It's The Structure, Stupid

Jerome Armstrong: "What's more, though the notion of bipartisanship as exemplified by folks like Sam Nunn and Unity08 may sound laudable, as I've written at length before the bipartisanship of the 1970s and 1980s was a byproduct of the changing partisan leanings of the electorate coupled with decades-long Democratic dominance on the congressional level, two conditions we do not see today."

I'm not sure I agree with that in all the details, but it really is remarkable that for all the bellyaching about the decline of bipartisan behavior in DC there's very little attention paid to the fact that there are actual reasons this has happened beyond Newt Gingrich being a meany and bloggers being too shrill. The Jim Crow South gave rise to an odd structure of American political institutions whereby both of the parties contained substantial ideological diversity. This had the benefit of setting the stage for a wide array of cross-cutting alliances. It came, however, at the cost of consigning a substantial portion of the population to life under a brutal system of apartheid ruthlessly upheld through systematic violence.

After that system collapsed, there was a two decade or so period during which the voters and parties were re-aligning themselves during which we had cross-cutting alliances but no apartheid. And now the aligning process is done, so we have two parties where essentially all Democrats are to the left of essentially all Republicans and so you have relatively few genuinely bipartisan coalitions.

Comments

"The Jim Crow South...had the benefit of setting the stage for a wide array of cross-cutting alliances. It came, however, at the cost of consigning a substantial portion of the population to life under a brutal system of apartheid..."

This is a good point. Bipartisanship before the civil rights movement of the 1960s typically meant that Southern Democrats and Republicans cooperated to keep anti-lynching or civil rights legislation from becoming law and to remove enforcement provisions from any law that did pass (see Civil Rights Act of 1957).

Moreover, bipartisanhip during my adult life has seemed to be Democrats caving into Republicans. I think of how Dems are forced into bipartisanhip in order to court conservatives in their state. Breaux in LA, Bacchus (sp?) in MT, Nelson in Nebraska, etc...

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 20, 2007 3:39 PM

"cross-cutting alliances."

Rimshot!

Posted by sherifffruitfly | August 20, 2007 3:54 PM

I think that what Matt misses is that it is possible to have partisan division over issues while still having less partisan rancor. And that gets us back to Newt Gingrich and people of his ilk.

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 20, 2007 3:55 PM

Southern Democrats no longer support racial segregation. (Neither do Southern Republicans.)

This doesn't mean that all Southern Democrats are to the left of all Southern Republicans.

Posted by theodoric | August 20, 2007 4:05 PM

The weirdness of American political Party identification and composition did not begin or end with Jim Crow or its reform. The decline of all other determinants of party identification has contributed to the nearly pure, ideological worldview division, which now dominates American politics. Catholics no longer vote predictably as Democrats; union membership has declined, and so has enthusiasm for mainline Protestant churches as structures for social identity and status.

It never got much publicity, but Republican Yankees and Democratic urbanites fought over political power in New England viciously right into the 1960's. One-man, one-vote had profound impact on the politics of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, just as it did in the South. Racism dictates the politics of South Dakota just as much as Mississippi; it is just the race in question are Native Americans.

But, additional historic detail just reinforces your basic point: the nearly pure alignment of political identification with ideological worldview is a new, capital fact of American politics and must have implications for patterns of governance, which are different from the past.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | August 20, 2007 4:06 PM

fyi ... that was Jonathan Singer who wrote that at MyDD, not Jerome Armstrong.

Posted by BriVT | August 20, 2007 4:07 PM

It came, however, at the cost of consigning a substantial portion of the population to life under a brutal system of apartheid ruthlessly upheld through systematic violence.

Interestingly, many of the people who go on and on about "how much better things were in the good ol' days when there wasn't so much partisan rancor" tend to support a sort of neo-liberal/neo-conservative "consensus" on foreign policy, trade issues ("free trade"), etc., that has traditionally been associated with commodity exporting states and regions like the old South. Also, they tend to have a very manoralist sort of world view (only the "serious thinkers" should have a space at the table, not those unwashed masses and dirty/hippy bloggers ... and people who are too interested in "political gain" or who are too uppity are bad ...).

These people certainly are not racist or anything like that, but their nostalgia for a political state of affairs that was so dependent on the old South being what it was is very much indicative of their general (economic) world view, eh?

