Between Two Majorities | The Cordray Administration

[The_Doctor]

Just a quick ?: Russia has a 6-year presidential term & the next election is scheduled for 2018... did he leave office 2 years early or is it supposed to be 2024 lol??

Yes, I mean 2024, sorry.

This was a fantastic read! Quick question, what would the map look like with a large Republican electoral victory in 2036?

Would they win New York, Illinois, or Washington?

I am not really sure, imagine something like maybe Dewey 1948 but a lot more Midwestern states in the GOP column and the Interior West as GOP as well as the upper Pacific Coast.

[The_Doctor]

I'm tempted to write supplemental articles to flesh out some of the concepts expressed in this timeline. Or should I leave well alone?

Technocratic Timmy by the way has an excellent thread. Not that I understand everything it (but the gist of it I do get and it's correct): Link.

[The_Doctor]

TD what would the voter demographics by age be like in 2024?

Not too sure, but roughly the millenials have grown to something like 45% of the electorate up from some 35% today. Overall, voter demographics by age are the same as they are today, because, remember, old people are still growing as a share of the electorate as we live longer. How they vote is changing, as the Reaganite baby boomers start dying off.

[The_Doctor]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Thank you for commenting. And welcome to Atlasia!

I drew on the 1930s Democratic Party and how they handled race relations in this era; ditto the Industrial Republicans. The Industrial Era Republicans had blacks and Northern whites in their coalition; but remember, these whites, in the 20th century, were pretty racist. So the GOP did a balancing act where they'd put one step forward on civil rights (TR would invite Booker T. Washington to the White House, which caused an uproar; ditto the GOP embracing anti-lynching laws in name) but never too far that they'd anger their white voters (think 1924 immigration restriction, they never acted against lynching laws with the fervor of the Lincoln Republicans).

The Roosevelt Democrats behaved very similarly. FDR would never touch civil rights because of Southern whites being a Democratic constituency. But he also had blacks in the Democratic coalition. So by 1948, this starts tearing the Democrats apart when Truman desegregates the armed forces and commits to civil rights. By 1964, the Southern whites walk out of the Democratic Party and join the GOP. It takes another generation to finalize but by 2010, they are voting solidly Republican at every level.

So let me tie these two strands together. The Democrats of 2030 will treat both parts of their coalition carefully, to keep them in line. Minorities will be given a lot of economic support to get up to speed in terms of economic equality with whites. Poorer whites will be given the same economic support to compete in the new economy. The immigration laws are so restrictive because poor whites fear the competition for the lowest paid jobs and they need the economic support that restricted immigration offers; e.g, less competition.

This time, the tensions will be economic, not cultural. The Democratic coalition will be big, unwieldy, and oftentimes, very messy. Democratic Presidents and leaders in this era will navigate race very carefully and with an eye to maintaining their majority coalition.  

Hopefully that answers your question.

[The_Doctor]

In regards to race and ethnicity, I'd also add that the White population could very well stay the majority going into the 2040's/2050's depending on if the children of Asian/White and Hispanic/White couples start indentifying themselves as White down the line. The interracial/interethnic marriage rates are fairly high among Whites and Asians/Hispanics and I believe that they're increasing.

PS, If anybody who enjoyed this timeline is interested, I wrote a somewhat lengthy post in the "Election Trends" tab about how macroeconomics led to the Reagan realignment and how they will also lead to another realignment. I basically tried to analyze past macroeconomic trends and their influence on political realignments and how the current trends could very well position us into the realignment that this timeline describes.

I linked to your post earlier this morning.

How did you get your economic theories from reading my timeline? I ask because I didn't delve into economics that much and I wish I had. You explained a lot of things I wish I had more.

[The_Doctor]

(Timmy, I'll respond to this tomorrow after watching the video; your post in the other thread was very insightful).

A friend and I were debating this and I wanted to share what he said with you so you can have a kind of alternate viewpoint to inform this discussion. We agree on the large points of the realignment, and this has been a discussion between us since Bush 43's second term in 2004 (actually he introduced me to this concept, which has been a obsession for a decade or so politically so...).

