Posted on 03/24/2004 3:31:35 PM PST by Keith
July 1988
An Insider's View of the Election
Our author visits the political pros in four battleground states and is reminded that the swing vote in the November election is not conservative or liberal, northern or southern, young or old, black or Hispanic--it's the white middle class.
by William Schneider
There are two theories about the 1988 presidential election. One is that the Democrats can't lose unless they do everything wrong. The other is that they can't win even if they do everything right. According to the first theory, the Democrats hold all the trump cards--the Iran-contra scandal, the stock-market crash, public disenchantment with Ronald Reagan, and George Bush's high negatives in the polls. All they have to do is play their cards right. The other theory says that the Democratic Party is in such a parlous condition that none of these advantages really matters. "The unpleasant truth is this," the political consultant Patrick H. Caddell wrote in a memorandum to major party contributors last year. "The party has never been weaker in our lifetime and the array of obstacles and trends never more alarming." Horace W. Busby, formerly a confidant of Lyndon B. Johnson's and now a Washington consultant, offered this prophecy one month before the 1980 election: "The hard-to-accept truth is that Democratic candidacies for the White House may no longer be viable. The Republican lock is about to close; it will be hard for anyone to open over the four elections between now and the year 2000." I interviewed Busby late last year and asked him if he saw any prospect that the Democrats could break the Republican lock in 1988. "No, I don't," he replied. Who did he think would be the strongest Democratic standard bearer in 1988? "Michael Dukakis," he said. "Why Dukakis?" I asked. "Because," Busby replied, "he is the Democrat most likely to carry his own state."
It's fairly easy to find evidence for the theory that the Democrats are headed for a victory. Just look at the polls--and not only the "horserace" polls, showing Dukakis with a healthy lead over Bush. Gallup polls taken earlier this year showed the Democrats regaining a lead, of 42 to 29 percent, over the Republicans in party affiliation. In 1985, shortly after President Reagan's re-election victory, the parties were nearly equal in strength. In October of 1987 a Time magazine poll asked people which party would handle various issues better. The Democrats were rated five points ahead on "keeping the country out of war." Two years earlier the Republicans had been five points ahead. On "keeping inflation under control" the Republican advantage had shrunk from 10 points in 1985 to an insignificant one point by 1987. The Republicans were still ahead on "keeping the country strong and prosperous," but the margin was six points in 1987, down from 18 points in 1985. And this was before the stock market crash.
The revolt against government is over. According to a CBS-New York Times poll taken in May, the American public is now evenly divided when asked whether it prefers a "bigger government providing more services" or a "smaller government providing fewer services." The Times reported, "Bigger government has not been this popular since November 1976, which is also the last time the Democrats won a presidential election." Moreover, tax resentment, a key source of public support for the Reagan revolution, has clearly diminished. From 1978 to 1986, according to polls taken by the Roper Organization, the percentage of Americans who felt that their federal income taxes were "excessively high" dropped from 41 to 26 percent.
Americans are in a mood for change. When people are asked in various ways whether they want the next President to continue Ronald Reagan's policies or change direction and follow different policies, a majority consistently opts for change.
If the evidence for Democratic optimism comes from the polls, the electoral college provides ample support for Democratic pessimism. "The electoral college, which Democrats prefer to ignore, is a Republican institution," Horace Busby wrote in 1980. "If a Democratic incumbency cannot hold it, it must be considered unlikely that a Democratic challenge can retake it." In Busby's view, the Republicans dominated the electoral college from the Civil War through the 1920s (the "Lincoln lock"); the Democrats held the advantage briefly, during the 1930s and 1940s (the "Roosevelt lock"); and the Republicans have dominated presidential politics since the 1950s (the "Eisenhower lock"). In the nine presidential elections from 1952 to 1984, thirty-nine states have gone Republican at least five times. Those states account for 441 electoral votes, or 171 more than the majority needed to win the presidency. "So long as the GOP holds that lock, Democrats are not competitive at the presidential level."
That does not mean the Democrats are not competitive at all. The Republican presidential lock coexists with a Democratic lock on the House of Representatives, which has had a Democratic majority for all but four years since 1930, and on state and local offices, where Democrats continue to predominate. Busby observed that "nearly anything you look at in American politics turns out to be sixty-forty." The Democratic percentages in Congress hover around 60 percent, while the Democrats can count on winning only about 40 percent of the presidential vote (43 percent in 1968, 38 percent in 1972, 41 percent in 1980 and 1984). "If you have a credible opposition, it's likely to get about forty percent of the vote," Busby explained. Americans, it seems, are governed by one-party rule--but by different parties at different levels.
