With Unemployment So Low Why are Wages Stagnant?

My latest blog originally appeared today in Counterpunch.


If the unemployment rate is so low why have wages for most Americans failed to go up very much recently?  The simple answer is for the very same reasons why economic inequality and social mobility in America has largely ground to a halt in the last 40 years–the decline and war on labor unions.

Last Friday the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%–the lowest rate since the 1990s.  Yet with this drop wages have yet to increase very much, especially since the Great Recession of 2008.  Why?  Venerable neo-liberal economists, such as the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, hypothesize that employers are reluctant to raise wages for fear they cannot cut them in the future. Others contend that we have not fully recovered from the recession or that the actual labor force participation rates are still high, making wage increases sticky.  All of these explanations miss the point.  Employers are not raising wages because they do not have to.  The reason is that labor unions are so week now that they cannot do what they historically have done which is to pressure employers to increase wages.

Last week was May 1–May Day.  Yet people forget why we have unions. The last 150 years of American history is the battle of workers and unions against corporations. America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the country of  trusts.  It was the emergence of the railroads, steel, big oil, and monopolies.  It was also the era of sweatshops, child labor, adulterated and unsafe foods, and the six day, 70 hour+ work weeks.  It was also the era of piecemeal below subsistence wages, poor working conditions and high injury rates, no health benefits, no retirement benefits, and no protections against discrimination and harassment.  It was the world of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Unions were illegal, and workers who stood up for their rights were beat up by the Pinkertons–company hired security–or arrested by the newly created public police forces which were created to control and brake unions.

No one should wax romantically for this era if you care about workers and the people.  America economically may have grown exponentially, but it did so unevenly, producing massive fortunes for a few but significant economic inequalities for the rest.  The America of the early nineteenth century–the one that Alexis De Tocqueville so famously described in his Democracy in America as one characterized by a general equality of conditions–had vanished.  By the time the stock market crashed in 1929 the income and wealth gap in America had literally produced two Americas:  One was the country of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the other of the depression-era novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or the Wagner Act brought relative peace to the labor market in that it recognized the right of workers to collectively bargain.  The NLRA established a process for how to unionize, organize workers, hold elections, and bargain for benefits.  It was a victory for workers, but also for the American people and the economy.  The Wagner Act was part of the New Deal, it was one element in a package of legislation to restructure the economy and fix the market failures in the economy.

The NLRA had more than an economic purpose or impact.  Many of the economic problems in America are political.  They are produced by asymmetric political power between corporations, the rich, and rest of the people.  Unions at their best can be what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., once called the countervailing power to help limit the power of businesses and corporations.  The Wagner Act thus reset the political equilibrium in American politics to help favor the people.

And it worked.  Labor density and unionization in America dramatically increased in the United States, peaking in 1954 with over 35% of the workforce collectively bargained.  But what did unions accomplish?  There is powerful evidence first that they brought tremendous economic benefits to American workers and the economy.  They produced the minimum wage, the eight hours, five day work week.  They improved workplace safety, gave us health insurance, retirements, and workers compensation.  They raised the standard of living of most Americans, often even those not in unions. They also helped bring more economic equality to the economy, significantly erasing the disparities of the Gilded and Robber Barron eras.  Unions grew and flourished  at a time of significant economic growth, and there is little hard data to show that they caused rises in unemployment.  America’s post WW II affluence is tied in with unions.

But in addition to the economic benefits that unions bring, there was a political aspect to them.  Unions were part of the Democratic New Deal coalition.  The strength of the Post World War II Democratic Party dominance was tied to unions.  Unions got out the vote and they did so to the advantage of Democrats.

But many employers, conservatives, and Republicans hate unions.  Even many workers, especially white collar professionals, share this animosity, thinking they are better off on their own. Almost from the day the NLRA was passed opponents sought ways to circumvent the law.  The found ways to fire striking workers and replace them.  They harassed and fired organizers, they found ways in court to delay or challenge elections.  They claimed unions hurt the economy or restricted individual freedom and passed right-to-work legislation.  Yet unions remained a potent force in American politics until President Reagan became president and signaled with the firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981 that it was okay to go to war against the unions.  Since then, one can  correlate the rising inequality that Thomas Piketty describes or the decreasing social mobility in America to the decreased power of unions.

As Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison tell in The Great U-Turn, the Reagan era war against unions was part of a strategy along with deregulation and tax cuts to restructure the economy.  It was also part of a political restructuring of American politics.  The strategy has largely worked.  Overall, less than 12% of all workers are now in unions in the United States, with only 7% of the private labor force collectively bargained.

The decline of the American income in the last 40 years goes part and parcel with the decline of unions. In the last thirty years the American economy has seen a dramatic increase in the gap between the rich and poor such that it now mirrors that of the 1920s.  According to the United States Census Bureau in 2010 the richest five percent of the population accounted for 21% of the income, with the top 20% receiving over 50% of the total income in the country.  This compares to the bottom quintile accounting for about 3% of the total income.

A second study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in 2010, drawing upon Congressional Budget Office research, found that income gap between the top one-percent of the population and everyone else more than tripled since 1973.  After-tax income for the top one-percent increased by 281% between 1973 and 2007, while for middle class or middle quintile it increased by 25%, for the bottom quintile it was merely 16%.  Looking beyond income to wealth, the maldistribution has not been this bad since the 1920s.  According to the Institute for Policy Studies, in 2007 the top one-percent controls almost 34% of the wealth in the country, with half of the population possessing less than 3%.  Since the Great Recession, the numbers have accelerated.

Opposing unions and workers costs families money.  There is a significant difference in median family incomes in states that are right to work (RTW) versus those that are not.  Several years ago I did a study using a three years average median family income for 2009 to 2012.  I found that  RTW states have a median family income of $46,919, non RTW it is $53,418–a difference of $6,499 or 13.9% per year.  Testing for the statistical impact of RTW on median family incomes, the relationship is -0.4.  This means there is statistical evidence that RTW is associated with lower incomes.  RTW depresses wages.  If all of this does not demonstrate a war against unions it definitely does reveal an attack on workers.

Yet Americans have been convinced unions and workers’ rights are bad.  They resent successful unions that pay better wages than they receive instead of organizing to bring themselves up to that level.  We live in a culture that worships the Donald Trumps and MBA-led management teams, yet these are the people who brought us the economic crash of 2008, gross mismanagement of the economy, and the mass layoffs that frequently dot our workplaces.  For many middle class workers, the image of a surprise visit to your cubicle by a HR person with a box telling you that you are fired and have one hour to clear out your desk is all too real.  Yet despite this, Americans continue to believe that they are better off without unions and worker protections.

Fixing the NLRA is a must to yet again reset the economic and political imbalances in the law.  Some claim that unions are no longer relevant or that their corruption has led to their own demise.  There is no question that unions need to clean up their act and support meaningful government reform, but there is also evidence that many people do want to organize and want representation in a union.  If it were easier to organize, perhaps more people would have health care even without Obamacare, or maybe more people would have retirement pensions.

At the federal level, unions made fixing the Wagner Act a top priority in 2008 and 2009 with the Employee Free Choice Act.  The law would have streamlined organizing and holding elections.  While initially as candidate saying he would support such changes, President Obama never pushed the Act when the Democrats had control of Congress, and now the chances for its passage are dead.  Perhaps the most important structural reform of the economy Obama could have made, he simply ignored, costing lasting damage to workers and middle class America.  And how with the Supreme Court ready to take the final constitutional shot against public sector unions, the last organized force to represent workers will be gone.

What is Orthodox Republicanism?