With the realignment kind of now in view, our main agreement has been on the following

1) The Democratic majority will arrive in the 2020s absolutely
2) It will be a debt based crisis as the GOP fails to address it thus fueling the rise of the left.
3) The Democrats will be inspired by the Bernie Sanders left and abandon the Hillary/Obama contingent who focused on pragmatism in the age of Reagan.

Our debate is purely on the details.

1) He raises the concern that he thinks that the private sector has some $80 trillion in debt and this is a bubble that will pop. I have the GOP screwing up on a state bailout. He believes the private sector debt crisis will be a driver of the new Democratic majority.
2) He also believes that a recession will cause a Democratic Presidency by 2020 but that president is going to be a one termer and limited as the GOP nominates and elects a final true believer in 2024 (aka the Pence of the story) who would face the debt crisis using Reagan-era tools of tax cuts and trying to stave off disaster
3) Ergo the realignment is in 2028.

We also differ on the amount of economic pain the country is undergoing. He feels it needs to be a little more painful for the realignment to occur.

So some food to chew on. I do think this is the inevitable trajectory of the United States in 2021, 2025, or 2029 and that by the end of the 2020s, the Democrats will be ensconced as the country's majority for a generation (or two).

[The_Doctor]

TD,

First, do you have the Scott walker timeline you wrote?

And second, you mentioned that you usually get events right but people wrong, and Trumps first 100 days you wrote about is very accurate in both those regards! So if you had to keep this timeline the same but recast it who would be who? Obviously Pence would stay as the nominee in 2020.

1. Sadly, I deleted it, since there were two TL's with the same title. However, I do have the stories. I'll put them up on Google Docs or put them on Word Press, shortly, so that people can read them. It was a silly mistake but I have the stories saved.

2. I had the Walker Cabinet planned out, I'll dig it up later. I must say that if this was Walker a ton of this wouldn't have happened (Walker most likely would have executed the ban more smoothly, stuck with high risk areas and so on - if he did it at all).

a. Pence would not have been the nominee in 2020 because Walker wouldn't have most likely lost the popular vote by 2% and wasn't such an obvious risk for removal/impeachment. I had planned 2 terms of Scott Walker, followed by a Portman victory in 2024, and then a realignment in 2028 for this reason. (I did not factor into my thinking incidentally that Walker's narrow 20,000 vote popular vote win in my timeline would have meant that Portman would have lost in 2024; but I guess, Walker would have won by 3-4% or something, with a highly disciplined campaign).

[The_Doctor]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That was the original intent. I was going to have a 1920s political America and as you've seen, we did end up using the late 1920s and early 1930s as a template to transition from one political coalition to the other. I always figured the last president of the era would be a Coolidgean/Reaganite figure (ergo, Portman, who has a long and storied history in the GOP).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Actually, I think both Wilson and Nixon were foreshadowing presidents. If you read one of my first articles in this thread, it casts Wilson and Nixon as similar positions. Wilson foreshadowed the Roosevelt progressive majority 12 years later and Nixon did the same for Reagan 6 years later.

But you're right, it did change Obama from a Nixonian to Wilsonian figure. Ideologically, he is very much the forerunner of Cordray, in part, an incomplete Cordray and a much weaker coalition. One intent was to showcase that Obama could not succeed in securing his legacy in substantial numbers because he lacked the support of white working class voters that Cordray does have. That is the point of the Bernie Bros - they add the working class whites to the Democratic coalition and secure the kind of political strength Cordray has.

[The_Doctor]

For people like Technocratic Timmy, here's an interesting report embedded in this tweet (PDF). Might be worth reading in context of this timeline.

[The_Doctor]

You have crafted a superb timeline, but I think you have Cordray all wrong.

Thank you for the kind words. Out of curiosity, how so on Cordray?

[The_Doctor]

You have crafted a superb timeline, but I think you have Cordray all wrong.

Thank you for the kind words. Out of curiosity, how so on Cordray?

