The Minnesota DFL Meltdown: Why it matters, why it is overdue, why it is mostly good

The meltdown of the Minnesota DFL was entirely predictable.  It is  also overdue and mostly good.  The roots of  this implosion  can be located in its failure till now to address significant changes in Minnesota, ranging from structural forces in the state to demographic ones.  But simply the cause is that the DFL failed to gradually reform, forcing an abrupt crisis that is happening now, at a most critical if inopportune time.
The DFL implosion parallels one found with the national Democratic party.  Nationally the Democrats are facing their failures to rebuild the lost New Deal coalition that linked labor unions, working class, and people of color.  Unions are all best decimated and will meet their final fate in a few weeks when the Supreme Court kills them off in Janus v. AFSCME, in part because when given the chance, Obama and the Democrats took them for granted and did nothing to change the law to help them modernize.  Democrats long ago abandoned working class when they became a corporate party chasing Wall Street and rich donors while ignoring the growing gap between the rich and poor in America. Now a new generation expresses disdain for these Reagan and now Trump Democrats, seeing them as ignorant, racists who are not worth courting.  And while yes Democrats still appeal to people of color for votes, how much they really deliver for them versus take their vote for granted is a matter of serious debate.
The crisis of the national Democratic party is one lacking a compelling narrative, it is one  of having a one-size-fits-all campaign strategy well suited to run in urban settings but largely ineffective in rural and often suburban areas.  It is a party facing an existential crisis as the aging Baby Boomers and soon Gen Xers  exit politics and it is unable to talk an agenda relevant  to Millennials and soon Gen Z.  It is a party whose divide and problems surfaced in the 2016 clash between Clinton and Sanders, where many Democrats stayed home because they could not stand to vote for another neo-liberal.  It is a party whose problems are summed up by saying that their rationale or narrative in 2016 was that “We are not Trump,” and who may, if they are lucky, this year, squeak out a victory in 2018 on running against something and not for something.  This is the problem of the national Democrats.  Trump is only the latest external threat to the Democrats, both externally and internally.
The Minnesota DFL faces similar challenges.  It is a party still living in the past, assuming  that the political landscape of the state is the same as it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago when the DFL  was the majority party.  The statistics fail to show that.  It is a Blue state gone Purple and maybe headed Red.  It is a state where the party still pays homage to fallen and past party leaders and lives in their shadow.  Yes Humphrey, Wellstone, McCarthy, and Mondale were great figures, but they represent a different political area.  The Minnesota DFL is an insular party where its one-size-fits-all campaign strategy has reduced its political base to a few  urban cores and no more than maybe 10 or so counties.  It is a party occupied by an ideology of Baby Boomers and some Gen Xers, and it is a party with a leadership looking backwards and not to the future.  It is a party facing an existential crisis.
Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham wrote in his  Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics that every 30 or 40 years American politics and parties are characterized by a critical realignment.  Driven by economic or political crises, American history  demonstrates the need for parties and political to change, forcing changes in party labels, coalitions, and alignments.  For too long too Democrats nationally and the DFL in Minnesota have needed to  critically realign.  Changes in the economy and political changes, driven by racial and generational  demographics, necessitate the DFL to change.  This is what is happening now.
The DFL change began five years ago in Minneapolis with Betsy Hodges.  It was a DFL without the F and L.  Hodges had an opportunity to ride the wave of change but she was simply too inept to manage it.  Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter are a second wave of the change, how they respond is too soon to tell.  Now what has happened over the last few days is another sign of a party torn in lots of directions.  Murphy, Walz, and Swanson at the gubernatorial level represent three wings of the party, three ideologies, and three strategies on how to campaign in the state and forge winning coalitions.  The divide played out at the DFL convention with the fight over the attorney general nomination and subsequent filings for the office, and it plays out in replacing Keith Ellison. 
Much of this is destructive.  Many of the candidates running appear to be in it for themselves and not for the party of state.  Many seem to lack the experience or qualifications for the job, and many in choosing to run seem to have conceded that the State House of Representatives is a lost cause and are abandoning it for higher office.  All of this is unfortunate, coming at a time when control for so  many institutions and levers of powers in Minnesota are at stake. 
But much of this behavior is also understandable.  It comes at a time when the party has sat on reform and change for too many years and where new leaders are demanding that the party reflect  their generation’s interests and needs.  Short term it is not clear how well the DFL navigates  this meltdown, longer term it is too soon to tell the results.   But this meltdown matters, it is overdue, and maybe mostly good.