What does Republicanism mean?  This is the burning question for the Republican Party today with
Steve Bannon declaring war on his party enemies and the likes of Senators Flake and Corker opting to resign because they are outcasts likely unable to win their nominations in the party that Donald Trump remade.  And the answer will have fateful consequences not only for the GOP but the health of the American Democracy.  Contrary to the hopes of Democrats, there needs to be a responsible Republican Party that has a soul.
The Republican Party today is not the party of Lincoln and civil rights.  It is not the environmental party of Teddy Roosevelt, and it is not the party of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits from New York where I grew up.  Back then it would not have been farfetched to argue of the two New York senators–Republican Javits and Democrat Bobby Kennedy–the former was more liberal.  Nor is this the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan that worked across the aisle with Tip O’Neill, or the Party of George H.W. Bush who signed the American with Disabilities Act,  supported tax increases because it was in interest of the nation, and forged international alliances to  liberate Kuwait.  And it is not the Party of George W. Bush who supported immigration reform.
The Republican Party today is an ugly, selfish, and mean party.  It is a Party premised on the  anger, resentment, intolerance, and nastiness.  It is a party that does not want government to work, one that tolerates a president referring to women as pussy, immigrants as rapists, Muslims as terrorists.  It is a party that looks at someone like Jeff Flake–a pro free trade, internationalist who believes in a strong US international presence while also endorsing tax cuts and small government –as a RINO (Republican in Name Only). 
The same is true of Bob Corker, Susan Collins, and John McCain.  All traditional Republicans, but none of them find a place in the Party of Bannon and Trump.  It is not enough to support some principles of Republicanism, it is an ideological purity test demanding 100% loyalty. Bannon and Trump have become the Grand Inquisitor and Joe McCarthy of the Republican Party, and when Flake or Corker step into the role of Joseph Welch, asking of them “Have You No Sense of Decency,?" few within the Republican Party are willing to support them.  The new orthodoxy overrides principle, integrity, and what is right for the party and the county.
George Washington warned in his farewell address of the dangers of parties, seeing in them how they encouraged “the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, [and] kindles the animosity of one part against another.  He thought we would be better as a nation without them.  Perhaps, but they day is long since past.  Parties are a reality and the task as political scientists such as E.E. Schattschneider said, is to make them responsible.  Parties make governance possible, they make American democracy possible by mobilizing voters, checking the opposition, and articulating a vision for the public good.
The Republican Party of Bannon and Trump does not do that.  It is a party of nihilism, consuming itself and American democracy with it.  There is a need for a Republican Party to speak for the Constitution, Bill of Rights, free speech, and freedom of religion.  It is a party that needs to respect the right of people to kneel at football games, to acknowledge that scientific facts and that alternative facts are not facts but lies.  It needs to say that conspiring with a foreign government to  influence an election is treason, that conflating personal wealth and self-interest with the public good is wrong, and that remaining silent in the hope that it will advance a party agenda is wrong. 
There was time in my lifetime during Watergate when the likes of Howard Baker, William Ruckelhaus, and Elliot Richardson put the good of the nation ahead of party and did the right thing in opposing  Richard Nixon.  They were heroes, and Republicans, and no one tried to oust or outcast them.  The Republican Party needs people like this, as does the country, and we need a Republican Party and an American public that will support people like this.  This is what orthodox Republicanism once was, and it needs to be that again.

Jerry Springer Without Jerry: Thoughts on the First Republican Presidential Debate

Let’s be serious–this was not a debate it was pure entertainment.  More accurately, the first Republican presidential debate (including the junior debate for the also-rans or wannabees) was pure politainment.  It was the spectacle of demonstrating what happens when we merge politics and entertainment, we get politainiment.  It is about the transformation of news into entertainment where the focus is on ratings and making money, and it is about the effort of candidates to become media personas to succeed in politics.  This is what Ronald Reagan did, as did Jesse Ventura.  Now we have FOX, Donald Trump, the first debate,  and might I say, the departure of Jon Stewart from Comedy Central all occurring on the same night.  Welcome to politainment and the 2016 election cycle.