In his memorandum, which was widely circulated, Caddell described the electoral college as "nothing less than an electoral Matterhorn" for Democrats. Caddell examined statistics from the past five presidential elections and came up with a startling conclusion: the national Democratic Party has no base. Only the District of Columbia, with three electoral votes, has voted for the Democratic ticket every time. Twenty-three states with a total of 202 electoral votes have voted Republican every time. One of those states, California, is the biggest prize of all, with forty-seven electoral votes. Add to this Republican base those states that have supported the party four out of the past five times, and the Republicans end up with thirty-six states and 354 electoral votes. That is well over the 270 votes needed for an electoral-college majority. Only one state, Minnesota, has voted Democratic four out of the past five times. A Minnesotan was on the Democratic ticket each of those times.
What can the Democrats do? Caddell's rule of thumb is that in order to be electorally viable, the Democratic ticket has to be able to "compete to win" California, Illinois, Texas, New Jersey, and North Carolina. In the past five presidential elections the Democrats have won exactly three victories (North Carolina in 1976, Texas in 1968 and 1976) out of the twenty-five contests in these states.
The Democrats are the victims of demographic change and ideological change. The movement of population to the Sun Belt has shifted the balance in the electoral college decisively. In 1932 the Northeast and the Midwest accounted for 54 percent of the nation's electoral votes. By 1960 the Sun Belt states of the South and West had pulled even in population with the Northeast and the Midwest. Now the balance has reversed: this year the South and West hold 54 percent of the electoral votes.
Moreover, as the Sun Belt has gotten more populous, it has become more Republican. In the two Eisenhower elections, 1952 and 1956, about twice as many votes were cast in the Northeast and Midwest as in the South and West. In those days the South and West voted more Democratic than the Northeast and Midwest. By the time of the two Reagan elections, 1980 and 1984, the Sun Belt and the Snow Belt were casting about the same number of votes, but the party advantages had reversed. Republicans were now doing better in the Sun Belt than in the Snow Belt.
Population shifts within states have been as important as population shifts among states. In the northern industrial states population has shifted decisively from the cities to the suburbs--which is to say, from core Democratic to core Republican areas. Back in 1940 the urban population in these states outweighed the suburban population by more than two to one. By the 1970 census the suburbs were larger than the cities they surrounded. And as the suburbs got larger, they became more Republican. From 1960 to 1984 the Democratic share of the big-city vote remained roughly constant, at about two thirds. But the Democratic share of the suburban vote fell steadily, from just under half in 1960 to about one third in 1984. In other words, the Republican Party's base has been shifting with the population, to the fastest-growing states and the fastest-growing areas within each state.
Ideologically the Democrats have become more and more isolated on the left. Two broad streams of voters have been leaving the party since the 1950s--white southerners and white "ethnics" outside the South. Walter Mondale carried only 28 percent of the white southern vote in 1984. Mondale's Catholic vote, at 44 percent, was the worst showing by any Democratic presidential candidate since 1924. Beginning in the 1960s the Democrats made it clear that the party did not welcome the support of racists, hawks, and religious conservatives--voters who had felt at home in the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. These losses would not have been devastating if the Democrats had managed to hold on to the economic issue. But Carter's failure and Reagan's perceived success in managing the economy had the effect of seriously damaging the party's economic credibility. Thus social and foreign-policy liberalism has driven the conservatives out, and the economic issue no longer brings them back in--at least it doesn't in the absence of a major recession.
In order to win the presidency this year, the Democrats have to gain nine percentage points over the party's 1984 showing. An increase of that magnitude for a party out of power is relatively rare in American politics. It has happened four times in this century. The largest gain came in 1932, when the Democrats' share of the popular vote went up 17 points and Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept into office. The big issue was the Great Depression. The next largest gain was in 1920, when the Republican vote went up 14 percent. The big issue was the return to normalcy after the Great War. The Democrats picked up 13 points in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was elected. The big issues were Watergate and the economy. The Republican vote went up 10 points when Eisenhower led the ticket in 1952. The big issue was the Korean War, with a dose of communism and corruption thrown in. If George Wallace had not been on the ballot, the Republican vote probably would have gone up by at least 10 points in 1968 as well (the Democratic vote fell by 18 points). The big issue in 1968 was Vietnam, along with racial violence and student protest.
There's a message here. If the Democrats want to score a gain of nine percent or more in 1988, they need a big issue. The Iran-contra scandal? It certainly looked like one when the scandal broke, at the end of 1986. Now it is not so clear. Congress and the press went into their Watergate mode and spent the better part of last year looking for the "smoking gun" that would tie President Reagan to the contra fund diversion. Not only did the smoking gun never turn up but the whole investigation diverted public attention from the one issue that really hurt the President--the fact that he sold arms to Iran. With Bush at the top of the Republican ticket, the issue may hurt. But not nearly so much as Watergate or Vietnam or Korea or the Great Depression did.