A Tale of Two Parties: The Challenges Facing the Republican and Democratic Parties in 2016

            In contrasting ways both the national Republican and Democratic parties are divided and dysfunctional, facing terrific challenges as they enter the 2016 elections.  Their respective troubles speak to many issues, but among them is both a generational shift occurring in the US and the failure of the establishment in the parties to keep pace with these changes.  Political scientists like to speak of critical party realignments.  These are processes where parties redefine themselves, adopting new policies and coalitions to reflect the changing political landscape.  Realignments are necessary for political survival.  Yet in so many ways, what we are seeing with the Republicans and Democrats are realignments that are either going in the wrong direction or which are stalled, thereby contributing to the problems they face as they enter 2016.

The Republicans

            When Abraham Lincoln in 1858 gave his famous “A house divided against itself cannot stand” speech he was referring to a country torn by slavery not a House of Representatives and Republican Party divided against itself.  But that is exactly what we are witnessing now.  First it was the presidential race where the so-called establishment party candidates with governing experience (Jeb Bush for example) are losing to the outsiders (Trump, Carson, and Fiorina) or to the hard right (Cruz).  But now the House of Representatives is a mess: Boehner is out, McCarthy is out, and the Liberty Caucus of the House (aka the Tea Party members) is looking to weaken the Speaker’s position and pull the Republicans even farther to the right and into even a more confrontational mode against Obama, Democrats, and really government and the institution of the House itself.  One thought it was bad enough that the Republican House could not accomplish anything in the last four years, now it cannot even rule itself.  It is a party hugely divided against itself, and against its future.

            The Tea Party has won.  They have achieved a critical realignment of the Republican Party, remaking it in is conservative image.  It took five years but now they have enough clout to at stalemate the party, if not perhaps completely take it over.  Critical realignments of parties are good–they are ways to realign the base and policy preferences of the party so that it will be able to survive and reflect the changing and evolving political landscape.  Yet the critical alignment of the Republican party is retrogressive–it is a party taking it backwards in time. 

            The new Republican Party is one that seems to represent not a new emerging demographic of America–one that is more multicultural and racially diverse–but one that is a throwback to the aging base of its that will literally die off in the next few years.  Phrase otherwise, the future belongs to the Millennials but the Republicans are still locked into the politics of the Silent generation.  They are adopting views on immigration, abortion, GLBT rights, and taxes that are clearly at odds with those views held by the Millennials.  Moreover, they are hardly a populist party.  Their views on GLBT rights, guns, and money in politics are in clear opposition to where public opinion in America is headed, and also to where majorities of their own members are in some cases.  Throw in their views on taxes and it is clear that the new GOP is a plutocratic one, increasingly anachronistic and at odds where history is headed. Contrary to the claims of some that the Republicans are the party of no, they actually do have an agenda.  It may not be one that they can govern on, but they do seem to have an emerging an clear narrative, even if that narrative is one that is a throwback in time and to a set of views that is so many ways take them back to a world before the New Deal.

The Democrats

            The best thing the Democrats have going for them is the Republicans.  Yet the Democrats too are a divided party–just look at Clinton versus Sanders.  Clinton is still leading in the national polls and have a ton of party regulars and leaders supporting her, but polls show little enthusiasm for her among many of her supporters. She is the safe candidate, although one that the polls again suggest may not be able to win over critical swing voters in swing states.

