican Party suppressed union riots as early as 1886 and ignored the risks that industrial capitalism presented in terms of economic stability. This is not a one off - they repeatedly did it, all the way into the 1920s. In response to the economic crises that hit (particularly stock market crashes), these Republicans sought to fashion pro-business solutions that mitigated the crisis. The 1929 shock saw the GOP stick to that template with disaster. So, laissez faire capitalism was the soft underbelly of the Lincoln GOP. The New Deal Democrats had two big ticking time bombs from the moment they took power. Their policies were arguably inflationary and could threaten the economy (the government spends too much, doesn’t rein in inflation too much, and taxes too much, thus causing economic issues). And the second issue was race and cultural upheaval. The 1960s ripped apart the hegemony of white Protestant America, and replaced it with a (better) more diverse and multicultural America - one we’ve been grappling with ever since. So, add up these two ticking bombs that are evident as early as 1936 and voila, the Reagan Revolution.

So, what are the big longstanding issues that the GOP has brushed under the rug? A couple. There’s regulation of the financial sector and … there’s debt. I thought about it and since every crisis is different, a re-run of the Great Depression isn’t necessarily in the cards. So, that left me with debt as the ticking time bomb for the GOP. The GOP has routinely brushed aside deficits and mounting debt when they were in power all the way back to Reagan. We’ve been able to stall for time as government debt mounted and strained the states and the feds’ ability to pay. So...why not call this crisis as the time that the piper calls in his due? And with the fact that you cannot repay debt by austerity measures, that pushed us towards the progressive Left taking power to grow the economy to be able to finance our debt.

So, that’s why I picked debt but honestly, if I’m being honest, I also threw in the GOP’s increasing ideologically conservative profile, inability to compromise, and reconcile their fiscal orthodoxy with reality (a big long standing GOP issue that they ignore, routinely). Add it all up and … voila. Pence is the perfect foil to represent as the Reaganite heir who tries to enact all of Reagan’s ideas.

And when the debt issue explodes, government services are hit. And so, you have the GOP’s base - blue collar working class white voters - hit the hardest, and they divorce the GOP as a result. The cultural connection was tenuous and fragile, compared to the economic connection that the Democrats had with their working class base from 1932 to 1980.

Anyway, why realignment in 2024? Why not the continuation of the GOP majority in 2024? I thought about this and my simple answer is “math.” Let me preface this with saying that American politics very rarely operates well when two parties are closely divided. We’re a nation that likes direction and simplicity. That’s how political norms are enforced and legitimacy conferred; when one party has a clear mandate to govern the nation and the other party has to abide by the general rules of the majority party.

Now, do the math. The GOP has to increase their share of the white vote in every election after 2016 by at least 3-4% to just stay at 50-51% of the vote. That means by 2024, that’s 65% of the vote, 2028, 68%, and so on. And this is to just stay at 51%, and assuming minority voters continue to split 75-25% in the two party vote for the parties. Either the GOP starts reaching out to minority voters to win 30-35% of the minority vote and to expand their base, or the Democrats create a new broad based majority that redraws the landscape. I don’t think the GOP is a viable vehicle to reach out to minority voters, given 2016 and the racial history of the modern GOP.

So, to me, it seems that the GOP has straightjacketed itself into being a slender majority party, at best, with increasing reliance on white voters. Given that the white population will begin falling in absolute terms by 2024, it seems logical to me that the GOP will face a situation where they need to reach out to liberal white voters to stay in power. Given that this amounts to the Northern Strategy, I don’t think it’s viable as long as the GOP owes its base to the South and the rural white evangelicals in the Midwest (and South). So, to me, for the Northern strategy to begin working, the GOP has to be uprooted as the party of Reagan and allowed to rewrite its political identity. And given all that … I don’t see the GOP staying as the country’s majority party. This is not a viable situation where the GOP has to win 65-70% of the white vote to just stay at 51% of the vote over several elections.

Throw in the polarization and you see a situation where there is a ticking time bomb. This plays out in the crisis and we see the GOP unable to resolve it as a unified party because they’ve become so wedded to an ideology that pragmatism evades them and they’re unable to reach beyond that.

So, I have the Democrats coming into power in 2024. Which fits nicely with the 48 year New Deal era and the 44 year Reagan Revolution. If you believe, as I do, that they’re bookends, as much as the Jefferson era (60 years) and Lincoln era (72 years), the 40-52 years for Reagan makes sense.

And with the changing economy, it just made sense that the times are changing and require new solutions. Ergo, the progressive Democrats replacing the economically libertarian Republicans.

On that last point, let’s talk about the Democratic and Republican Parties. In 1980, the neoliberal evangelical Republican Party took power in this country and twelve years later, the Democrats copied with their version of college educated technocratic centrism embodied in Bill Clinton (who was socially a moderate). Follow that up with Barack Obama’s more progressive twist on the same paradigm and you get the picture. So I have a theory and history kind of bears me out. The minority party will emulate the majority party’s basic paradigm and copy much of it. Think Eisenhower Republicans appealing to labor and leaving much of the New Deal in place for example. Or Clinton Democrats agreeing to welfare reform. As the power flows back to the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party re-assumes a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian identity of being for the working man under a new paradigm.

So that’s why I have the working class shifting Democratic as the GOP fails to keep its grip on the blue collar vote that powered it. Conversely, while college educated whites will back the Democrats during this time period, expect them to return to the GOP in 2036 as the two parties realign (and the Republicans become a copy of the Democrats but for the rich and more moderate).

The new majority is inherently all about shepherding the country into the 21st century by balancing neoliberalism and populist goals (e.g, making globalization and capitalism work for the working class, as the FDR Democrats did) and to bring the technological leap forward that places us squarely into the 21st century. Call it the Automation Age.

So, why Cordray?

I guess, I picked him because he wsa a national figure that perfectly embodied the likely next Democratic White House - populist, strongly connected to the Sanders wing of the party, winning back working class whites while keeping minorities, and forging a new party. His record is deeply populist, he has connections in Appalachia, and I chose the Midwest to search for candidates since Obama came from the Midwest. So, that’s Cordray.

Thank you for reading this timeline and I hope you enjoyed it. The last articles will be the inauguration of Richard Cordray, 47th President of the United States, and an epilogue.

[Frodo]

This timeline is indeed one of the crown jewels of Atlas.   

[Devout Centrist]

This was by far the best timeline I have ever read and one of the most realistic futures for this country.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

This was by far the best timeline I have ever read and one of the most realistic futures for this country.

Hear hear

[Blackacre]

This was by far the best timeline I have ever read and one of the most realistic futures for this country.

Hear hear

I concur. This has been incredible to read!