The Ohio Democrats he shares infrastructure with back home in Columbus/Franklin County are ... part of a wing that doesn't seem to currently have a national group. So it's a little hard to explain. Suffice it to say he's generally more allied with conservative Democrats back home and not liberals/populists. Which isn't to say he hasn't done a good job as Director over at the CFPB, but extrapolating that outwards and upwards, I don't think he's fit to be the uniter this timeline suggests.

I've sort of read about that. I don't know if it will be Cordray exactly but he fits the kinda profile of the likely next Democratic President (in my mind anyway) so I went with it, if that makes sense?

[The_Doctor]

Realigning Presidents tend to be experienced politicians associated with the fervent base of the new majority coalition. Think Reagan, FDR, Jefferson, and to an extent, Lincoln (he was a Whig politician for many years but I wouldn't say he was a truly national name until 1858). They tend to be 50s - 60s, established politicos who have spent decades in the political field before becoming President (true of every realigning President). Creating realigning coalitions that set the terms of political debate for the next several generations is not usually left to a young politico but to people who know how to set the state of ship IMO.

Curiously enough, all of the realigning Presidents except Jefferson suffered major losses before becoming President. There's a sort of "being on the outs" that seem to animate the careers of these realigning Presidencies. Ex., Jefferson's loss to Adams in 1796, Lincoln's loss in 1858 against Stephen Douglas (and an earlier loss for a very local office), FDR's 1918 failed bid for NY Senate and 1920 loss for Vice President, and Reagan's two failed Presidential bids. All of them kind of were important developments in the careers that allowed them to later utilize the loss to win later on. The losses might have animated the realigning Presidents to presidential greatness, who knows? It's a little weird, so ignore this if you want.

I feel these three areas are the biggest determinants/characteristics of a realigning President. Association with the party's base, having suffered a major defeat, and having political experience sufficient to lead a realignment, which is a major event in politics. I'm spitballing but that's my feel.

I would say that Feingold would fit the bill in 2020 honestly (he fits all these criteria) or an established Democrat who has been on the national stage (or is someone we know already who would be a potential President down the line). Sherrod Brown would also fit mostly. There are a number of national Democrats who would probably hit all these boxes.

[The_Doctor]

I'll draw up a House map of the 2024 Democratic coalition based on current lines (roughly) so you get an idea where the new Democratic majority is located. This TL is finished; but I like writing supplemental articles and things time to time to fill out our understanding of this world.

[The_Doctor]

Spenstar, actually, most realigning Presidents had two losses. Feingold qualified under his second loss.  Jefferson had one; Cordray would have three, including primaries. It's a statistical quirk and commonality.

And yeah, that's the intent of this TL at this point, to continue the endless discussion of where the country is going. I think the issues presented are really difficult and interesting and I'd like to go on and on about them.

What I would like to achieve is a robust discussion and consensus (maybe) of the conditions leading up to realignment, why they happen, and how they will happen. Obviously the reasons are consequential, since they will impact global history for the next 30-40 years. The trends we're examining are not merely American, but also UK, Europe, Indian, and elsewhere.

[The_Doctor]

You have crafted a superb timeline, but I think you have Cordray all wrong.

Thank you for the kind words. Out of curiosity, how so on Cordray?

The Ohio Democrats he shares infrastructure with back home in Columbus/Franklin County are ... part of a wing that doesn't seem to currently have a national group. So it's a little hard to explain. Suffice it to say he's generally more allied with conservative Democrats back home and not liberals/populists. Which isn't to say he hasn't done a good job as Director over at the CFPB, but extrapolating that outwards and upwards, I don't think he's fit to be the uniter this timeline suggests.

I've sort of read about that. I don't know if it will be Cordray exactly but he fits the kinda profile of the likely next Democratic President (in my mind anyway) so I went with it, if that makes sense?

Sure. The mold you've envisioned makes sense, I just think the man chosen doesn't fit.

Any other Ohioans or Midwesterners you would have suggested? I'm curious since I want to see if I overlooked anyone in my research.