            Sanders speaks to a base of the Democratic Party fed up with its institutionalism and elitism.  Obama  disappointed, he helped the banks and Wall Street and never did much for workers, unions, and middle class America.  He now seems paralyzed in waning presidency.  Sanders offers something Obama, Clinton, and the Democrats have not had since 2008–a narrative for why they should govern.  “Change” was great in 2008 but since then what has been the narrative for the Democrats?  What is the message they offer for why they should stay in power and govern?  Simply saying the Republicans are nuts is not enough.  The lack of narrative cost Democrats power in 2010 and 2014 and it was only a weak Mitt Romney that saved them in 2012.  Clinton has no narrative in 2016, Sanders does. He has pulled near even with Clinton in fundraising, still leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, and draws enthusiastic large crowds.  Clinton for now has huge advantages further down the line, even if Biden enters the race. Clinton should be able to wipe out a Socialist running as a Democrat, yet her failure to do so speaks to her weaknesses and to the dangers facing a Democratic Party establishment that has too quickly endorsed a candidate who too may not be where the future of the party is.  Clinton, like Bush, is yesterday, not the future.

            Moreover, Democrats are counting too much on “demographics are destiny” in 2016.  The demographics are against Republicans and favor Democrats, but one still needs a reason to get people to vote, and they includes offering a good candidate with views that will motivate and mobilize.  Remember 2014 where we threw an election and no one voted?   Clinton lacks the buzz, Sanders may have that.  The Democratic party divide mirrors the Republican Party–establishment v outsiders, aging Boomers v Millennials.   The problem the Democrats face right now is that while demographics are destiny, the leadership is fighting this destiny both by embracing policies and candidates who might now reflect this destiny, and by a failure to construct a narrative to take advantage of that destiny.

              It is the best and worst of times for the Republicans and Democrats.  Both have the potential to change but they approach and they direction they are taking may not where history suggests they  should move.  What also may be occurring is that the divides between and within these parties reflects more powerful divides within the US across race, class, gender, region, and religion.  Lincoln may have been right in that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  The divisions that we see politically reflect broader divides found in America society, yet neither the Democrats nor Republicans seem capable at addressing  these divides.

Les Republicans–I Dreamed A Dream (That Nothing was Wrong with Our Party)