Posted by DAS | August 20, 2007 4:10 PM

When people bellyache specifically about the decline of bipartisanship in foreign policy, I think there is another factor at work, unrelated to the regional alignment of domestic coalitions. Following WWII, we entered a period of "cold war" that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union. So from 1941 until 1991, we had a half century of a permanent "wartime" foreign policy - and a massive and unprecedented national security state took shape as the structural instrument of that policy. A state of war with a huge attendant war bureaucracy that continues across several successive administrations, of different parties, naturally produces a tendency toward unity and consensus at the institutional policy-making level.

So natural and habitual does this state of affairs and manner of thinking seem to all of the professionals who received their educations and came of age during those wartime conditions, that they believe the country's foreign policy should always be that way, and that foreign policy decisions should be insulated from the ordinary democratic political process, and the many competing values and outlooks that process expresses, just as command decisions by warring generals are not left up to the voting public.

Since the end of the Cold War, foreign policy and national security practitioners have been desperate to elevate some new global menace to the status of a global war or its moral equivalent, and they continue to reach back into the recent American Cold War past for their inspirations: Kennen's X letter, a global Islamofascist menace reminiscent of International Communism, Chinese Illiberalism conquering the third world, The dark forces of un-democracy requiring that we form a new Free World Concert of Democracies, Russian Authoritarianism requiring a revived and ever-expanding NATO in eastern Europe, etc.

It should also be noted that beyond the fact that this approach to the world and government reflects a habitual style of thinking, a permanent wartime foreign policy also reflects the personal economic interests of the many people who constitute the extensive military and bureaucratic ranks - including the intellectual ranks - of the imperial national security state.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 20, 2007 4:20 PM

think that what Matt misses is that it is possible to have partisan division over issues while still having less partisan rancor. And that gets us back to Newt Gingrich and people of his ilk.

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 20, 2007 3:55 PM

Dilan is right....the level of partisan rancor is dependent upon how badly each side wants to win, and that, is directly proportional to the stakes involved. I think, once again it boils down to who has something to gain and who has something to protect.

Hizzhoner

Posted by hizzhoner | August 20, 2007 4:20 PM

The thing to recognize about third Parties is that it is first-past-the-post electoral systems, and particularly Presidential politics that work against them. In American Presidential politics, third-parties usually prove to be either ineffectual (Lincoln 1860 won against 3 opponents, but had an Electoral College majority even against all 3 combined) or served to elect the other guy (Wilson 1912 was elected only because Roosevelt took most of the Republican vote away from Taft). Nationally, in Presidential politics, third parties are self-destructive, gaining neither power nor office.

But, in a legislature, a third party occupying the middle is advantaged, gaining power for small numbers, if they command the margin for a majority. In governance, in a legislative context, third parties, in some circumstances, are favored.

In Britain, third and fourth parties in the legislature have been exploited along with shameless gerrymanders to make it possible for one Party to govern with modest electoral "majorities" of less than 40%! Not having to gain 51% of the vote allows the Parties to be more ideologically coherent, and to cater less to the least-informed and least-involved parts of the electorate. It is not exactly an endorsement of the majority-rule principle.

The Democrats appear to be trending toward becoming a bi-modal majority Party with two clusters: a conservative-moderate group and a liberal-progressive group.

There are a lot of dinosaurs in the liberal-progressive group, who will soon exit the stage due to age; and there are some certifiable DINOs among the Blue Dogs in the moderate-conservative wing, along with some far more militant moderates, radicalized by Bush. It is hard, therefore, at this stage to judge how the younger leadership of the liberal-progressive group will behave, when they finally emerge; and it is also hard to say how easy the moderate-conservative group will be, for Republicans to manipulate.

But, it ought to be clear that "bi-partisan" has become a bumpersticker for people, who want to continue reactionary/conservative governance, and who fear that a governing alliance wholly within a majority Democratic Party will emerge in 2009. It is even possible that progressives leading conservatives, with the Democratic Party might become a dominant pattern of governance, with a significant habit of accomplishment. We can all dream.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | August 20, 2007 4:29 PM

I don't get why people think arguing over party identification now could possibly be worse than having Congress argue over whether black people were actual human beings or not! I mean, I think that both Reagan and Gingrich specifically did a lot to sort of pit the parties against one another in a rhetorical war of ad hominem, which is of course bad. But the idea that things are so bad now when they were once all nice and peachy, why do grown adults continue to espouse this idea?

Posted by onceler | August 20, 2007 4:33 PM

Southern Democrats no longer support racial segregation. (Neither do Southern Republicans.)

If you'd ever stood nearby a Southern Republican while he tends the bbq grill (or seen Borat), your paranthetical would read a whole lot different.

