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Party Like It’s 1988
Remember how well that went? We should.
Disappointment comes from events failing to meet your expectations, so I understand why many here are disappointed, angry, disheartened, and depressed. Plenty of folks hoped and expected that Tuesday night would end You-Know-Who. But I am not disappointed in the slightest with the results because I’d been expecting them for months. This is not to say I rejoice in them, am satisfied with them, or relish them in any way; merely, that I was prepared for them. And really, everyone else should have been prepared, too. We are seeing echoes of 1988.
Amidst all of the crushed optimism and the pronouncements that “this is the strongest field we’ve had in years,” our side has consistently overlooked something very important: That the people of the United States of America freely elected Barack Obama in 2008 and then — despite the ruinous havoc he and his party wreaked upon our economy, culture, freedoms, and the very rule of law — re-elected him four years later. The American people chose Obama twice. Moreover, they saw what we were selling and decided to pass, also twice. And if I am reading things correctly, they are prepared to do it a third time.
I imagine this is how the Democrats felt in 1988. They were utterly convinced that — with eight years of that horrible, demonic, senile demagogue Reagan behind them — their message would at last be heard. After all, they had controlled the House for all of Reagan’s term, and the Senate for six of those years. Surely the nation was tired of Reagan and would embrace their enlightened message, especially if it came packaged with a young, heart-throbish, charismatic candidate named Gary Hart. Yes, the field was crowded, but it was the strongest they’d had in years. Optimism ran high that the party and nation would come together in a referendum to repudiate the prior eight years.
Nothing went as planned.
For starters, there were too many candidates (nicknamed, for a time, “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs”) and they were all of the sort we would find familiar today: a mix of ideologues, hacks, in-it-for-vanity types, and improbable long shots. Hart, the hope of many, was embarrassed out of the race before the primaries even began (though he later tried to jump back in). Of the strongest at the start of the primaries, we had a matchup of Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Jesse Jackson, Paul Simon, and, of course, Michael Dukakis. Jackson and Gore would take most of the southern states in a manner reminiscent of Huckabee decades later. Gephardt squeezed a few wins in, and even Paul Simon got a state. Dukakis — probably the worst imaginable representative for the party due to his utter lack of charisma and doctrinaire liberalism — won just enough states at just the right times to win the nomination with a plurality of votes. He was the purest liberal, at a time when the party demanded ideological purity (thinking this was what the electorate wanted).
As you may recall, he won a mere seven states in the general election that November.
You see, the Democrats had convinced themselves that — because everyone else must hate Reagan as much as they did — all they needed to do was make their case and the electorate would call on them to rescue the nation and save its soul. They utterly failed to consider that the American people hadn’t been bamboozled and actually chose Reagan three times (once via proxy) because they honestly wanted to.
But, of course, George H. W. Bush was no Reagan. He lacked the old man’s charm, convictions, and ability to troll the Democrats. With the help of Perot’s wildcard candidacy in 1992, the Democrats finally came back into power.
We are now experiencing our own version of 1988. We have had a crowded field, ideologically pure candidates (Rubio and Cruz), and a hotly-contested primary with the leading candidate someone winning by pluralities. Moreover, we are failing to grasp — and forgive me the repetition — that the electorate freely chose Obama twice, and seems to be looking for his successor, either to cement his ideological legacy (Hillary Clinton) or someone to rule, like Obama, with pen, phone, and bluster.
We should also grasp that, like Bush 41, this successor is inheriting a whirlwind of events and may not last beyond a single term. The debt crisis ever looms. The world order of the last 20 years is crumbling. The economy is in poor shape. The electorate is more fractured than perhaps any time since the 1850s. Obama’s coalition will not hold together in the hands of anyone less capable, and the Trump coalition has its own deep fault lines and capacity for self sabotage.
A lot can happen between now and the convention, of course, and Cruz or Rubio may indeed prevail over Trump and win the nomination. But looking ahead, we need to learn what the Democrats failed to learn in 1988: Our party, despite holding Congress, is ideologically out of step with the nation. The electorate is not buying what we are selling. No matter how disastrous we think the last eight years have been, the American people chose it, re-affirmed that choice, and seem poised to do it again.
But, as with Bush 41, either Clinton or Trump will have to reap events they are not prepared to face and — in another four years — our party may learn what it needs to win.
Published in History, Politics
I think conservatives projected too much onto the “keep your hands off my medicare” tea party.
People didn’t like the stimulus bill, they don’t seem to like Obamacare. The democrats are also out of step with the country. The difference is we are constantly threatening to destroy the entitlements people do like. And nobody has done the hardwork of convincing them there is an actual problem. There is a reason Huckabee, Kasich, and Trump have voters.
