If the decline began 40 years ago, it is only because the bargain that FDR made was, in the long run, a reward of fool's gold. The meat of the modern Democratic Party has always been the brokering of rewards and favors to constituent groups in return for their support of the Party elite. Once, it was the Kennedys, then the Clintons. Some day it may be someone else. But power in the Democratic Party always centered around the old Eastern Establishment. Later in history, the Democrats would become controlled by the dot.com zillionaires of the New Economy and Trial Lawyers. In their turn, the party elite doled out favors to Labor, immigrants, and after 1960, blacks. What held this coalition together was the mastery of the tax code by Democrats and the mastery of the House, where spending programs began. But something happened.
Political power is all about the ability to dispense patronage to supporters and withhold it from opponents. To succeed at patronage, Democrats had to cobble together a coalition each time elections occured. When victory occured, Democrats would create pork for their constituents or long term entitlements to benefit target demographic groups (such as federal support for state welfare programs to buy off blacks, poor whites, and Hispanic immigrants).But what happened when members of the coalition began to split apart?
It was the twin occurance of the Goldwater Campaign and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that first broke the coalition.
The Goldwater Campaign, despite the feckless myopia of Barry himself, gave rise to a new generation of anticommunist Conservative activists. These people were centered around the permanent campaign of Ronald Reagan and the intellectual activists at National Review, Encounter, and the Committee for a Free World. They would eventually turn the Republican Party from a reactionary, "me too" force, into an intellectual powerhouse that not only produced ideas for governance but created in the vehicle of that party the instrument for the demise of the Soviet Communist Party. These facts alone gave rise to the new decisive actor in American politics: the Republican Conservative white southerner, who had to have something more than opposition to Civil Rights to hang his hat on. Anti-communism and an advocacy of lower taxes, smaller government, and robust national defense would replace petty racism as the driving force of the "white south".
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became the Great Myth of the Democrats and cemented their hold on the black community. In truth, the Act would not have passed without the leadership of Everett McKinley Dirksen, Jerry Ford (then a rising young Turk in the House), and Prescott Bush, among other Republicans, who formed a coalition with Johnson and Dr. King to push for passage of the Bill. Most Democrats in the Senate opposed the bill. It was Johnson's Bill, however, and it was used as the ultimate act of patronage to hold blacks to the party. It was also the beginning of Racial Identity politics that would drive white southerners from the party in droves.
Democrats had to play favors to keep blacks and latinos loyal. For instance, a limited program to correct past slights against black contractors in Federal programs, Affirmative Action, metastasized to effect virtually every aspect of American economic life. This was done intentionally by liberals to keep their voters loyal to them, and remains a totem of loyalty in the black and latino communities, even though the importance of AA has been reduced over the past decade. Once the white ethnic voters who made up part of the Democrat's coalition began to rebel against identity politics, it was a matter of time before they were scooped up by Reagan. Remember, white ethnics were told by the ruling elite that if they paid their taxes and voted Democratic, they would be rewarded. Democrats were surprised, therefore, when their white ethnics started realizing that Democrats had created a system in which some Democrats were more equal than others. Reagan was there as an alternative; they defected to him en masse.
In return, Reagan reduced their taxes and gave them a strong national defense, and the eventual defeat of Soviet Communism! Reagan gave them what they wanted, while Democrats were figuring out how to divide a smaller piece of the pie among their angry ethnic and labor constituencies. Reagan changed things. Democrats became reactionary defenders of an old order. Only when Republicans became reactionary themeselves, in the person of George the Elder, did they lose.
Unfortunately for Democrats, the Son is no reactionary. He just gave Seniors a huge entitlement, which might lead to Republican control of the senior and older Boomer voters. This may be economically unsound, but it is electorally ingenious. This is a result of the political instincts of a Republican govenor of Texas who came of age with his fellow Republican governors in the nineties, while the Washington party was out of power.
Republicans changed; they learned how to give people what they wanted in more effective packages, while Democrats, and their base voters, remained wedded to a reactionary old order. We would not have been able to take advantage of the cleavage of the old Roosevelt Coalition had we had nothing to offer in return.
Be Seeing You,
Chris