Between Two Majorities | The Cordray Administration

[Boss_Rahm]

I've been a long time lurker here, and I finally registered so I could join the conversation on this phenomenal timeline. Well done TD!

I'd like to sketch out a scenario in which the realignment happens in 2028. Basically, I don't see a realignment happening by 2020, but I do see a more conventional Democrat defeating Trump (who survives his first term despite Mueller's investigation). Here's how it goes:

2018: Democrats gain a 10-vote majority in the House, and Republicans retain control of a 50-50 Senate.

2020: Cory Booker narrowly defeats Trump. Democrats gain a few more seats in the House, and have a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

2021: With unified control of Congress, Booker initially tries to govern from the left on environmental and social issues. But moderate Democrats in the Senate stifle his agenda. President Booker's only major accomplishment is repealing some of Trump's tax cuts.

2022: The GOP takes back the House, and gains 2 Senate seats for a 51-49 majority.

2024: A crisis hits, similarly to how TD describes it. Voters blame Booker, and elect Mike Pence as President. Republicans expand their House majority to 250 seats. They also gain 10 seats in the Senate, bringing their total up to 61.

2025: Republicans respond to the crisis with sweeping tax cuts, which prove to be ineffective. The white working class becomes dissatisfied with Republican economic policy, and shifts towards the Democrats.

2026: In a pre-realignment wave, Democrats gain 70 House seats and 10 Senate seats.

2028: The realignment happens. Pence loses in an Electoral College landslide, and Democrats win 300 House seats. They also pick up 13 Senate seats, for a total of 62 seats in the upper chamber.

[Boss_Rahm]

I am from Chicago originally, though I currently vote in PA.

If a crisis were to hit before the end of Trump's term, I could absolutely see a 2020 realignment. But if not, we'd be in an awkward position. If the status quo holds, Trump would be an underdog to win reelection in 2020, but his base is still large enough to avoid a landslide. That's why I could see a realignment taking a couple more cycles to sort out, in spite of the historical pattern.

[Boss_Rahm]

Very well written! Might want to fix that first sentence though...

[Boss_Rahm]

TD, curious what you think of the geography of Democrats' House pickups (largely in suburban districts, while losing two rural districts in MN), and how that compares to your expectations.

[Boss_Rahm]

I'm watching the Democratic debate, and both the candidates and the moderators keep referring to "The Crisis". The resemblance to this timeline is uncanny. If we're living through the crisis right now, are we about to see a realigning election?

[Boss_Rahm]

I've been a long time lurker here, and I finally registered so I could join the conversation on this phenomenal timeline. Well done TD!

I'd like to sketch out a scenario in which the realignment happens in 2028. Basically, I don't see a realignment happening by 2020, but I do see a more conventional Democrat defeating Trump (who survives his first term despite Mueller's investigation). Here's how it goes:

2018: Democrats gain a 10-vote majority in the House, and Republicans retain control of a 50-50 Senate.

2020: Cory Booker narrowly defeats Trump. Democrats gain a few more seats in the House, and have a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

2021: With unified control of Congress, Booker initially tries to govern from the left on environmental and social issues. But moderate Democrats in the Senate stifle his agenda. President Booker's only major accomplishment is repealing some of Trump's tax cuts.

2022: The GOP takes back the House, and gains 2 Senate seats for a 51-49 majority.

2024: A crisis hits, similarly to how TD describes it. Voters blame Booker, and elect Mike Pence as President. Republicans expand their House majority to 250 seats. They also gain 10 seats in the Senate, bringing their total up to 61.

2025: Republicans respond to the crisis with sweeping tax cuts, which prove to be ineffective. The white working class becomes dissatisfied with Republican economic policy, and shifts towards the Democrats.

2026: In a pre-realignment wave, Democrats gain 70 House seats and 10 Senate seats.

2028: The realignment happens. Pence loses in an Electoral College landslide, and Democrats win 300 House seats. They also pick up 13 Senate seats, for a total of 62 seats in the upper chamber.

Boss_Rahm (I'm surprised you aren't from Chicago...)

The greatest problem with a 2028 realignment in my view is a couple of things. One, the foreshadowing Presidency has already passed (Obama's). Usually, when we are between the foreshadowing and realigning White Houses, we tend to not have a minority party president. The majority coalition in waiting is already fully formed and fleshed out, just needs an addition.

