Some Thoughts on Realignment

There are quite a few signs that we are seeing something of a realignment, or at least, the initial flowering of one.

I remember the taxonomy of the political coalitions back in my college classes, which were overlaid with the assumption that while we may see drifts here and there, the basic structure would remain. In a report, the Manhattan Institute cites one political science textbook from 1998 which details what were formerly considered the party distinctions: “lower-status people, those with less education, those with low incomes, recently immigration ethnic groups, racial minorities, and Catholics are more likely to vote Democratic. Higher status people, the college-educated, those with high incomes, whites of northern European stock, and Protestants are more likely to vote Republican.” ¹

Which of those is still true? 

Working class districts are more likely to be represented by Republicans, as is less educated America in general. Meanwhile, the Democrats have captured the managerial class. The religious front is a tad more complicated, but there are still interesting deviations from the old pattern. Catholics can be said to be “divided” (depending on where the Latinos go), while mainline WASPs first left Christianity, and then shifted over to Blue.

Racial minorities remain broadly on the Left, but they appear to be headed over to the Reds too–remarkable given the extreme racial hostility that is alleged to be waiting for them there.

I’m not a pollster nor particularly interested in horse-race politics, but this issue in particular has fascinated me for years, as I began to feel this change on the ground. I started my “culture war” participation in an arena where the ideals of the Left theoretically clashed with its desire to be supportive of a maligned minority group. In reality, there was not much of a debate at all, and the hijab became a symbol of progressivism. Politically, this would make more sense if the minority group was powerful, or a even a long-standing of the coalition. But American Muslims were quite favorable towards the Republicans before 9/11, and outside of Michigan they wield limited power. At the very least, it was hypocritical for social progressives to treat Islam favorably while castigating conservative Christians for far lesser crimes. But over time, I began to realize that the stance towards Islam wasn’t pandering towards Muslims as a voting bloc–the reality of Islam did not matter, nor did the livelihoods of Muslims. 

The sensibilities being catered to instead belonged to educated white liberals who defined themselves by their tolerance towards groups disfavored by the majority. It was here where I first began to notice the incredible power of this bloc–although I continued to remain in denial for quite some time. (When I pictured “political dogmatism”, the picture in my mind was a purple-faced, sweaty man yelling from the pulpit of some mega-church, not the soft-spoken, kindly NPR listener. Eventually, I accepted that even the sandal-wearing can be politically powerful, oppressive even.)

I’m getting off track here, so I’ll jump to the short of it: I believe what we are seeing now is the extended fallout of the political “white flight”. When the educated whites began to shift from Red to Blue, their strengths in coordination, resources, and institution dominance forced everyone else to reconfigure. I suspect their abandonment of the Right was a necessary condition for the ascendency of Trump–their absence tacitly weakened the GOP establishment until it collapsed under the weight of the Trumpian challenge. 

I have some predictions as to how this might play out in the coming years, if indeed it is true that we are in the middle of a re-alignment. 

• Educated whites might make for nice neighbors, but they make for tyrannical political allies. The ideological exclusion will continue to foster an increasingly inhospitable climate for minorities and new immigrants, who are more religious and socially conservative. Meanwhile, the population decline of whites overall will make the threat of white bigotry less frightening, and so minorities (particularly the “underrepresented” sort) will continue to shift over to the Reds. 

• As a byproduct of the multi-polar nature of their new coalition, the GOP will become the party of ideological “innovation”. By this, I don’t mean to say it will necessarily innovate in a progressive direction–but simply that it will accept non-conformists and demand less ideological consistency than it had in the past because it must, which will make it attractive to society's “deviants”.  

• Meanwhile the Left, which has understood itself as the champions of the “marginalized”, will increasingly resort to relying on chosen identities as its legitimizing force, with transgenderism leading the way.

• God will be everywhere and nowhere. The atheists who hate Christianity will go to the Left, the atheists on the Right will go to church. 

It is interesting to think about what the reversal will do to the underlying ideologies that the parties hold–how will “conservatism” and “progressivism” transform? Where will the old-school liberals go? 

1. https://manhattan.institute/article/the-rise-of-college-educated-democrats