The aughts were a hopeful time for Democrats, but problems lurked under the surface

Part III of the series explaining why the Democrats are in trouble

Over several days we’re sharing a six-part essay on how the Democrats ended up where they are today — as a party that has broken from FDR’s liberal experimentation and change, becoming the conservative party in the traditional sense of being averse to change and innovation. How and why did this happen?

Here’s the outline:

I. A brief review of party history up to 1964 (published April 14)

II. The Democrats from 1964 to the new century (published April 16)

III. The aughts were a hopeful time, but problems lurked under the surface

IV. An electoral deadlock develops between the parties, to the Democrats’ disadvantage

V. 2024: A case study in party dysfunction

VI. The party establishment has its head in the sand, and concluding thoughts

In the first two installments we reviewed the history of the Democratic party, with a special focus on the mid-to-late 20th century as the party’s New Deal coalition gradually dissolved. We ended up looking at where the party stood as the new century began — things were hopeful at first, with ominous signs beginning to show as the Obama years wore on.

What lurked under the surface wasn’t good for Democrats
Going back to the ‘90s and into the new century there were demographic trends that seemed to portend good things for Democrats. Journalists Ruy Teixeira and John Judis made that case in their 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority. It posited that, with the increasing population of minorities, single women, and college-educated professionals – all Democratic-leaning or strongly Democratic, in coming years the party would secure durable majority support. The competition between the parties may be more or less even now, they said, but that would change in the Democrats’ favor going forward. The mantra was: be patient; the demographic tide is inexorable and will result in a stable, long-lasting Democratic majority.

The book was well-received at the time by hopeful Democrats as it suggested that the party need not make any course corrections – this even though they had just lost the presidency in 2000 (but won the popular vote!) and were out of power in Congress. The other thing that looked bad on the surface was that they took a drubbing in the 2002 midterm elections – after all, midterm elections were supposed to go against the president’s party. But that was easily explained as a rally-around-President-Bush’s-party so soon after 9/11. Thus Democrats maintained a “stay the course, it’s all going to work out” strategy.

Which looked right on after 2008 with Obama’s convincing victory together with huge gains in the House and Senate. Obama did very well among all the Democratic-leaning groups and well enough (around 40%) among working class whites to carry the day.

What went wrong: 2010 and beyond
The Emerging Democratic Majority started looking a little less prescient starting in 2010 when Republicans crushed Democrats in the midterms. Democrats, who had competed successfully in many rural swing House districts as well as in many red state Senate races in the last two electoral cycles, took an horrific beating. The populist Tea Party movement spearheaded a massive 63 seat gain for Republicans in the House – the biggest seat flip in more than 60 years – giving them a majority. They also picked up six Senate seats, not quite enough for a majority but certainly for a scare.

Obama’s ambitious agenda had been a rallying cry for the right – its undeniable success spurred on the populist movement that railed against “Obamacare” (then considered an epithet) and other parts of his legislative program. That election presaged the party’s increasing difficulty with attracting white middle and lower-middle income voters.

Looking back on what had happened from the vantage point of 2023, Teixeira and Judis acknowledged that they had been wrong in one key respect. As they had originally pointed out, the Democratic majority relied not just upon maintaining strong support among certain growing, reliably Democratic constituencies but also on retaining something like 40% among the white working class. As the second decade of the 21st century developed it became clear that the support of 40% of the white working class would not hold, nor would the Democrats’ strong majority among one of its key minority groups.

It turned out, they went on, that from Obama in 2012 to Clinton in 2016 Democratic support among white working-class voters dipped sharply in key midwestern and rust belt states — down by half in some places. And from 2016 to 2020 the Democratic advantage among Latino voters dropped nationally about 18 percentage points (from a 41 point advantage to only 23). In Florida, a 32 point advantage in 2012 almost entirely evaporated by 2016.

It looked as though there would be no emerging Democratic majority.

What accounted for this development? It was perplexing; after all, the Obama administration was successful by any reasonable definition, and he himself was able to get reelected even if his popularity wasn’t trickling down to congressional races or to the state level for that matter. It appears Democrats had misunderstood a critical dynamic … badly.

