Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Amid a combative election, party realignment continued apace

Red and blue pawns covering the United States
J Studios/Getty Images

Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.

The term “ realignment ” gets used and abused a lot, because people have agreed to use it without agreeing on a definition. Traditionally, realignments are said to have occurred when majority and minority parties switch places. Starting in 1932, FDR pulled blacks and working class and immigrant whites into the Democratic Party, making it the majority party for generations. It’s a sign of how massive that coalition was that it’s been shrinking since the 1960s without Republicans ever becoming the clear majority party, though the story gets complicated with the rise in voters calling themselves independents.


For the last 20 years, the parties have essentially been tied, and it seems unlikely that will change anytime soon. But there’s still a whole lot of realigning going on. Donald Trump has accelerated the trend of the white working class fleeing the Democrats. Meanwhile, college-educated and suburban voters have moved significantly toward the Democrats.

In other words, while the parties are stuck in a logjam, the coalitions making up the parties are changing dramatically.

And that’s where the inconsistency and hypocrisy come in. Parties reflect the interests of their electoral coalitions. You can see signs of the adjustments all over the place. Republicans such as JD Vance sound a lot like anti-war Democrats from 20 years ago, railing against warmongers, chickenhawks and “neocons.” Democrats haven’t changed as dramatically, but they are far more comfortable talking about American global leadership and the importance of our alliances than they used to be.

Parties also reflect their candidates, which is why the party of philandering Bill Clinton now talks a lot about good character while Republicans fawn over Trump’s alpha dog “ manliness.”

Democrats have been far more consistent on abortion, because in a post- Roe environment it’s a winning issue. But Trump has moved the GOP toward a de facto pro-choice position, denouncing “heartbeat bills” while also insisting that states should be free to do what they please on abortion.

Neither party is coherent — or good, in my opinion — on trade and industrial policy, but Trump has definitely made the GOP more protectionist and dirigiste than at any point in my lifetime. Given the movement of rank-and-file members of private sector labor unions toward the GOP it’s not hard to imagine a new partisan divide between public and private sector unions.

The most interesting change might be on the issue of democracy itself. I don’t mean the arguments about Trump’s pernicious election fraud lies (the sorts of lies once associated with left-wing Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), but the broader debates about the Electoral College and so-called “voter suppression.”

For decades, both parties shared the flawed assumption that higher voter turnout mostly benefited Democrats in national elections. (Democrats had the opposite view in big city elections.) Voter ID laws and tighter restrictions on early and absentee voting were seen as a way to make sure that high-propensity voters — i.e., disproportionately Republican college-educated suburbanites who could be relied upon to vote — were overrepresented, and low-propensity voters — Black, Latino and rural non-college educated whites — were underrepresented. The overheated rhetoric about “voter suppression” or “election integrity” was unjustified. But the dynamic was real, because the electoral calculation was real.

After 2016, many Democrats doubled down on the claim that the Electoral College was racist or undemocratic, which was itself remarkably hypocritical given their previous boasts that the Democrats had a near- lock on the Electoral College: That’s where the phrase “ the blue wall ” originated. Bragging about your advantage in the Electoral College only to call it racist and undemocratic when it works against you is not a great look.

In 2024, the Harris campaign relied on high-propensity voters while the Trump campaign leaned heavily on low-propensity men. Assuming these trends are real and that they become the new normal, it will be interesting to see whether the parties switch their rhetoric about democracy.

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Read More

When Democracy’s Symbols Get Hijacked: How the Far Right Co-Opted Classical Imagery
brown concrete building under blue sky during daytime
Photo by Darryl Low on Unsplash

When Democracy’s Symbols Get Hijacked: How the Far Right Co-Opted Classical Imagery

For generations, Americans have surrounded themselves with the symbols of ancient Greece and Rome: marble columns, laurel wreaths, Roman eagles, and the fasces. These icons, carved into our government buildings and featured on our currency, were intended to embody democracy, civic virtue, and republican ideals.

But in recent years, far-right movements in the U.S. and abroad have hijacked these classical images, repackaging them into symbols of exclusion, militarism, and authoritarian nostalgia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump
President Donald Trump
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Give Me Liberty or a Tinpot Dictator

Peggy Noonan has been a voice of conservative reflection for The Wall Street Journal since leaving the Ronald Reagan administration as his primary speechwriter. Five of Noonan’s books have been New York Times bestsellers. Consuming every word of her weekly column keeps me politically balanced.

In her June 14-15 column titled “America is losing sight of its political culture,” she referred to and elaborated on our 47th president being America’s Mr. Tinpot Dictator. This phrase, often used to describe a leader who acts like a dictator, with delusions of grandeur and authoritarian tendencies, struck a chord. Following the title about Mr. Trump, I pursued investigative research on the topic.

Keep ReadingShow less