The stock-market crash is another candidate for the big issue of 1988. Here, too, the damage seems to be insufficient for the Democrats' purposes. The public did not show any sense of a crisis. According to the polls, most Americans felt unaffected by the October 19 crash. A survey taken by the Confidence Board, a business-research organization, found that consumer confidence dropped by only five percent after the stock market plunge. In contrast, consumer confidence dropped 33 percent after the 1973 surge in oil prices. The principal effect of Black Monday was to create more pessimism about the economy. But the economic issue is still a brush fire in the hills to most Americans. They know there is danger out there, and the stock-market crash suggested that it is getting closer. But it is not here yet.
The stock-market crash was not a crisis. It was a warning. And by forcing both candidates to talk about the deficit, it does not play to the Democratic Party's strength. The instability of the world's financial markets does lend further support to the view that the United States must change its economic policies. And the desire for change always helps the party out of power. But to gain nine percentage points in 1988 the Democrats will need more than a national case of the jitters.
According to Horace Busby, "When electoral-college locks have been broken, as in 1932 and 1952, the winning party has benefited from a large infusion of new voters. FDR's 1932 popular vote was 51 percent larger than Al Smith's in 1928; Eisenhower's 1952 popular vote exceeded Dewey's 1948 level by 54 percent." Caddell made a similar point. "Both Eisenhower and Carter won by bringing over millions of 'new' voters--weak Democrats, Independents and war veterans for Eisenhower, and white Southern Protestants for Carter." What new voters are available in 1988? The Baby Boomers are one possibility. In Busby's view, both the Republican lock on the electoral college and the Democratic lock on lower offices "were set and maintained by those voters born before the 1940s." Younger voters could break those locks. In fact, Busby expects that to happen--but not in 1988. There is no issue like the Vietnam War around which Baby Boomers can rally this year.
The generation that is flexing its political muscle most conspicuously in 1988 is not the Baby Boom but the Senior Boom. Elderly voters have a real generational issue--the protection of federal entitlement programs that are under threat because of the deficit. Seniors are mobilizing to meet that threat. They might break the Republican lock if the Republicans are foolish enough to propose serious entitlement cuts.
Every election offers voters two kinds of choices: an ideological choice ("Which candidate is closer to my beliefs and values?") and a referendum on the incumbent ("Am I satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going?"). The Democrats cannot win an ideological election anymore. That is the message conveyed by the electoral-college data. In moving south and west and out to the suburbs, too many voters have shifted from the pro-government to the anti-government side. They identify as taxpayers, not as beneficiaries of public spending, and they are more likely to see government as interfering with them than as protecting them. They can get what they need from government by keeping the Democrats in charge at the legislative level. The Republicans seem to have the edge on executive qualities--leading and directing--while the Democrats are better suited to the legislative tasks of protecting and providing.
The Democrats can, however, win a referendum. That is the message conveyed by the polls. American voters want change, as long as it is not too much change. They want to preserve the two leading accomplishments of the Reagan presidency--lower inflation and a greater sense of military security. But they want the new Administration to correct Reagan's mistakes--the deficit, the Iran-contra approach to foreign policy, the sleaze factor--and to pay more attention to social and economic justice. What the Democrats have to do in 1988 is turn themselves into a usable opposition. If they present themselves as a liberal party, the electoral college will do to them exactly what it did in 1968, 1972, and 1984. But they can't become a conservative party either. Liberals are right when they say that faced with a choice between two Republican parties, the voters will choose the real thing every time. The answer is for the Democrats to define themselves as the party of change. Instead of posing an ideological choice, in which people are asked to vote their beliefs and values, the Democrats must do exactly what Ronald Reagan did in 1980- forget ideology and turn the election into a referendum, a choice between continuity and change. Once the Democrats win, they will have ample opportunity to convince the voters that their principles are correct. All they have to do is show that they work.
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(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Looking at this in hindsight, Bush is doing great. Check out the poll numbers on Dukakis and Bush in the spring. I think it is important to look at all the polls and trends and see how patterns continue...let's stay cool, gang.
Some things never change.
The article is still relevant, but the closer (and more unsettling) parallel is to 1992. The criticism and attacks on today's incumbent are very similar to those made about his father. Kerry, though, may prove to be more of a hapless Dukakis than a seductive Clinton, and Perot shows no signs of stirring this year.
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