Please one group, disappoint another
If you think of parties as comprised of groups of policy demanders (which they are in this day and age), the growing influence of more liberal groups — well-educated whites pushing for culturally progressive policies and African-Americans and public sector unions advocating for government programs and race-sensitive policies — meant the party’s policy orientation shifted to the left.

These positions were not popular among some voters inclined to vote Democratic. This was particularly true for the white working class, which, while not supportive of Democrats in the majority, as we have seen, did go for the party at around 40% in presidential elections through 2012. It seemed that the demographic tide favoring Democrats among minorities and single women was canceled out (or worse) by vote losses among the white working class.

As for Hispanic voters, Democrats’ grip continued to slip all the way through the 2024 election, and notably, according to exit polls, Trump did better than any other Republican had in generations among African-American voters – in particular males. In short, Democrats were paying the price for acceding to the policy demands of its most liberal constituencies.

Mere “partisanship” evolved into “hyperpartisanship”
The 2010 election was a turning point for party politics. From today’s vantage point we can detect a hardening of the partisan divisions that had been developing for decades – a hardening that exists not just in the electorate but is also reflected in the roll call votes of members of Congress.

As recently as 1982, most of Congress landed somewhere between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat on a left-to-right ideological spectrum. As Alex Roarty laid out in Atlantic, 344 House members and 58 senators fell into this area of rough agreement that year when it came to votes on legislation.

But as the century progressed, Roarty went on, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats started disappearing from Congress. By 2002 the overlap had shrunk to 137 in the House and only 7 in the Senate. By 2012 the parties had become ideologically distinct — the most liberal Republican in Congress stood to the right of the most conservative Democrat. Little has changed since then.

This process by which voters and elected officials became more firmly ensconced in their respective partisan leanings is often called “hyperpartisanship.” To make a comparison, in economics “hyperinflation” is characterized by rapid, out of control price increases which destroy the value of the currency and generally wreak economic havoc. What seems to happen, according to economists, is that inflation feeds more inflation in a vicious cycle. As a public policy matter, it is critical that conditions don’t degenerate this far as there are no easy solutions.

In politics, the analogous condition describes when ordinary partisanship evolves past reasoned and principled differences on policy into something more purely vitriolic – with partisanship breeding more and more division. Essentially, hypartisanship is the political version of a heated rivalry in sports — a visceral hate that, for example, Duke basketball fans have for UNC basketball (a view that is reciprocated) and Auburn and Alabama football fans have for their rival – all having nothing to do with rational assessments of the players and coaches involved.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind suggests: “People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds” and partisan identities solidify. Political scientist Lilliana Mason, in Uncivil Agreement, chimes in that politics have become our identity, not unlike our identification with favorite sports teams.

Haidt and Mason argue that partisans have become locked into their preferred “tribe” largely irrespective of objective realities, changing circumstances, or even agreement in some policy areas. There is evidence to support that idea.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts there is policy preference overlap between large numbers of loyal Democrats and Republicans, although, importantly, the most committed and active voters in each party’s coalition are the most ideological. These comprise approximately 23% of the GOP base and about 12% on the Democratic side. This segment of voters drives the action in primaries, working especially effectively on the Republican side to enforce loyalty and ideological purity. And on both sides they are the most vocal. Studies show that voters with more moderate or less consistently ideological views are less likely to post on social media about politics than the more ideological.

And there’s yet more to it – Pew also finds that the two sides distrust each other on fundamental matters having nothing to do with policy, per se. Each side’s partisans judge the other to be inferior on moral grounds, unpatriotic, less intelligent, closed-minded, and lacking a work ethic. With these attitudes it’s difficult or impossible to break people of their partisan leanings simply by tweaking policy positions, and reaching across the aisle to people who fundamentally distrust you presents its own set of problems.

NEXT INSTALLMENT COMING MONDAY: An electoral deadlock develops between the parties, to the Democrats’ disadvantage