Jon Stewart and Comedy Central never pretended to be real news but so many people treated like it was.  It was pure politainment representing the fine line between politics and entertainment.  But FOX national news (as opposed to the local FOX affiliates) has be pure partisan politics pretending to be news.  It has brilliantly figured out (in ways that MSNBC has yet to) how to break down the walls of partisanship, news, and entertainment and package it into a multi-billion dollar force that serves as the unofficial house organ for the Republican Party and often crackpot conservatives theories.   Thus Fox is conflicted with competing demands of pushing ideology, making money via ratings, and entertaining.  This is the context of the Thursday so-called debate.
Had this been a real debate the first question would not have been about honoring party endorsements and third party candidacies.  It would have been one asking candidates questions about global warming, ISIS, unemployment, or their stand of the treaty with Iran and what alternatives they had.  I heard so many people say the journalists did a good job asking tough questions.  No, they were terrible in terms of encouraging a debate on serious matters of public policy.  Instead they were provocateurs do their best to ask questions to hype ratings and get a fight started–no different than what Jerry Springer did so successfully.

The debate was made for Trump.  He is the ultimate politainer of our age.  Setting up with an opening question to get Trump mad was brilliant entertainment. It made for perfect theater.  And in setting up a format where Trump was the star–and also the object to be attacked–perhaps Fox was also trying to protect mainstream Republicanism from what it has become–Trump.
So much has been made of Trump’s racism with his immigration comments and sexism with comments about women and allusion to Ms. Kelly and her menstrual cycle (at least he did not say she was “on the rag” or was PMS but you knew he wanted to say that).  But the fact of the matter is that the other candidates are just as harsh on immigration.  They have all taken extreme positions on abortion and women’s health.  Even though no federal funds pay for abortion, they all want to cut Planned Parenthood off from federal funds that pay for women’s health.  Jeb Bush said too much money is being spent on women’s health.  Huckabee said he would send in federal troops to prevent abortions.  Rubio will not support abortions even when a woman’s life in endanger.
Trump scares the Republican Party because he actually is what the GOP has become, except he is not shy to run away from his racism and sexism.  The rest of the party wants the benefits of racism and sexism but without owning up to it.  They pretty up their policy positions–no immigration, no abortions, restrictions on voting–but want to deny the real reasons or implications of their policies.  Texas tried to justify its voting restrictions but a Fifth Circuit this past week upheld a lower court decision finding a racial impact to its voter ID laws.  Trump is laying bare where and what the Republican Party is and has become, and   faced with that reality FOX is trapped.  Does it come to the defense of the kinder and gentler Republicanism that wants and cake and eat it too or does it exploit Trump for all the money and ratings they can garner?  This is the problem for FOX and the Republican Party now.

Orthodox Republicanism after Eric Cantor

David Brat’s defeat of Eric Cantor should comfort neither establishment Republicans nor Democrats.  His victory portends threats to both parties.  For Republicans, it suggests a continued ideological divide, for Democrats, a vital threat in 2014 to the electoral prospects.

Until Brat’s victory, many declared dead the Tea Party insurgency within the Republican Party.  But the Tea Party is more than simply a group of people or a fringe organization.  It is an attitude and ideology. The Tea Party movement, with language describing some GOP members as RINOS (Republican in Name Only), questions the ideology and political views of party, raising the question:  What is orthodox Republicanism today?

The contemporary battle for the Republican orthodoxy begins in 1964 when Barry Goldwater challenged the Rockefeller wing for dominance.  Goldwater’s “Extremism in defense of liberty” speech was a repudiation of New Deal accommodation that Eisenhower, Jacob Javits, and the Nelson Rockefeller wing had reached.  Goldwater may have lost the election but he propelled the GOP in a direction that first triumphed with Reagan’s victory in 1980 and his inaugural speech  declaration that government is the problem, not the solution.