The other thing to keep in mind is that nobody knows how much we actually spend on stuff or put that into perspective. Nor do the people know where we get our money, or how much other people are taxed. People also don’t like how government services suck, and we keep cutting actual government to pay for entitlements. People don’t know this.
People aren’t convinced they are doing their taxes right, so obviously the rich bastards with lawyers and accountants are getting over.
A winning campaign is one of:
People don’t actually know much about the budget and nobody is doing the hardwork of informing them.
Sad, but true.
Another winning tactic could have been Law and Order. People are sick of seeing the corrupt openly get away with shenanigans.
Do not underestimate the fraud in 2012 nor 2016. This is the stock and trade of the urban democrat machine. This is what the voter ID is all about. Moreover, the people who appear in mass for Democrats after collecting their few dollars and getting bused in, do not have a clue what they are voting for. That was no doubt different for black votes for Obama, but not all of them, 100% turn out in some precincts and 100% vote for Obama is impossible. Democrats will tell you that there is no evidence of fraud which is true. It is impossible to catch without photos matching names with registered voters and follow up to identify. Try to get that done if we can’t even require photo IDs.
I do not at all discount the fraud at play, and fraud may indeed have tipped the race in a few states (the Cleveland area of Ohio comes to mind), but fraud is only useful when the race is close (Chicago 1960, for instance). With a large enough majority (or plurality) fraud gets drowned out, and even without the fraud, Obama still would have won.
I for one don’t believe for one minute that Obama won in 2012. This Chicago native has seen the Democrats up close. And by the way, voter fraud isn’t the only trick in their dirty little bag. They think nothing of tampering with voting machines. I’ve been in shock ever since 2012 that nobody looked into it more deeply.
Exactly. The second time was a real eye-opener as to the preferences of the electorate.
Helpful, but you’re over-simplifying the situation. If Americans generally wanted conservatism or limited government under President Reagan, then why did they elect so many Democrats to Congress? If the current electorate loves President Obama’s policies so much, why did they give Congress to Republicans?
Some argue that Americans prefer a government split between Republicans and Democrats. But that pretends that voters of the many states coordinate their votes to achieve a grand strategy. Presidential races undoubtedly influence Congressional elections and vice versa. But how often does a voter choose both a Democrat and a Republican to set his own representatives against each other? Almost never, I suspect.
So, what else could explain this self-defeating situation? Personalities. Perhaps a majority of active voters (or a significant proportion of them) are voting less on the basis of ideology and more in response to the charms of individual candidates, particularly when voting for presidential candidates.
Thus is the consistent weakness of popular democracies. The more the US has drifted from its roots as a republic and abandoned all limits on democracy — to the point that many states no longer require even verification of identity or citizenship — the more we have opened our elections to theater, games, and wild passions.
When it comes to presidential elections, people go for personality. When it comes to Congress, they nearly always keep voting for their guy and their party. Plus Congressional districts are gerrymandered to force certain outcomes, and the Republicans have controlled the redistricting for the last couple of cycles, where the Democrats had controlled them before.
The electorate did not necessarily want limited government or conservatism under Reagan, they wanted strong leadership, optimism, and an authority figure to fix things, which Reagan provided. If they had really wanted conservatism, they would have given him Congress, even with the gerrymandering.
Just as the electorate did not want the horrendous overreach of Obama, instead voting for a “different kind of leader” to strong arm things they thought needed fixing. Obama overreached badly, of course, and so lost Congress, but he was not tossed out because he still portrayed himself as the better leader than Romney.
Skip, you may be right that the electorate doesn’t want what we’re selling. But my anecdotal experience tells me that it’s more like they don’t like the salesman or the the pitch. Much like the Democrats of the 80’s had fallen into a bland formula that actually turned people off, I think we’ve done the same. It could be the ideas themselves, but I favor trying a new salesman and new approach first before we follow Murphy into blurred lines and discontinuing products and New Coke.
That is definitely a part of it too.
That can be a weakness of a democracy, but it’s also true that personality is important in all walks of life. Personality can be a marker of confidence, leadership, charisma – all important aspects for the top office, perhaps even more important than being able to get into the wonkish weeds on specific policies.
Personality shouldn’t be the only thing, but it should be a big part of the thing because that’s how humans relate to one another in a community.
Yes, we’re facing this decision with the electorate we have, not the one we wish we had. Fidelity to founding principles has been drummed out of public school students for generations, now. The people are not republican in temperament.
As I’ve said in other threads, I believe Trump is doing this well because the people who are fed up with being bullied by Obama want to install a bully of their own. Trump fits the bill.
You have to trust the salesman before you will even consider a product you won’t like.
The repubicans seem to think breaking the faith is the way to make people totally trust them.
