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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
Yes, Bentsen was an arrogant SOB on the campaign trail and during the VP debate. His lines against Quayle were loved by the pundits, but just convinced the electorate of his arrogance.
I have no agenda whatsoever. I have no notion that I’ll convince anyone of anything – that is not my gift or talent. Just trying to keep us in shouting distance of the place where Trump is vulgar, unelectable, and not a conservative rather than moving closer to the con man, fascist, murderer-in-waiting place so much of the right wants to go to.
I do think that Trump would be better than Hillary or Bernie. I do think that Trump has at least some overlap with conservatism and actually has appeal to the fabled independent that we’ve failed to reach for so long. In short, Trump is no reason to break up the party.
If anything, the failure of the party to generate anyone who’s able to speak to what Trump is speaking to might be the failure that breaks up the party.
The failure to incorporate the Birchers, Buchananites, Reagan Democrats, and Perotistas rather than pimping them might be cause to break up the party.
The fact that we still get mocking pushback against the very notion of an establishment that has been timid, incompetent, beholden, and out of step with large sections of its base – that might break up the party.
The fact that our side seems to view political campaigns as primarily about position papers and the minutiae therein might be reason to break up the party.
Trump is incidental to all this. He’s just the only one who seems to have noticed any of these notions and is acting on all of them at once.
I was with you right up until that bolded last sentence. Where is that coming from?
The difference between 1988 and 2016, is that is a very winnable election for our side. Unless Iran-Contra was going to blow up, then no one was going to beat Reagan’s heir in 1988.
Aaron, I think you nailed it here, well said.
Right. The analogy, as all analogies, has limited application. History does not repeat itself, but it does sometimes rhyme.
the bad part is I’ve seen Obama supporters talking about the “seven years of prosperity” we’ve had under his administration.
I remember Prosperity – I was around for the 1980s and the 1990s. That was prosperity.
Obama is more like the 1970s. I was around for the 1970s too. That was not prosperity.
Indeed. The problem is that for many voting today, they do not remember the 80s, and their memories of the 90s are dim. Moreover, those who do remember have had their memories clouded by hearing 20-30 years of condemnation of the 80s as a time of greed rum amok, to say nothing out outright lies about what happened and why. They simply do not believe that things could have been that good for that many, instead believing lies about nonsense like the so-called “Homeless crisis”, and other similar rot.
I posted this somewhere before. I was talking with a young friend of mine about Biden. He’d never even heard about the plagiarism (or the hair plugs). I’m sure future generations will be fed a version of Obama that’s somewhere between Mother Teresa and Jesus.