Posted by ed | August 20, 2007 5:28 PM

What?

Posted by Naveen | August 20, 2007 5:41 PM

"This doesn't mean that all Southern Democrats are to the left of all Southern Republicans."

Isn't that the point? If Southern Democrats aren't to the left of Southern Republicans, then we have a problem, and bipartisanship as it unfolds in reality is a symptom of that problemn not some kind of dreamy solution to partisan ills. For example, how many times during the 1990s did Newt Gingrich explain that his policies were "bi-partisan" because Zell Miller signed on? He did that ALL THE TIME, because Zell Miller (which he made clear in 04) was a functional Republican. His "bipartisanshihpf" was simply cover for misidentification.

Democrats need to create a veto-proof majority through ideological suasion. That doesn't mean they can't work with Republicans when interests really intersect, but it does mean that sometimes (many times) compromise is not the answer.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 20, 2007 5:55 PM

Jim Crow was always but, only towards the end, conspicuously racist. Mostly it was a system of bi-partisan concession-tending and coalition government whereby Northern and Southern Whigs carved out turf within and divided responsiblity for government between the two nominal parties.

For very serious or just wealthy people, setting aside responsible, two-party government was needed to bind-up the wounds of Civil War and Reconstruction. They would go on to build an "American Empire" from sea-to-shining-sea, then a "Blue Water" Navy, and, finally, an Anglo-American co-dominium that won the Great, World, and Cold Wars.

What is not to like about that for an Anglo-American overclass, North or South? They never had much use for republican democracy and noting but contempt for Shaw's militia or Jackson's First Brigade. Now, they bow and scrape before the generals and admirals of our rank-inflated, long-time hire military establishment -- the Pentagon Parody of Horse Guards Parade, The Admiralty, and Whitehall.

And, Texas has a Jim Crow Election Code to this very day. At first, it was "property-qualified" ballot access, now it is computer-aided, "credit-scored", ADA-compatible access to electronic polling that substitutes for popular elections.

There is not and never was a racist word in the Texas statute. Indeed, it has been routinely updated with politically-correct language. The historic and quite reasonable disenfranchisement of what were once called "idiots and morons" is now styled "mentally incapacitated persons", for instance.

In fact, the "cringing liberals" kept the Texas Election Code in place and effectively minimized political participation rate even while biasing it against "the poor, the young, and the non-white" in Texas because they hoped to dominate the same one-party system that segregationist Democrats had previously run. Of course the cringing liberals thought about the children and were exquisitely sensitive and inclusive but of other demoralized "clients" but not well informed juries or armed citizens.

That all makes a difference, and they failed:

The GOP, consisting mostly of segregationsist ex-Democrats, runs Texas now.

They obviously blabber about Guns, Gods, and Gays, but they took over handily enough posing as moderates, and do not reciprocate or cut the liberal Democratic minority the same slack that the conservative Democrats cut the liberal Republican minority before 1974.

So, what is going on in this ex-Confederate State, this Great Province of Texas?

Well, the GOP wants to represent the rentier-class exclusively. They are all Whigs now and figure they can get middle-class people to think a vote for them will make them rich too.

Who are the "Hold Harmless" Democratic minority but their handmaidens in this regard, bailing out the rich on the pretext of helping the poor. But, seriously, who needs them to do this?

The great land-owners and concession-tenders -- a tiny fraction of the population eligible to vote but amost all the net worth in Texas or any other ex-Confederate state -- find it altogether more genial and downright cheaper to subsidize Republicans exclusively.

The great new development here is not an overt or covert Whig Party or "Federalists" who despise the Bill of Rights and prefer the "British Consitution", "English" (meaning feudal) Common Law, and big, fat three-deck "ships of the line", and so on.

It is an even more radical GOP, not comprised of ex-Democrats. They are an economic and military catastrophe. But, every time they fail, they get more, not less extreme. And, every time Vichy and Enron Democrats still clinging to minor offices or safe minority-majority districts do a deal with them, they renege and move further to the right.

The cringing liberals here were never political executives. They were legislators, mostly, and now want to retire to the bench or the lobby.

The progressive populists cannot get rid of them fast enough. Meanwhile, the GOP raises money as the ruling party here and runs against the very government they virtually own and completely control. After all, there is only one party in Texas, a single class-entity that is both the elite ruling and popular opposition party.

Posted by John Robert BEHRMAN | August 20, 2007 5:58 PM

"The thing to recognize about third Parties is that it is first-past-the-post electoral systems, and particularly Presidential politics that work against them."