[The_Doctor]

Apparently the lesson from today's DNC Chairman election is that I am right on the what, when (kinda), but totally blank on the who. (¬_¬)

[The_Doctor]

It could be Kander or Buttgieg if either wins their state's Gubernatorial election in 2020

My list came down to Kander, Carter, and Cordray. the prologue refers to either Kander or Carter actually, can't remember which.

[The_Doctor]

Also, the prologue probably refers to Kander. He was a state officer when Trump was elected, while Carter held no office

Probably. I cycled through people before settling on Cordray in December as the guy who fit my criteria (reasonably).

It could be Kander or Buttgieg if either wins their state's Gubernatorial election in 2020

My list came down to Kander, Carter, and Cordray. the prologue refers to either Kander or Carter actually, can't remember which.

Jason Kander would be an interesting person to follow these next 4-8 years to see where he fits in the future Democratic Party.

I read the levy institute article you posted. It was really interesting and I can definitely see the New New Deal job programs being a part of the democratic platform in the 2020's.

Regarding your timeline, how would you rewrite it if your friend was correct about the order being Dem win 2020, Rep win in 2024, and Dem win and realignment in 2028?

I'd say it would be Kamala Harris/Al Franken in 2020, then a republican governor in 2024, then Kander/Cordray/Buttigieg style figure in 2028.

It's definitely interesting and covers how for a significant portion of the country the recovery was never there.

As for 2020 and 2024: Sherrod Brown or someone with the ability to pull the Midwest + FL back but Texas, Georgia stay R. Rubio wins 2024 and is defeated in 2028.

[The_Doctor]

It could be Kander or Buttgieg if either wins their state's Gubernatorial election in 2020

My list came down to Kander, Carter, and Cordray. the prologue refers to either Kander or Carter actually, can't remember which.

Tbh it would be absolutely hilarious if the Dem who broke the Reagan era was a Carter

exactly why I toyed with him, lol. He fit the other criteria too but I chose the Midwest as my region of choice to find the realigning president.

[The_Doctor]

Does the stability of the Cordray administration cause younger millenials and older Gen Zers to settle down and start families by the late 2020's/2030's; thereby creating another baby boom?

You're the economist. What do you think would happen? I am honestly not sure so I'm asking you what you think based on the information given.

[The_Doctor]

1. To Sherrod Brown in Disguise: No, not really. Given LePen's recent surges, I expect her to win narrowly but I'm 0-3 or 0-4 on foreign elections, so who knows? But no, not really. I expect her loss, if it's one, to be fairly narrow and signify that the French population, like the rest of Europe, is moving towards the nationalist position and thus will force European politics to recalibrate appropriately.

2. Technocratic Timmy - your explanation seems good enough to stand as official canon. If anyone wants to do a spin off of this canon, they're more than welcome to explore that stuff.

3. Pessimistic Antineutrino - I left the Electoral College in the air deliberately. After some deliberation, I do think that there will be some movement to abolish the electoral college (after all it robbed the Democrats of their 2000 and 2016 wins, in a sense) but I am not sure how successful it will be. It could hinge on the 2032 election; if Castro (or D VP) wins comfortably, the Democrats may conclude they've overcome their political problems and no longer need to do away with it. The Electoral College is actually a solid majoritarian tool - it benefits the Republicans precisely because they're the majority coalition in this coalition. But because the GOP is so tenuously a majority coalition, with strong opposition on the Pacific and Eastern seaboards, and in the major urban areas, you could argue the EC is upholding majoritarian coalition rule while suggesting the GOP does not really have a mandate to rule as they used to. Arguably, there's some dispute over 1960 - where JFK may not have actually won the popular vote (I don't really understand the heads and tails of it) but because the Democratic coalition was so strong in 1960, and so national, they could probably have lost the popular vote and still won.

Pointedly, the Left has a great benefit in repealing the Electoral College and shifting the center of the country to the urban and coastal areas. It would push the GOP leftwards, and make the great vote sinks (which lean leftwards) crucial to electoral outcomes, rather than the disparate rural and suburban areas across the country.