Marco Rubio is living a dream along with the rest of the Republican Party.  It is partly  a dream that the government can do no good and the free market can do no wrong.   It is a dream that the Party’s core message is fine but that the tone needs to change.  It is a belief that being a party that is against helping one another, a party that has only one message, a party that tells the public that you are on your own and that 47% are takers, simply needs to put better candidate faces in front of the public to succeed.  It is a party that believes that opposing gay rights, reproductive rights, the Violence Against Women’s Act, civil rights, higher minimum wages, and reasonable gun restrictions is not a serious impediment to winning the votes of young people, moderates, people of color, and the poor.  This is Rubio’s dream, or perhaps fantasy.
    The challenge for the GOP is evolve or die.  While many Republicans may embrace Social Darwinism, they fail to realize the reality of Political Darwinism–parties must too evolve and change or face extinction.  While today we have become accustomed to the American two party system composed of Republicans and Democrats that was not always the case.  Over time the Whigs and have come and gone along with the Know Nothings and other major or minor parties that have graced the political landscape, only to vanquish because they failed to roll with the times.  The challenge that the GOP may be facing is that there may have been a critical realignment of the American political system but no one has told them about it.  What is a critical realignment?
    Over time membership, labels, and even the existence of who the major parties are has changed over time.  Political scientists such as Walter Dean Burnham describe critical realignments, or realigning elections, as until recently, have occurred about every 30-40 years in American politics.  Realignments were triggered by changing economic conditions or crisis that slowing build up to a very intense election that redefines the major political agenda and parties in American politics for the next couple of generations.  Among the characteristics of such elections were short lived but very intense disruptions of traditional patterns of voting behavior.  Major parties become minor; politics which was once competitive becomes non-competitive, or vice versa.  Formerly one party areas become arenas of intense partisan competition; large blocks of voters shift their partisan allegiance.
    Second, critical elections are characterized by abnormally high intensity.  This intensity includes ideological polarization within and among parties and an abnormal rise in voter participation. This intensity spills over into party nominations and platforms where "rules of the game" are changed and/or the party becomes polarized. Party coalitions shift or existing parties decompose and new or third parties emerge to reflect changes in coalitions and voting.
    Finally, critical elections produce new majority parties and policy programs and agendas that dominate the institutional structure of American government.  These parties will continue to dominate for a couple of generations until the next realignment occurs.
     Burnham has identified several critical elections over time with the first in 1800.  Here the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican and the Adams Federalist parties emerge.  The Democratic Republicans win the presidency and take over the two houses of Congress.  This party is composed of mainly farmers, former Anti-Federalists, and those from the southern and middle southern states.
    The second critical election is in 1828. The Jacksonian Democrats emerge as the major party.  The Democrats now are composed of southerners and westerns representing rising middle class merchants and investors.  The third is in 1860 when the Republican Party of Lincoln emerges.  The Republicans represent the northern anti-slavery states and those committed to the supremacy of national power over states’ rights.  The fourth critical election is in 1896 when Democrats no longer simply represent the southern slave states but they include the prairie states and farmers.  The Republicans take on the Progressive banner of reform.  Finally there is the critical election of 1936.  The FDR landslide creates a pro-government and emerging civil rights oriented Democratic Party consisting of unions, workers, Blacks, Catholics, and Jewish voters.  The Republicans are pro-business and anti-government.
    Since 1936 political scientists have been waiting for their realigning Godot. Some claim it occurred in the 1960s when Barry Goldwater drove the Republicans to the right and Lyndon Johnson signed civil rights legislation that lost the south for the Democrats.  Or maybe it  occurred with the election of Reagan and the emergence of Reagan blue collar Democrats.  One could even make the case that Obama’s 2008 election was a critical realignment that moved the Democrats in one direction and forced the Republicans further to the right as the party of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. The point is that right now the GOP is living in the Reagan past and they need to evolve and  realign much like the Democrats did in the 1980s.
    Realigning and reinvention is not easy.  But the GOP is on the road to oblivion otherwise.  Republicans have all but disappeared from the Northeast. Look to votes on issues such as the debt limits, medical marijuana,  and others, the core Republican votes are in the South with even mid-west and western states bolting to vote with moderate Democrats.   The Republicans are not just in danger of being the party of the two percenters, but also of just the South.  They are the party of cranky, greedy old  rich folks who seem not to care about anyone else.  They are the party of Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake." To think that this is a game winning strategy for the future is more than a dream, it is a fantasy.

Addendum:  One reader sent me this comment.  I think it is worth posting.

Great column.  History demonstrates that 1800, 1828 and 1860 were clearly
realignment elections.  Arguably, there was no further realignment until
1932-36, when the Democrats replaced the Republicans as the majority party.
That majority began to unravel with the defection of the southern Democrats
on account of civil rights.  In 1968 and later, the Republicans became the
national majority, but lost the Congress for a period on account of
Watergate.  The Republican majority was built on a coalition of the racist
white South and the old business Republican party; but this coalition was
inherently unstable.  Minnesota is probably at the forefront of the ongoing
realignment due to moderate business Republicans rejecting reactionary
right-wing positions and moving toward the Democratic Party.  In Minnesota,
we have the Independent Party as a way-station for many of these people.
Its inability to elect legislators and a Governor likely limits its future,
and at the same time will increase the Democratic hold on the state.  This
same realignment is occurring across the northern, far-west and into other
areas with a dominant urban population.  The best evidence of this is to
compare the electoral map of 1896 and 2008, which are remarkably similar,
but the parties are reversed.  If the election of 1800 was a triumph of the
agricultural vote, the election of 1936 was the triumph of the urban vote.
Since we have become an urban nation (with a significant majority living in
urban areas and living urban lifestyles) the question for the future is from
where will there come a second urban party.