Bruce Wilder makes a number of good points, but it should be noted that it is the presidential system that works against third parties, not the first past the post electoral system.

Britain, Canada, and India all have single member plurarity (ie first past the post) rules for electing legislators, just like the US does. All three countries have multiparty systems with strong third parties. New Zealand switched from single member plurarilty to proportional representation in the 1990s. The share of the vote garnered by the two big parties there didn't change (in fact it increased slightly). Under SMP, third parties would get as high as 16% of the vote in New Zealand elections, under prportional representation governments are still Labour or National led, just as before.

The main difference is that in a Presidential system, the President (and the Governor at the state level) controls all executive jobs and is the source of all patronage. If you can't elect a President you are nothing. The status of a politician in this system flows from how much he or she supports the President. The only way for opponents of the administartion to make headqay is to combine around one alternative candidate. And if the President doesn't have a majority in the legislature, as we are seeing now, he can basically tell the legislature to f--- off and still run his administration.

In a parliamentary system, a government that doesn't have a majority in the legislature is toast. So its possible for minor parties to advance their agenda by making deals to support the government of the day during periods when neither of the two big parties has a legislative majority. This happens just often enough to make supporting a minor party an effective political strategy.

Also, gerrymandering is something that only happens in the U.S. In every other democracy districts are drawn by independent commissions, and not for the purpose of keepig incumbent politicians in power. For arcane statistical reasons, the party that gets the largest share of the vote will usually (not all the time) wind up with a majority of the seats, even if it doesn't get a majority fo the vote. However, this tends to be self correcting in the long run, for if third party voters are really that unhappy with the government they tend to support the largest opposition party anyway; so the NDP lost most of its support to the Liberals in the 1990s, and to a lessor extent the same thing happened at the same time in the UK between the Liberals and Labour. Third parties tend to do well if you have a group of voters unhappy with the government for one reason or another, but are not sure they really want to put the opposition in power instead.

Posted by Ed | August 20, 2007 7:56 PM

theodoric wrote: "Southern Democrats no longer support racial segregation. (Neither do Southern Republicans.)"

Perhaps not, but when David Duke ran as the Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana in 1991 he received a majority of the white vote.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | August 20, 2007 8:06 PM

One-man, one-vote had profound impact on the politics of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, just as it did in the South. Racism dictates the politics of South Dakota just as much as Mississippi; it is just the race in question are Native Americans.

But, additional historic detail just reinforces your basic point: the nearly pure alignment of political identification with ideological worldview is a new, capital fact of American politics and must have implications for patterns of governance, which are different from the past.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | August 20, 2007 4:06 PM

I prefer First Nations people to Native Americans for nomenclature. Today's generation of same and every other of their generations definitely do not now nor at any time in the past have had any relationship to Amerigo Vespucci. That would be like us naming our capital city after the German commander at Dieppe. They themselves use Native and Indian for self-referential purposes almost exclusively, but never would refer to themselves as "American."

I would like to see the First Nations theme pushed to its logical limit: the fact that Nations have certain well-established rights to exercise controls over things like immigration, education, health and so on. In Canada we can look upon Quebec as a precedent, and not a little precedent either. They are trying as hard as they can to "Quebecois-ize" their immigrants. The reason they are doing this is because they want to increase their political power. I wish them success in this effort. Today's First Nations descendants should fight for their right to do the same thing. With one and a half million in Canada and about 7 million in the States their political power is small, but what if they could firstly get their national identity properly recognised (worldwide) and secondly double or triple their population.

What better way to get the f**k out of George Bush's America than to not even leave your home!

Posted by bleat my little face paint merchants bleat | August 20, 2007 9:09 PM

Re: If you'd ever stood nearby a Southern Republican while he tends the bbq grill (or seen Borat), your paranthetical would read a whole lot different.

I don't doubt a lot of people want de facto segregation, though probably more by income than by race (the gated community crowd probably has no issues with a Black corporate VP or neurosurgeon living up the street). I doubt you could find support out of the single digits for old fashioned de jure segregation.

Re: They would go on to build an "American Empire" from sea-to-shining-sea

The American nation already stretched from "sea to shining sea" in 1865. The only significant territiories added (permanently) later were Alaska and Hawaii and maybe Puerto Rico, whose status is somewhat vague.

Re: What is not to like about that for an Anglo-American overclass, North or South?

Other Europeans broke into the ruling class a long, long time ago. The Roosevelts and Vanderbilts were Dutch, the Astors German, the Duponts French.

