Between Two Majorities | The Cordray Administration

[King Lear]

I think TD wrote a very amazing and realistic timeline, The only thing that strikes me as unrealistic when I first read it a few months ago before I started posting on this forum (I used to lurk around and read people's post and timelines before I decided to join), is the fact that TDs so dead set on believing Trump won't fill out his term. If I wrote this, I would have kept everything the same except I would have had Trump getting reelected and the crisis breaking out at the start of His second term leading to republicans losing congress in 2022 and Cordray beating Pence in a realigning Landslide in 2024. Honestly I think Two terms of Trump with a economic meltdown in his second term is more likely to lead to a realignment because the legacy of a failed, controversial, Trump administration would weigh on republicans for decades to come.

[King Lear]

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President Cordray has to tow the line between the emerging Obama coalition and the WWC voters who were brought into the Democratic Party fold as a result of the 2021-2023 crisis. (Note: every realignment has a surprising segment of the former majority shift to the new majority that was never expected to shift. Even if it’s not WWC voters, there will be some segment of the Reagan-Bush-Trump-Pence coalition that’ll shift Dem that nobody will expect to happen)

This is another aspect of TDs theory I really have trouble rapping my head around, I personally don't see any evidence that any part of the republican base of older (40+), affluent (50k+), Christian (evangelical Protestant, Catholic, and Mormon), White people is getting ready to bolt and join the Democratic Party, including the so called "White working class" that are really not working class at all because the vast majority of them make more then the national average of 50k a year and due to this inconvenient fact none of them vote on economic concerns instead they vote primarily on their racial, religious, and sexual bigotry (opposition to abortion, gay marriage, immigration, gun control). If their is another realignment in the near future I don't believe it will be due to part of the republican base bolting to the democrats but instead due to the democratic base of younger, nonwhite, nonchristian, voters demographically replacing the republican base of older, white, christian, voters.

[King Lear]

Every single realignment in American history has had a segment of the former majority shift to the new majority. That’s partly why it’s called a realignment. The idea that no former Federal republicans will vote for the new realigning Democratic majority is pretty silly.

Ah, but what if it's not the WWC that's the segment that shifts? Already, we're seeing upscale suburbanites trend from Republican to Democrat. Many had been staunchly R before, so they would count as part of the "former majority." Or perhaps upscale white Republicans don't shift but upscale Hispanic and Asian Republicans do (e.g. if the Republicans go full and explicitly Bannonite), ensuring that both groups go from 70-30 D to being as D as Blacks?

These are both alternative possibilities for the realignment, don't you think?

Yes these are alternative possibilities (not Latinos and Asians voting as D as blacks since that would make the GOP’s path to 270 damn near impossible in 2036 ). We won’t know who these groups are until they shift post crisis in 2024 (or 2020).

Romney-Clinton voters were primarily Swing voters and not ardent Republicans until Trump. 9 Romney-Clinton counties voted Obama in 2008 and many McCain-Romney counties that voted for Clinton last year were pretty close in 2008 (my home of Orange County only went for McCain by 3-4 points for example).

White working class voters do seem to have the most to lose in a crisis and are more easily incorporated into a populist Democratic Party than upscale republicans. Perhaps it’s my own bias here, but having lived in Huntington Beach and having connections to even more upscale republican Newport Beach, I just can’t see it. I could see them voting for a Cory Booker Third Way-ist Dem Party but a more populist economic centered Cordray one? Not happening unless they stop thinking money is the end all be all to life and I wouldn’t bet two pennies on them doing that.

Btw the Bannonite concessions are on economics and not social issues.

As someone who also lives in Orange County, I can tell you the transformation of Orange county’s partisan preferences is all because of the demographic shifts that have transformed the county in the last 30 years (the massive increase in the Hispanic and Asian population), it has nothing to do with the old, rich, white population of Newport Beach turning from bigoted republicans to progressive democrats (believe me theirs nothing but trump signs on that side of the 73 toll road). If the county had the same racial makeup it did 30 years ago it definitely wouldn’t have voted for Hillary Clinton by 9 points last year, and on the other point I don’t see the “White working class” going Democratic anytime soon because number one these people are not working class the vast majority own their own homes and make more than the national average of 50k and number two due to the previous fact these voters don’t vote on economic issues they vote on social issues so if democrats don’t start embracing racial, religious, and sexual bigotry (they won’t and shouldn’t) they’ll never win these voters again. The next political realignment is going to be based on the demographics shifting and causing the country to get less White and less Christian along with young white liberals replacing their old, white conservative parents (this process will probably take 20-30 years to unfold).

[King Lear]

I'm skeptical of a wave in 2018 without a realigning election in 2020 because the foreshadowing and realigning down-ballot gains are usually similar. E.g., I don't expect a Democratic wave in 2018 with a Republican victory in 2020 because it's impossible for the Democratic Party to gain 6-8 seats in 2024 in the Senate to mirror past realignments.

How do you know that democrats won't flip the house and senate next year but in 2020 trump wins a narrow 270-268 victory in the electoral college (holding all his 2016 states minus Michigan and Pennsylvania) leading to another democratic wave in 2022 strengthening their majorities in the house and senate followed by the realignment happening in 2024.

[King Lear]

I'm skeptical of a wave in 2018 without a realigning election in 2020 because the foreshadowing and realigning down-ballot gains are usually similar. E.g., I don't expect a Democratic wave in 2018 with a Republican victory in 2020 because it's impossible for the Democratic Party to gain 6-8 seats in 2024 in the Senate to mirror past realignments.

How do you know that democrats won't flip the house and senate next year but in 2020 trump wins a narrow 270-268 victory in the electoral college (holding all his 2016 states minus Michigan and Pennsylvania) leading to another democratic wave in 2022 strengthening their majorities in the house and senate followed by the realignment happening in 2024.

Maybe it’s because Trump won 46% of the electorate on the backs of almost every shrinking demographic group against the most unpopular Democratic candidate in modern American history?

Also why are PA and MI written off but not Wisconsin? Obama won the state by 14 in 2008 and by 7 in 2012 but after Trump’s landslide win of less than a percent last year we’re suppose to believe it’s become Wississippi?

Wisconsin is by far more republican then Michigan and Pennsylvania, Remember Wisconsin voted out Russ feingold in 2010, rejected Feingold again in 2016, voted for the Far-Right, Anti-Union, Governor Scott Walker three times in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and at the presidential level nearly voted for George W Bush in both 2000 and 2004 (he came within less then a point of winning the state twice). This shows Wisconsin has been itching to vote republican in a presidential election since at least 2000, and along with the fact Wisconsin is significantly more White and Rural then Michigan and Pennsylvania, shows it is by far the most likely of those three states to vote for Trump again.