The Reagan coalition blended together often contradictory movements of economic liberty and social conservativism.  The former requires a minimalist state protecting individual choice, the later an activist one second-guessing freedom. While ideological, it was still willing to compromise within its party and with Democrats, producing notable and important legislation such as the 1986 tax reform and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.  From 1980 to 2008 the Reagan brand defined the party.  But beginning with the presidency of George Bush in 2001, and clearly by its end the Reagan  brand had worn thin and when McCain ran and lost in 2008 it was clear that Reaganism was dead.  Obama’s victory, along with Democratic gains in 06-08, signaled that change, whatever it meant, was preferred to Reaganism.

But the seeds of Reagan’s demise in McCain’s 2008 loss produced the heir of a new Republicanism in Sarah Palin.  Palinism seeks to balance the social conservatism and economic liberty of Reaganism, but it takes seriously the Goldwater extremism speech in its hyperactive purism and refusal to compromise..  Palinism takes aim at the New Deal, combining it with nativism and constitutionalism that came to a head in the formation of the Tea Party and its mantra “I want my country back.”

Palin is toast, but her spirit lives on. The Palin makeover of the GOP combines Goldwaterism and Reaganism with a cult of personality  a multi-media advertising campaign, and a dose of Ayn Rand libertarianism.  But Palinism is also built on what historian Richard Hofstadter labeled the paranoid style in American politics.  It is a anti-intellectual world view nurtured in fear–a fear that outside forces are threatening a way of life that includes faith in Christianity, capitalism, and the Constitutionalism.  This paranoid style, incubated in the Puritan theology of the seventeenth century as described by Perry Miller in his classic 1956 Errand into the Wilderness, was premised upon a theory of uncertainty of salvation, fear of evil, and the omnipresent threat of outsiders who were not part of the church and community.  For Hofstadter and Miller, the paranoid style of fear and prejudice produced notable events such as the Salem Witch Hunts and McCarthyism.

Puritanism and the paranoid ethos both contain an orthodoxy and powerful internal contradictions. Both believe in the righteous and absolute certainty of their truths and in a demonification of challengers.  Both eschew reason for fear, and both necessitate a strong state to suppress evil and  preserve God and American values, even at the expense of freedom for some.  Facts are not important–they stand in the way of truth.   Liberals and MSNBC commentators fail to understand the Tea Party world view.  It is a new orthodoxy that goes right to the heart of politics, asking and questioning the most basic question, “Why government?”

This new orthodoxy draws its roots from this Puritanism and paranoid style .  But it is driven less so from the pulpit than by Fox news, conservative talk radio, and blogs in search of profits and ratings.  Tea Partyism is less a coherent ideology or world view than it has yielded a paranoid attitude mixed in with a branding effort to make money.  It is a brand built on populist anger, anti-government feelings, opposition to immigration, gays, abortion, Democrats, and anything else that inspires fear, so long as it sells.

The new orthodoxy has two wings–The libertarianism of Rand Paul committed to some type of libertarianism, and the Ted Cruz populist politics.  While both revolve around less government and less taxes, they differ on civil liberties and the role of the US in the world.  Whatever their anti-governmentism is, their views and that of many Tea Party members are hypocritical.  Yes less government and taxes, but still I deserve my Social Security check and Medicare because I deserve it, others do not.  There is also a hypocrisy in that the areas of the country that most strongly espouse  anti-government views are the ones with the greatest poverty, uninsured, lower per capita incomes, and the greatest percentage of money coming to their states from the federal government.  Less government for thee, not me.
   
So what orthodox Republicanism now?   Tea Party GOP rebranding is a multi-media cult of personality that draws upon the anger and fear of many that their way of life is threatened and that someone else is to blame for it.  If only government, gays, immigrants, abortionists, Democrats, and RINOS did not exist, we could take back our country and prosper again.  This is what orthodox Republicanism is, the marketing of a politics of fear.