On the other hand, the vast Democratic majority will include many small states that flip leftwards (West Virginia, for example) and their Senators and Congressmen may object to the diluting of their state power. Unless you convince the good denizens of these states that shifting power to the major urban areas will benefit their interests (e.g, their economic interests) any such constitutional amendment would fail.

So, really, it comes down to what the Democrats conclude is the best strategy and what the various constituencies conclude is in their best interests.

Now having answered your question, I will like to take the moment to go on an extended rant. The 2016 stuff is my rantings about general political coalitions. Warning: extended rant.

For the record, I would submit my biased opinion:

a. 2000 was intended to be a narrow Republican victory. Had Bush not been hit with the DUI, in the closing days of the 2000 campaigns, he would have likely won the popular vote. The country voted to uphold the Reagan coalition by handing W the keys but the last minute DUI charge scrambled things. W was (in my eyes) the intended confirming President that upheld Reaganism and his tenure was designed to set Reaganism for the second half of its run. Remember, 1960 was closer than 2000 and JFK still won anyway.

b. 2016 is a true aberration in the sense that the Reagan coalition limped out for Trump but Trump displayed such incompetence on the campaign trail that he lost the popular vote convincingly (relatively; third biggest popular vote loss while being an electoral college winner - and the only President to win the electoral college convincingly while losing the popular vote by that much). It signals that the coalition is increasingly weakened as time marches on and the motivations that propelled Reaganism to our majoritarian ideology is starting to fade. Even among many Republicans, they are calling Reagan "outdated."

What a lot of them don't realize, you don't change ideological majorities overnight. Reaganism took 30 years to develop and so did Roosevelt's progressive ideology. Trump is basically creating a new ideology in months, when it took a substantial amount of time to fashion the ruling ideologies of the past.  So, you either stick with Reaganism or you go home, if you're a Republican, really.

And the Constitutional system encourages this, for the record. The Framers never intended parties to rule the day or coalitions to turn out that way but somehow, our constitutional system has developed to the point where new dominant ideologies must hibernate and take time to cohere before becoming the country's ruling ideology. It's a requirement for our political stability as a country. The vast amount of effort and energy that it takes to maintain a political coalition is so enormous that you don't flip your ideology day to day. There's donors, there's constituents, there's a ton of shorthand political thinking that goes into voting, donating, and protesting, and it's an extremely complex system. Ergo, stability is a premium. You don't want your partisans to flip their message day to day and the political conversations need to be somewhat consistent and above all, on a stable axis. We humans crave that and that's seen in our political ideologies.

Trump's people do not understand this fact. They stormed the country in eighteen months with a protean reactionary populist ideology that still defies scholarly accounting and with no real mooring in the conservative movement. So, Trump himself may have done a ton of the Democrats' dirty work by breaking apart the Reagan coalition's ideological stability and to push the door open to a new ideology to take center stage. You'll see in this timeline, most of the actions undertaken have been Reaganite because the country's moorings - and the Republican Party's moorings - are rooted in that.

The Republican coalition has been left reeling and this is why so many Republicans today are uneasy about Trump. There was no measured ideological build up to Trump, no long standing academic debate about the new ideology, no whatever. You can't defend a primal scream with consistency and this is why his supporters are perpetually left with the instinct to call their rebellion a "breaking of the status quo" without explaining what the heck replaces it. When you ask Trump supporters for ideological consistency, they can't provide it or turn it on the liberals because there's none to speak of.

Bernie Sanders, however, very much understands this. His leftist Democratic ideology is not new. It dates to the 1960s and 1970s, and you can see it in the protests against welfare reform, the protests against Reagan's ideology, and the complaints of far left congressmen in the 1980s and 1990s. "Higher minimum wage," "living minimum wage," and "financial regulation" and so on isn't new - it's pretty old. The only new thing is the college thing. Even single payer has a long and storied leftist history. This is an ideology that is fully formed, has academic and political consistency, has a viable political constituency and coalition, and will someday emerge as the ruling ideology of the United States (little as I like it). This story is how really Cordray is the final beneficiary, as FDR was, of a long standing revolt against the conservative status quo. And sometime, down the line, there will be a conservative revolt against the liberal status quo. And so on, and so on, as long as we have a functional Republic, this will go on. 