For example between 1848 and 1860, the Whig-Republican coalition was already largely set. The downballot numbers proved it. By 1924, the LaFollette - Democratic bloc was adding up to 46% of the vote. The Obama coalition has proved to win over 50% of the vote twice. The Democrats downballot have demonstrated the ability to be a majoritarian coalition.

So, Booker's win and the crisis hitting - or a second stunted foreshadowing - feels weird to me. Like, his coalition is clearly there but the second foreshadowing Presidency fails? Historically, at the very end, there's a burst of support for the majority as they die out. (1852-1860, 1976-1980, 1920-1932).

The crisis always hits the majority coalition, never the minority coalition. In fact majorities change because of the majority coalition's screwing up the crisis. They often start out ordinary but mushroom into extraodinary crises.

Originally this was set to be a Walker-Portman timeline that ended in 2028. But Trump's popular vote loss ended that.

What I'm puzzled about at this point is given the weakness of the GOP majority, is  whether we're headed to a 2020 or 2024 realignment. Or a staggered Lincoln-esq realignment where Cordray realigns winning 45% of the vote and minimal Congressional gains but needs a second term to cement power.

Amid all the doom and gloom from posters on here about how our TL resembles reagante's more than this one, I would like to resurrect this discussion point for those who aren't interested in dooming.

Biden is not our guy. If he were, the Republican coalition would be in shambles, and it obviously isn't. In all likelihood, Biden's agenda will be stifled by the Democrats lack of a filibuster-proof majority in the senate and moderate democratic senators' reluctance to embrace some of the more progressive policies he's proposing. After Republicans wins both chambers of congress in 2022, his agenda will be stifled in full, leaving him with nothing but empty platitudes and a limited slate of accomplishments (the COVID relief bill and maybe an infrastructure package) from his first 2 years.

This doesn't mean the cycle is broken. Instead, it means Biden fits into our category of "failed" presidents preceding the realignment. His limited slate of accomplishments and the overwhelming disadvantage Democrats face in the electoral college will prove fatal for him (or Harris) in the next election, when the electorate will almost surely be as polarized, if not more polarized, than it was in the preceding election. A Republican victory in 2024 can then be interpreted as a final "snapping back to the mean" before a crisis so catastrophic occurs that the reigning Republican coalition is left in shambles.

Will Biden fit the traditional definition of a "failed" president? Maybe not. Maybe you can think of him as analogous to Calvin Coolidge, who himself was sandwiched between a scandalous president (Harding) and a tragic one (Hoover). Biden may preside over a strong economy as Coolidge did, although the state of the economy would be owed to the seemingly unstoppable stock market as opposed to policies enacted during his tenure. What makes Biden a "failed" president then isn't his failure to deal with the impending crisis (that would be mostly blamed on his republican successor), but rather his failure to enact the changes needed to stop the impending crisis and being unfortunate enough to be sandwiched between Trump and whoever succeeds him.

Who the realigning President could be is still unknown, although Fetterman is an interesting choice, and I know he's a favorite on this forum. I suppose only time will tell whether we really are stuck in a nation-ending nightmare or whether TD's cyclical hypothesis is true.

Love to see a three year old post of mine getting some attention, so I'll weigh in here. I actually think there's a real possibility of what TD called a "Lincoln-esq" realignment under Biden, in which Democrats win enough Senate seats in 2022 to nuke the filibuster and usher in a new era of policy. The left flank of the party (which I count myself a part of, by the way) will continue to lose policy arguments, just as it did under Roosevelt. But like Roosevelt, Biden is following the center of mass of the Democratic Party, which is moving to the left as a whole. For one example, a $15 minimum wage has gone from a fringe idea introduced by Bernie Sanders to nearly having the votes to pass Congress.

On the other hand, it's perhaps more likely that Biden ends up a failed president and a realignment happens in 2028 like I described, or in 2032. For what it's worth, every realignment that TD identified (1800, 1860, 1932, and 1980) coincided with a Class III Senate election. If that pattern holds, it would point to 2028 being the year.

Or we could very easily end up on a reagante-style path, which isn't much fun to think about.