Is America ready for a woman/African-American/Mormon/Mexican-American President? A friend from rural Missouri, exasperated by neighbors who clearly are not ready, raised that issue the other day. We know that a candidate should be judged on his or her program, principles and record, and are a bit tired of these questions. But in the real world of politics, those are not all the same question. They affect Democrats and Republicans differently. And the reason is related to Lyndon Johnson’s ability to see the future clearly and engineer a huge inter-generational horse trade, and to why the Republican candidates don’t even try to talk to African-American voters or their issues, and to sex with Congressional pages. Let’s tie all those things together, after the break.
To win any election, a candidate needs to do the same things: hold one’s own supporters and get them excited enough to vote, win over the uncommitted middle, and expand the participation of those non-voters who are favorably inclined. Elections have been won and lost (and rehashed) over the relative weightings of these priorities, but everyone agrees they are all important. Few elections have been won by peeling away the core supporters of the opponent. Let’s consider how those crucial tasks will be affected by a "breakthrough" candidate. (Here is the asymmetry part.)
If the Democrats nominate a woman or a Mexican-American or an African-American or a member of a less than mainstream religion, it will have little effect on core Democratic voters other than to enhance their pride in the diversity of their party. The middle -- conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents – are not likely to be very much concerned with these identity issues (okay, maybe some conservative Democrats will be dissuaded, but not very many of them.) Finally, some non-voters in both parties are likely to be energized, Democrats because they see themselves in the candidate and Republicans because they are strongly opposed to such an opening up of the political system. (Sure, any particular candidate will win votes or lose them, but we are trying to examine the impact of a "breakthrough" candidate, one who would be a first of a gender or a nationality or a religion, abstracted from the particularly of the individual candidate.) Overall, the historic outsider identity of the candidate is likely to have little effect on the election, one way or the other. Nothing to see here; just move along.
But the Republicans are different. If they nominate one of those potential breakthrough candidates, all their core tasks become enormously more difficult. Their base, to the extent it includes large numbers of religious conservatives, will not be energized and will see a decline in turnout. Some conservative Democrats who consider voting Republican will be turned off. And the few evangelicals that Bush and Rove were unable to turn out in 2004 will definitely stay home.
Why is it that only the Democrats have the freedom to nominate a Catholic or an African-American or a woman? And the Republicans field a debate line-up of obviously undiverse all white men? The answer takes us to LBJ. (You have to read all the way to the bottom to get to the sex part.)
From FDR’s New Deal in the 1930’s until the election of Nixon in 1968, the Democratic Party had been able to win the votes of both northern Blacks and southern Whites. This very stable political stool sat on three legs: economic programs that provided some relief from poverty and won the loyal support of the poor, including 90% of Black votes (where they were allowed to vote); segregation, which won southern white votes; and disenfranchisement, which made Black votes in the South irrelevant. Legendhas it that as President Johnson put down his pen after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation." Not only was he right that the Democrats would lose the South, but he appears to have gotten the timeframe almost exactly correct. Why did he not say that Democrats would lose the South forever? And why was he willing to lose it at all?
This was not just the morally right thing to do – although it was that. It was not just forced on him by important sections of the party’s base: unions, northern Blacks, southern Blacks beginning to fight their exclusion from southern state Democratic party organizations, intellectuals, northern progressive religious leaders and voters – although it was that as well. It was also a long-term political swap of historic proportions. The Democrats gave up their lock on southern white voters. And if the Republicans took the bait, and they did, the Democrats would lose the South for a generation. Worse yet, Democrats lost a large section of the less educated northern voters, the "Reagan Democrats". But over time, as people became more educated and more informed and have more friends and co-workers who are Mexican or gay or African-American, the Republicans, as the party of states’ rights (racism), small government (individualism), and tax cuts (greed), lost the northeast and much of the west coast and are losing the Midwest and even the Rockies. Ultimately their ideas will lose their popularity in the South as well, and if enfranchisement of southern African-Americans can be sufficiently protected, a coalition for progressive change can thrive there as well.
Giving up something then (the solid South), for something later, is definitely a short-term pain – long-term gain type of a deal. And the country has suffered a huge amount of short-term pain that has lasted 40 years. But it seems to finally be starting to wander out of the desert. But it is up to us to make sure that we really get the long-term gain.
Why do the Republicans go out of their way to offend African-Americans by refusing to attend debates on issues of concern to that community? Why not try to peel away a few votes from the Democrats? Getting a few more African-American votes is the easy part; doing so without losing more white votes is what this G.O.P. can not accomplish. As Josh Marshall put it almost 10 years ago,
The Republican Party has not ... ignored blacks and other minorities. In the last 30 years the Republican Party has increasingly relied on the support of constituencies that feel embittered and resentful toward minorities and the poor. ... Any genuine effort to aid minorities or the poor would instantly alienate a substantial portion of the Republican base. It's an electoral bind, inexorable and fixed. The Republicans can't be the party of both black opportunity and anti-black resentment, no matter how big the tent. The Democrats tried it; it didn't work.
His articleis worth reading, but may be hard to find; if so, his own rework of it is a decent substitute.
Okay, on to sex with Congressional pages. As (slightly off-topic) evidence of this phenomenon, consider the 1983 Congressional Page Sex Scandal. In 1983 the House censured Rep. Dan Crane (R-IL) and Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) for having engaged in sexual relationships with 17-year-old congressional pages (legal in the District of Columbia where the age of consent is 16). Crane, whose partner was a female page, promptly lost his next re-election campaign. Studds, whose partner was male, acknowledged the "serious error in judgment" and yet was re-elected five more times. So much for Edwin Edwards’ observationthat the worst thing for a politician is getting "caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.")
Republicans whose platform largely consists of attacks on immigrants, gays, and liberated women, and whose political allies include violent white supremacists, and preachers, columnists and colleges that decry Jews as "unperfected" and Mormonism as a cult, have a much harder time recovering from sex scandals. And they will have a much harder time nominating and electing breakthrough candidates.
While the identification of this phenomenon is not a prediction of any election, we can be thankful for this bit of electoral asymmetry and charge ahead with a breakthrough candidate if we are so inclined.