Re: but what if they could firstly get their national identity properly recognised (worldwide) and secondly double or triple their population.

That should be "national identities", plural. Very plural. The native peoples were incredibly diverse, a good deal more diverse than the inhabitants or Europe and Africa, perhaps even more diverse than Asia. There's no agreement at all on the classification of their languages (are three just three families, or hundreds?), and their civilziational attainments ran from near-Paleolithic hunting-and-gathering to Bronze Age sophistication in Mexico and the Andes. Lumping them all into one group as "Indians" or "Natives" does them an injustice.

Posted by JonF | August 20, 2007 9:32 PM

As others have noted, the demise of bipartisanship largely coincides with the development of ideologically coherent, parliamentary parties on a national scale. The regional preculiarities that once played an important role in electoral politics in the U.S. are pretty much gone -- so you won't have an Ed Brooke or a Jacob Javitz on the Republican side of the aisle or a Strom Thurmond or John Stennis on the Democratic side.

I don't view this as a bad thing.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | August 20, 2007 9:38 PM

Ed: ". . . gerrymandering is something that only happens in the U.S."

Excuse me? Let's not be naive.

The potential for gerrymanders is strong in any system of single-member districts.

The use of independent electoral commissions is no bar to manipulation.

In fact, in the U.S., despite all of the hullabaloo, the composition of the House of Representatives very closely conforms with the partisan division of the electorate, nationwide, and even the Senate does not depart very far from the national partisan divide. So, in fact, gerrymandering, despite all of the talk, has had little impact on partisan division; I won't generalize as to racial and urban/rural divisions.

In Britain, by contrast, Labour won a solid majority in Parliament in 2005 with less than 36% of the vote! The two major opposition parties attracted, together, a majority of the electorate.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | August 20, 2007 9:52 PM

That should be "national identities", plural. Very plural. The native peoples were incredibly diverse, a good deal more diverse than the inhabitants or Europe and Africa, perhaps even more diverse than Asia. There's no agreement at all on the classification of their languages (are three just three families, or hundreds?), and their civilziational attainments ran from near-Paleolithic hunting-and-gathering to Bronze Age sophistication in Mexico and the Andes. Lumping them all into one group as "Indians" or "Natives" does them an injustice.

All this is true; however, I'd like to see anyone walk around downtown Vancouver repeating the last sentence to anyone in sight.

Fact is, I don't see 350 national identities flying very far. Also, in the first part of your thought is referring to America or London, England?

Posted by bleat my little face paint merchants bleat | August 20, 2007 10:05 PM

Electoral districts in Britain and Canada are drawn by civil servants, in accordance with legal guidelines. They do not draw districts to benefit any group of politicians, which is the normally used definition of gerrymandering, and in fact it would be illegal if they did this.

This has nothing to do with proportionality, which is more of a function of the number of parties, the size of the legislature, and whether districts are single member or multimember. House and Senate results are actually fairly proportional, because functionally there are only two parties in the US that contest Congressional elections (and if there was only one party, they would be completely proportional). The UK has three parties, plus a number of fringe parties and regional parties. But the current UK electoral map was not drawn to ensure a Labour victory. It would have been odd if it was, since it was put in place under a Tory government.

For those interested, the website of the English Boundary Commission, and for Elections Canada, follows:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pbc/default.asp

http://www.elections.ca/home.asp

The same system is used in Iowa, as explained in this document:

http://www.legis.state.ia.us/Central/LSB/Guides/redist.pdf

In most of the other states, politicians draw the lines to make sure that politicians are elected. This is great for the politicians, who enjoy an unusually high relection rate in US states other than Iowa. Its not good for ensuring that communities of interest are adequately represented, or for political participation. But this has nothing to do with proportionality.

Posted by Ed | August 20, 2007 10:57 PM

Does anyone really know why some office-holders (at various levels)in the South called themselves "democrats"?

Why, it was because they weren't allied with that integrationist, Abraham Lincoln, that's why. He was a Republican. Yes it goes back that far. And you thought he really freed the Negroes? Ha! Just you read the Emancipation Proclamation.

To add salt to the injury, another Republican, this time Dwight Eisenhower, had the temerity to force the races to mix in Arkansas! He did! So we did what we had to do, which was to vote for the opposition party, which was the democrats. We didn't really care what they stood for, just so long as they didn't make us associate with those people.

And that's what happened here in the latter half of the 19th and 20th centuries here in America.

The 21st century has the republicans better fixed to win elections because they have tapped into the religious mind of the typical southerner.