For all of the contradictions within the new Republican orthodoxy, Democrats should not take comfort.  Yes such a new orthodoxy threats to split the Republican Party, sending them further to the right, putting them out of sync with the median voter, and thereby making it more difficult for them to win elections.   But this might only matter with national presidential elections.  As Democrats saw in 2010, turnout is lower in non-presidential elections years, benefitting Republicans.  What the Tea Party brings to the Republicans is passion–passion is essential to electoral success. Passionate candidates and voter win.  Democrats have little passion going for them in local races in non-presidential election years.  Moreover, today as it was back in 2010, Democrats lack a narrative to counteract the Tea Party.  Four years the Democrats ether lacked a narrative, or simply said the Tea Party was nuts, or they simply expected them to self-implode.  They are taking the same road again this year, perhaps with equally disastrous results.

The new Republican orthodoxy is the child of Obama–has taken up the banner of “change” and it  is using their narrative, also with fear, to advance an agenda that challenges the mainstream of both the Republican and Democratic parties

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.

The Road to the White House: How Obama could lose it

From a political science perspective Obama is strategically positioned to win the presidency on November 6.  If all the polls are correct Obama has well positioned himself to win the critical 270 Electoral Votes to win the presidency, even if he were to lose the popular vote.  This split in the Electoral Vote and popular vote is a real possibility, but there are so many signs pointing to an Obama victory. He has a better ground game than Romney, he has registered more voters, delivered more early voters to the polls.  He has the demographic advantage with women and people of color.  All of this points to an Obama victory.

Yet for months I have said that Obama should not even be in this race.  The economy should have doomed him already.  Unemployment has ticked down, the GDP is up slightly, durable goods sales are better as is true also with home sales.  But unemployment is still high and past history suggests presidency almost always lose with numbers like this.  If this coming jobs report is bad–or at least spun as bad–Obama is in real trouble because he will not be able to explain away the economy over the last weekend where the news will key in on that.

Additionally, Obama’s major failure all along has been the missing narrative.  Obama has not had a rationale for reelection since at least back to 2010.  The Democrats were trounced in 2010 because they lacked a narrative and even today Obama too still lacks one.  “Forward” is meaningless.  Presidents needs to make the case for why they deserve four more years and Romney has correctly hammered Obama for a failure to articulate a vision for the future.

 A weak economy and no vision–this is a recipe to lose.  All that has kept Obama in the race is that Romney is a weak candidate.  The mistake of the first debate was that Obama made Romney look like a viable alternative.

But there is something else going on right now that is less political science and more intuition and observational.  Obama does have a lead in the critical swing states but that support may be soft and eroding.

Consider for example the October 28, 2012 Star Tribune poll that gives Obama merely a three point lead in the state.   Minnesota should never be a swing state and if it is Obama is in danger.  There are some reasons to thing the poll is accurate.  The Democratic-Republican makeup of the poll is 38%-33%, just about what I think it is in the state.  This should be cause for Obama to worry.  But the land line-cellphone split of 80%-20% probably under samples those who would support Obama.  And the news of the president consolidating support among independents also suggests that the president is doing well in the state.  Yet in a state where the Marriage amendment might pass, many if not most of those who support it might also vote for Romney, Obama might want to consider one more visit to the state before election day.

But nationally there are also worries for Obama.  The Washington Post reports the largest racial divide in the electorate since 1988.  Obama should worry.  Political scientists Charles Tien, Richard Nadeau, and Michael Lewis-Beck concluded that Obama lost five percentage points of the popular vote due to his race.  This time around that see him losing about 3 points.  They may be wrong.  Many working class whites voted for Obama begrudgingly in 2008 because of the economy.  Obama has had a hard time sealing the deal with them this time around.  It is possible that at the last minute that do not go for him.   Here is also some evidence that the waitress moms–working class moms without college degrees, are not as strong supporters this time around and may waiver.

So much of Obama’s 2012 strategy (as I have noted before) is reminiscent of the 1980 Carter strategy to make Reagan look like a nut.  Yet in the last 96 hours of the election the race went from a tie to a Reagan blowout as millions of voters changed their minds.  Reagan’s “Are you better off” question resonated, as did the reality of the continued Iranian hostage crisis pointed to a presidency that appeared to  lack leadership.  Voters liked Reagan as a person and the disgust with the status quo was so powerful that they opted for change over status quo.

