Jay Cost: An Incipient Realignment? A Response to Judis and Teixeira

This essay is a response to a fascinating article by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira entitled "Back to the Future: The Re-emergence of the Emerging Democratic Majority." Judis and Teixeira argue that the 2006 election signals a realignment that favors the Democratic Party. I think their theory is underdetermined, and in this essay I shall offer my justification for that position.

First, let me make clear that what follows is a non-partisan critique. I am not going to try to convince you that the facts point toward the opposite of what Judis and Teixeira argue. I'm not going to try to convince you that the GOP is on the rise, and that 2006 was an aberration. I am, rather, going to argue that the epistemological foundation of their entire project is unstable, and - as a consequence - Judis and Teixeira fail to support their hypothesis. Simply stated, this kind of argument is very tricky, and Judis and Teixeira fail to make it.

What is a political realignment? To put it succinctly, a realignment is a broad-based, deeply-felt, and long-lasting change in the partisan orientation of a segment or segments of the electorate. Realignments can be one of two types: secular, or slow-moving evolutions in partisan preference that occur over a period of time; critical, or sudden shifts to one party or another that do not have a historical antecedent.

Lots of people like to predict realignments. Every post-election political science conference you attend, you will find at least one panel with at least one person pushing the idea that the last election was a signal that a new realignment might be a-comin'. I avoid those panels. I think that predicting realignments as they are starting to occur, as

The problem with the “Emerging Democratic Majority” (and the “Emerging Republican Majority” before it) is that it misunderstands that the parties, themselves, are dynamic — they aggressively compete for the middle of the electorate, changing ideologies in pursuit of the majority, and thus maintaining something close to equilibrium. Ultimately, it’s the people who lead and the parties who follow.

Long periods of dominance in a house or office usually fall apart on close scrutiny, which reveals a maintenance of political equilibrium as the “majority” party experiences internal swings in ideology and policy and external competition and checks and balances.

The Democrats reacted to their 2004 defeats by aggressive recruiting of the Webb-Tester-Casey type “moderates” and the Sherrod Brown-type populists for the Senate, and the legions of retired and veteran military officers they ran for the House. The failure of the immigration bill demonstrates that these were real (you might even say sincere) changes, rather than fake outs to a vulneraable electorate.

Republican reactions to their 2006 defeat and to the demands of the people are equally as clear. Mitt Romney — who is if nothing else the golden child candidate of corporate America — has committed against immigration amnesty.

None of us has a crystal ball good enough to say where on the 2007 left-right spectrum we will measure the politics of (say) 2037, but you can say with almost complete certainty that the Democrats and Republicans will remain at at no worse than 55-45 political parity, radically outlying elections aside.

My own guess is that the 2037 environment will be quite skew — some things pretty left (extent of gay rights and government financial support for health care) some things pretty right (extent to which public services are privatized and competitor-ized, and funded with personal choice vouchers), some things pretty libertarianized (drugs), and some things fairly unchanged (criminal law).

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