Agreed. Trump is the candidate of revenge. Many people who vote Republican would say they respect rule of law and limited government as general principles, but would quickly jettison those principles when offered opportunity for revenge and domination. They want a strongman.
Polls regarding values are useless because they reveal values only in isolation and not in competition with each other. They also represent generalities, which are much easier to support or reject than values embodied in a particular person or situation.
The strong man thing is only partially right, and not in the way I see it used here on Ricochet. They (I use this with all the usual caveats: nothing is monolithic) don’t want a strong man like Pinochet, they simply want someone who isn’t timid, incompetent, and beholden. Add in that Trump is actually wooing people who the right likes to brag about having read out of the movement decades ago, and you have the makings for some serious political crushes going on.
A mix of both, I imagine. I won’t pretend all Trump supporters are the same.
Speaking of revenge, y’all might enjoy this mild poke at Trump.
Eminent domain? Bringing libel cases against critics? Exhibits a willingness to manhandle illegals to deport them (that’s gonna make a lovely picture)?
Sure, he might not have his own police force round up opponents and dispose of them, but I have no idea what his limiting principles are, and neither does anyone voting for him.
He’s not an ideologue, I think we can agree. Which leaves us pretty much deciding whether he’s utilitarian or a might-makes-right kind of guy. Have you seen his WWF video?
Yeah, I’m sticking with “bully.”
Which is what a large part of the electorate wants. Obama has been a bully too.
Do you think his attempt to lobby for eminent domain as a private citizen is representative of what people like about him? I don’t. I really doubt most people would know what you’re talking about (Ricochet being a place for informed individuals).
I’m not sure what you mean by “a willingness to manhandle illegals “, and I take the bit about how he might not use his own private police to round up opponents and “dispose of them” as flat out paranoia (I don’t say that angrily or as an insult – I just figured direct was better than wasting words on beating around the bush). What evidence do you have that he has any more desire or ability than any other politician right or left to round up his opponents and dispose of them? How did we all move from thinking him shallow, vulgar, and boorish to thinking of him as a fascist pining to “dispose” of people?
How did we all move from thinking him shallow, vulgar, and boorish to thinking of him as a fascist pining to “dispose” of people?
.
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Saying that people who support his primary opponents should watch out just might have something to do with it.
Are you saying he actually threatened to physically dispose of people who don’t support him?
He made a threat of unspecified nature. Now, maybe that means he’ll do nothing worse than Obama, making sure they get audited and harassed by the administrative state and getting them imprisoned should they break any laws, the way Nakoula Nakoula has been.
And that’s assuming he doesn’t decide to abuse power any more than his predecessor.
What was the threat he actually made?
Ed, you just blew by this part of my statement. Do you dispute it? You brought up Pinochet, not I.
I’m saying he’s a bully. I know very successful, very smart, very conservative, very good people who support him. The common factor I’ve discerned for their support, despite his lack of decency and presidential timbre, is their Obama-fatigue and the desire to apply force in the opposite direction for a change — in the pro-America direction.
In no way do I disparage these people. I understand the temptation. I just believe they’ll be proven to have misplaced their hope.
I hope I’m wrong.
Meh. It’s the Cubs. Everyone already knows they bury the bodies of their playoff hopes in right field.
For crying out loud! Aren’t there real things to criticize (the answer is yes) without having to gin up paranoid implications about rounding people up based on quotes that don’t imply any such thing? I realize people really don’t like Trump and with good reason, but this is counterproductive.
I’ve seen it (as an aside, I don’t think it was him). But the GOP–and the Dems, but that’s another topic–has told blue collar workers that watch the WWF, that go to NASCAR races, that don’t want to sit on their collective butts pulling down welfare “You suck.”
It’s hard to cleave to ideology when you’re taking body blows from all sides. You just want relief.
Now, Trump may not want or be willing to “just make it stop.” But with every criticism we level at Trump, Joe Sixpack could make an analogous claim of actions by the GOP writ large. Con man? Won’t do as he says? Has a totalitarian urge? Ignorant of the real world?
The GOP is vulnerable to all those charges, with very little verbal pretzelry to make the analogy fit. Trump is selling himself as someone who will fight, and that makes a big, one could say yuge difference to that segment of the population that feels like it’s getting hosed.
Be careful there Skip; you have plenty to hide too! Besides, the real location is third base under Ron Santo’s shadow.
Yes, there’s plenty to criticize — and one of the things is that the man is incredibly petty and vindictive. Given the jerk he is to little people now — and how he doesn’t seem to feel that laws ought to restrain him — I really don’t want to make him the most powerful man on the planet and trust that at the age of 68, now he’ll learn how to be a responsible adult.