Most of these people really believe that a person somewhere up in the sky actually talks to them, hears them when they talk to him, and responds to their requests--whenever he feels like it, or not.

If'n he don't reply, then he must be mad at them, or something. Surely this person wouldn't abandon them. No, no, no. That's just inadmissible palaver. The man always hears us, and blesses us, donta ya see?

That's why the Democrats have been able to gain sway over a majority of the population in the American South, except when the Republicans win.

No one is allowed to tell the truth here, because that would be devastating to the entire society.

And that how it is, in the early part of the 21st century in southern America.

Posted by Abigail Wilder | August 20, 2007 11:34 PM

"This doesn't mean that all Southern Democrats are to the left of all Southern Republicans."

"Southern Democrats no longer support racial segregation. (Neither do Southern Republicans.)"

Both of these statements are lies. All Southern Democrats are to the left of any Republican from any state in the Union.

Southern Democrats no longer support racial segregation (and haven't since the Dixiecrats split from the party and went Republican) but Southern Republicans do support racial discrimination. Not as overtly as in the 1964 election, but in their actions. Such as the battle Southern Democrats are currently waging against Republicans who want school choice, which is nothing more than a move to re-segregate the school system and do it at taxpayers expense. We are fighting a tough battle here and I can't say we are winning but staving them off to some degree only since we are getting no help from the Democratic Party proper.

I don't know where Abigail lives, but the Democratic Party has always been strong in the south both before and since the Civil War, originally primarily because of anti-federalism. The south overwhelmingly voted for FDR and Truman, before Eisenhower. The only correlation between Eisenhower and the Democratic Party is that the Democratic Party split in the election prior to his and the most of the racists (the Dixiecrats/States Right Party) went over to the Republican Party. The south went solidly Democratic and voted for Adlai Stevenson. Twice. As was customary. Was Adlai Stevenson a racist? Not so much, I think. In both elections, the entire rest of the country, including every northern state, voted Republican.

Also, nothing about Texas or Texas politics translates to anything else about the rest of the South. While Texas may have joined the Confederacy, Texas has always just been Texas, and unique unto itself. I used to live there and as I am a native South Carolinian, I can tell you that there is no comparison.

Southern Democrats are working hard to retake the south from the Republicans. Every time our fellow Democrats denigrate us, dismiss us, or brings up Jim Crow in bizarre efforts to lay everything at the feet of the south, and/or the Democratic Party in the south, it sets us back. Please stop it. Prior to the current administration, the only times "The South" voted Republican in a block were the re-election of Nixon and the re-election of Reagan, both of which were landslides of the entire electorate. "The South" is not lost, it is only misplaced and can be reclaimed with very little effort. There has never been a better time.

Both parties have made an about face on many issues throughout American history. Democrats used to be anti-federalists in the 1800's. Republicans used to be the party of the abolitionists and are now the party of whites, almost exclusively.

Irrespective of Jim Crow, many times in American history both parties have been diametrically opposed for all kinds of reasons and sometimes they have worked cooperatively on issues that have concerned the country as a whole, for good and ill. Sometimes not so much. And sometimes they have literally come to blows. The dynamics involved have alway been multi-layered and diverse, and rarely, if ever, over one issue.

The idea that both parties have just completed re-alignment, as Matthew is stating here, is ridiculous considering the ebb and flow of history. Both parties will most likely continue to evolve and change as they have which is why the two party system has remained dominant in the late 18th and all of the 19th centuries. If, indeed, either becomes static and unchanging, then another party which will most likely be an offshoot of either or both of them, will rise to dominance. We may be seeing the beginning of that with the liberal and centrists (DLC) mini-schism of the present. Or not. If the battle between the Silver Democrats and the Gold Democrats over the gold standard didn't result in the demise of the party, it's unlikely that what are minor differences in the scheme of history will split it now. But, it will likely change. Which will be good for the party and make it stronger if they are able to accommodate one another and compromise on key issues. If not, and the party splits, it will be years before either split will come to dominance relinquishing all to the Republican Party.

History, which includes what happened yesterday or a moment ago, is complicated. There is never one answer nor one reason for anything.

Posted by Bluekat | August 21, 2007 4:05 AM

"The Jim Crow South gave rise to ..."

Those are words of prejudice, plain and simple. I'm a southerner who has fought against racial, religious, sexual, and any form of prejudice for my entire life. I'm deeply disappointed in Matt.

Posted by JustMe | August 21, 2007 9:35 AM