Tl;dr: If you view Reagan as the beginning, W as the climax, Trump is the beginning of the downfall of the coalition and he may be paving the way for a Sanders Democratic coalition.

Sorry for the very long extended rant.

[The_Doctor]

Final note on my rant.

One thing this timeline was designed for me to do was to explore and reason out the way ideologies have a role in American political history and how they come about to be. One article I never wrote but now feel I should have written (well, I just did in a sense in my rant) is how ideologies are essential to the political stability of the United States. Indeed, it's right there in the title "Between Two Majorities." The implication is that the path between two majorities is so rocky because one ideology must replace the other in a fashion that's organized, deliberate (even if it looks electorally chaotic) and have a consistent champion.

Quick sidenote: again, if you look at the Lincoln Republicans - their ideology was around in the 1790s. Alexander Hamilton advocated the First National Bank, developing industries, and lost out to Jefferson. Lincoln is the one who won the 1860 election and defeated Jefferson's vision once and for all. It's right here, in Hamilton's own words. The stuff Hamilton writes is later upheld by Clay, who carries the Whigs-Federalists' banner in the wilderness, and is finally brought to fruition by Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley.

And yes, I wrote a lot of this timeline as a ongoing intellectual experiment to figure out where we are as a country. Which is why a lot of things weren't as developed as they should have been. (Sorry about that).

[The_Doctor]

It should be noted that the results of both the 2000 and 1960 elections were disputed by the losing side. I do not think this is a coincidence. It may be a feature of the ruling coalition that by the time their era enters its second half, they've built up enough institutional strength to tip the scales in their favour. It might not have been necessary in Kennedy's case, but if he was hit with a last-minute scandal similar to the DUI, maybe it would have been.

See also: the election of Ruthorford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison during the Lincoln Majority.

Pretty much this. Well, the election of 1876 was probably supposed to be Democratic, to be fair, but the GOP majority rigged it in SC, LA, and FL. You see the resulting tension during the 1880s and culminating in McKinley's 1896 election (though Cleveland let off some steam for angry Democrats in the 1880s). Though, 1876 was in the first half of the GOP coalition.

I am pretty sure that if there had been a recount in 1960, Jack Kennedy & the Democrats would have fought any tie in Illinois and Texas to a win in their favor. They were entrenched in the government in Illinois and Texas (actually Illinois elected a Democratic Governor in 1960 to replace a two term GOP governor) and could have probably knife fighted Dick Nixon out. Same thing happened with W in 2000.

[The_Doctor]

This is a really trivial thing to ask about, but what happens with the Trump and Pence Presidential libraries? Trump even getting one would be seen as controversial, (because everything Trump touches sparks outrage, down to his cabinet choices) but not having one would be strange as well. It might be that the Pence library includes documents from the Trump administration?

Nixon got one, so Trump gets one, somewhere in New York. I'm not sure how they would rent out the space in Queens or something, but they get it. Pence gets his in Bloomington, Indiana.

Trump's Presidential library is a outright hagiography about #AlternateFacts. Pence is a more conventional library.

[The_Doctor]

Lastly, I'm not a believer in free will, so I believe a lot of events are predetermined by our environment, our collective actions, and the generally predictable behavior of humans to do certain things. So that helps remove doubt for me for a set of actions.

I have yet to read this book series, but have you read Isaac Asimov's Foundation?

What you have described here sounds a lot like the fictional idea of psychohistory from these books. Given that your timeline has been generally accurate so far I thought this idea would be interesting to bring up.

A Sherlock Holmes (BBC) quote summarizes my beliefs on predicting the future, “The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing the other.  What we call premonition is just movement on the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable.”

From the Wikipedia article you gave me it seems in line with that sentiment. I'll read the book too, it sounds interesting. Always meant to get into Asimov as he sounded interesting and tried to create, as it were, a timeline of his own.