Goodbye to the New Deal: The great Democratic coalition is now down to two constituencies

The American Spectator ^ | 4/28/2008 | William Tucker

[Aristotelian]

I don't want to sound too optimistic, but it appears that, in a year when the Democrats were supposed to make their triumphant re-entry into Presidential politics, we may be witnessing the final demise of the New Deal.

The Pennsylvania primary was a clincher. Obama has two constituencies -- African Americans and college-educated liberals. They're both passionate bloc voters and will turn out in droves. But their numbers are limited. They'll give Obama Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Illinois, and maybe California and Oregon, but that will be about it.

Hillary's votes come from the Democrats' other constituency -- blue-collar workers, Catholics, and people without a college education. Catholics rejected Obama by 70 percent. That's scary. Catholics have been a core constituency for the Democrats since the days of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. If they drift over to the Republicans -- as they were doing under Ronald Reagan -- there's very little left in the Democrats' portfolio.

I've just been reading Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man, a revisionist history of the New Deal. It's a wonderful effort and makes it clear that, although the Roosevelt Coalition was the greatest single voting bloc in American history, it was also cobbled together from very disparate elements.

Most important, it was led, for and aft, by East Coast intellectuals and university professors. The New Deal was hatched in academia and among left-wingers who had made pilgrimages to the Soviet Union. But they had the people on their side. The Republicans had messed things up hideously and there wasn't any reason not to try something new. Herbert Hoover caved to the Republican Midwest-and-manufacturing coalition to pass Smoot-Hawley and what could have been just a bad downturn became the Great Depression.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

I’d love the demise of the democrat party if the republican party wasn’t waiting to snatch up the banner of neo-liberalism and rush it triumphantly over the leftern horizon.

Bobama and the Beast suck, but I wouldn’t vote for Mcloon if you paid me a million bucks.

[lentulusgracchus]

Hillary, is doing a Republican’s, McCain’s, legwork

Don't worry. She and her "oppo" drones and her buddies in media (and she has some left, still) will no doubt have something wonderfully toxic brewed up for McCain in the general, if she survives Obama.

I can see it now, in a special glassed-in recess on her desktop, marked with a skull-and-crossbones and the legend "in case of general, break glass".

[Aristotelian]

I recall reading some years ago an in-depth expose about McCain and his questionable friends/dealings in AZ. I think there is likely plenty there to dredge up. McCain may not be McClean.

[lentulusgracchus]

if the republican party wasn’t waiting to snatch up the banner of neo-liberalism and rush it triumphantly over the leftern horizon

....which would be a moment of opportunity for conservatives, as the party system finally resolves into the two great idea-clusters of American politics: conservative and totalitarian.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

We’ll be lucky to choose between global socialism and national socialism.

[lentulusgracchus]

I'm sure he has plenty of skeletons in the closet. I've read some rumblings in the past about the generally unsavory nature of Arizona state politics.

Just look at the way Hillary looks at McCain, when she can spare a second from savaging Obama, and licks her chops.

No, she was never afraid of Rudy Giuliani or John McCain, either one.

Don't think she was afraid of Fred Thompson, either, but for a different reason: she and Slick had tangled with Fred once before, using their intermediaries (Jamie Gorelick and Richard Ben Veniste), and won. Or at least they kept Fred from getting to the bottom of Chinagate and Slick's sale of his office to the Chinese.

[SauronOfMordor]

Tucker concludes that the Democrats have now whittled down to two constituencies -- African Americans and liberal intellectuals.

Let's not forget the ever-increasing ranks of civil-service union members

[lentulusgracchus]

Erratum to my last: I think I confused the 9/11 Commission and the Chinagate hearings -- different intermediaries. Don't remember who hauled Bill and Hillary's water on China, now. Some hack senator or other.

[Rider on the Rain]

I find it hard to believe Obama will win Mississippi

So do I.

[SupplySider]

The "new deal" was simply "fear of commitment".

Great line, and apt. After all, Old Europe already has the high taxation and regulation that Democrats claim to want. Yet are "progressives" satisfied that they've achieved their utopia there? Hardly. They want actual communism.

[lentulusgracchus]

Good point: It seems to have gone unnoticed that the Clintons were actively politicizing the Civil Service when they were in office. Remember the battle cry, "too male, too pale, too stale"? Remember the "change agents" the Clintons named throughout the Civil Service, and their "protected" committees on "change"? The Clintons had political agents running all through the Civil Service playing identity politics (everybody female, brown, or black, or gay, is automatically on Team Clinton, unless they want off). I wrote Sens. Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison about it, but they apparently didn't understand what I was telling them. Gramm's staffer thought I was a white male federal job applicant who'd been passed over and thought he got a raw deal. What a joke.

[lentulusgracchus]

We’ll be lucky to choose between global socialism and national socialism.

I prefer to think of it as global totalitarianism vs. molon labe -- we know how that one turned out!

[stockpirate]

Need I remind you that we have a Stalinist all of our own in Juan McCain.

He wants to be a maverick but at the same time he wants to be able to dictate to others in our party what to think, say, write and follow him without question.

[Oldpuppymax]

It isn’t hard to believe when he will receive 97% of the black vote. But remember, that isn’t racism. Only whites who DON”T vote for Obama are racist.

[Jack Black]

Smoot-Hawley did not cause the depression, as much as Free Trade advocates like to claim that. It probably didn’t help it much, but it was absurd mondetary policy at the Federal Reserve Bank that caused the Depression. Our current Fed chairman is an expert on that, having taught corses on the subject. He, among many other mainstream economists, believes the Fed caused the depression with monetary policy. (Essentially reducing the money supply by 1/3 in a single year)