I've mentioned John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's book The Emerging Democratic Majority on this blog from time to time. I consider it an indispensable book for many reasons, chief of which is that it contains an excellent analysis of the past forty years of American politics. The rise of the right, the shrinking of support for liberalism, etc. — it's all in this book.
The main purpose of the book is to argue that various demographic trends favor the Democrats. The authors offer complicated reasons for why they believe this, which I can't reproduce here, because they rely heavily on population and employment data, election results, and the like. The basic idea, though, is that those parts of the electorate that typically vote for Democrats are growing faster than those that typically vote for Republicans. Consequently, Judis and Teixeira declared themselves optimistic about the future of the Democratic Part.
Their book appeared in 2002 before the mid-term elections, which went badly for Democrats. When the paperback edition of the book appeared, it included a new section on the 2002 election. The basic idea there is that Republicans turned security issues to their advantage, while the Democratic party ran away from them.
But, as we know, Bush just won re-election. The Republicans have scored two major successes in a row, in other words. So, ask Judis and Teixeira, is their thesis of the emerging Democratic majority still a plausible one?
They take up this question in their latest article — Movement Interruptus.
This is one to print and ponder, but here's the upshot of the essay, as I see it. The wild card is still the security/terrorism issue. At the moment, Republicans tend to get the votes of people who put it at the top of their list. Otherwise, past trends continued into the future still tend to favor the Democrats. In short, the current Republican coalition is vulnerable. Kerry was a poor candidate, whereas Bush ran an effective campaign that highlighted his strengths and revealed Kerry's weaknesses. But no major realignment occurred in the recent election.
That's good news for Democrats, of course. But I doubt the ability of the Democratic party to come up with a coherent response to the security/terrorism issue. You would think that, at the very least, after the losses in the 2002 election someone would have realized that this was a debilitating omission. I can't honestly say that I got that impression from the Kerry campaign.
Yes, of course, Kerry talked about terrorism and related issues, but he never manged to spell out his alternative in a way that voters could understand. That demonstrates a lack of seriousness, if you ask me. If you realize that an issue needs to be addressed in a serious way, then you figure out how to present your vision to the voters in a clear and compelling fashion. Failure to do so indicates a lack of sincere and sustained engagement with the issue. But it wasn't just Kerry's fault. The party as a whole is reluctant to face this issue.
Anyway, regardless of what I think about the current weakness of the Democratic party, I recommend Judis and Teixeira's essay. It contains a lot of fascinating information.