There is no Iranian hostage crisis today.  People like Obama better as a person.  Much early voting has taken place.  But there are still 5% undecided voters in the swing states.  Hurricane Sandy if badly handled by the president could further dent his leadership and competency image.  And the economy and race are still factors.

Pure political science suggests today an Obama victory.  Political intuition tempers that.

Reviewing the DNC: Obama’s Missed Opportunity and the Road Ahead

The two national conventions for the Republicans and Democrats are over.  Who had the better show and benefited the most form their rival performances?  The simple answer is that Obama came out better, but it was because of him.

The RNC and DNC were theaters in contrast that bore powerful similarities.  The RNC seemed less about Romney and more about its future stars Rubio, Christie, and Ryan.  The best night for the RNC was Wednesday with the VP nominee Ryan speaking.  Romney gave his best speech in a long time but it was still was far from a home run.  He ended his speech with the Reaganesque challenger of asking if we are better off now than four yers ago, forcing Obama and the Democrats to have to respond to it. 

Did Romney get a post-convention bump?  All indications are that there was little bump.  Polls suggested at most a one or so point bump.  Perhaps this was due to the fact that so few watched the convention.  Those who watched were the hardcore, those whose minds were probably already made up.  It is doubtful the undecided watched since there was little news or theater here. In fact, surveys suggest less that 5% of the public is undecided at this point, again showing that there was little potential for much bump.

The DNC had two great nights.  Ms. Obama and Mayor Castro were greater speakers for the president and for why the election mattered.  Ms. Obama did what Ms. Romney failed to do–put a more human face on her husband.  Castro rocked, clearly setting himself up for the future.  It was like watching a young Obama again.

Night two was Bill Clinton.  It was an amazing speech, even if long (as expected).  He made the clearest case again Romney and the Republicans and also seemed to give credit to his wife and perhaps help position here for 2016 should she decide to run.

Obama thus entered the third night after two previous evenings of great performances.  He merely needed to give his usual great speech to follow up and it would have been a hat trick for the DNC.  Obama failed.   The speech, in the words of Tom Brokaw, was “workmanlike.”  It was competently given but uninspiring.  Obama failed to do what he needed to do–to inspire and make the case for four more years.  He and the other Democrats made the case for why the Republicans should not be given a chance, but like the GOP and Romney, the case for electing him was not given.  Biden too was similarly flat.

Obama should thank Clinton, Castro, and his wife. Were it not for their strong performances the convention would not have helped him.  There are some indications of a small post-convention bump and some signs that his approval rating went up.  Whether this is real or merely temporary, and how the Friday unemployment numbers stunt the bump is yet to been seen.

Bottom line–the two conventions really did not change much.  Romney still has a personalty problem and Obama has a problem making the case for four more years.  Neither candidate is as inspiring as their future leaders seem to be, and both will get their bases out but not in an enthusiastic way.  Both candidates need narratives and reasons for their candidacies.  It is unlikely that either much moved swing voters.

Looking to the future, the DNC and RNC need to change to be relevant.  No one watches and they are not interesting.

Looking to the future, the number of swing states is shrinking.  Polls suggest Pennsylvania is out of reach for Romney and he seems to be pulling out his ads from there.  Ohio seems to be solid for now for Obama and this is really the state where the presidential fight is all about.  If we look at the approximately eight or so swing states in play, the two campaigns are looking to move a  few million (maybe five million or less voters).

A Reagan Redux Election?
One thing is clear about this election–it is a tale of two Reagans.  Romney is running Reagan’s 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter–asking if we are better off now than four years ago.

Conversely, Obama is or needs to run Reagan’s 1984 campaign for re-election-declaring it’s morning in America.  He needs to look to the future and convince the voters that he has turned things around and that the country is moving in the right direction.  Given the cloudy economic news and uncertainty, this may be difficult to do.  However, “Morning in America “ is certainly a better message than “Foreward.”