What happens if the Democrats collapse?
<p>I&#8217;ve written several blog essays recently<br />
<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200409#154'>[1]</a><br />
<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200411#163'>[2]</a><br />
<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200411#164'>[3]</a><br />
<a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200411#167'>[4]</a><br />
pondering the deep trouble the Democratic party is in.  I believe,<br />
on current demographic and political trends, that their problems<br />
are going to get worse and might actually prove terminal &mdash;<br />
especially if the Republicans have the strategic sense to run Condi<br />
Rice for President or Vice-President in 2008.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not going to rehearse all their problems here.  Instead I&#8217;m going<br />
to try to think through some scenarios for what U.S. politics might look like<br />
after a Democratic-party collapse, and discuss why I think they are<br />
plausible or implausible.</p>
<p>The common premise for all of these scenarios is that the Democrats<br />
collapse or split into warring factions once they discover that they<br />
just cannot win elections any more.  The party breaks apart along the<br />
Democratic Leadership Council vs. hard-lefty split that&#8217;s been the<br />
main axis of tension within it since the 1980s.  The variables are<br />
about what happens to the left-wing and centrist/DLC factions<br />
afterwards.  I&#8217;m taking for granted that the handful of<br />
Zell-Miller-like conservative Democrats left in congress would jump<br />
the aisle to the GOP.</p>
<h3>Case Gray: Republican Triumph</h3>
<p>In this scenario, the left faction runs off to the Greens and<br />
minor Red parties such as the Socialists.  The centrist/DLC types go<br />
Republican or exit politics.  This one is a recipe for really<br />
long-term Republican-party dominance, with the Greens retaining some<br />
degree of clout in a handful of coastal cities and university towns;<br />
it&#8217;s the Karl Rove wet dream.</p>
<p>I rate this one moderately likely, and I&#8217;m not happy about that.<br />
It has benign possibilities, but it has fairly ugly ones too.  Which<br />
we get depends on whether small-government conservatives or the<br />
Religious Right get the upper hand in the GOP&#8217;s factional struggles.  The<br />
former seems more likely (especially since all those ex-Democrats will be<br />
pulling against the Religious Right).  But the latter possibility is<br />
actually fairly scary.</p>
<p>At the worst-case end, we&#8217;d end up in the theocratic U.S. of Robert<br />
Heinlein&#8217;s <cite>Revolt in 2100</cite>.  Mind you I think this is<br />
highly unlikely, and the widespread lefty panic about it seems to me<br />
to be mainly hyperventilation and hysteria &mdash; they&#8217;d have<br />
you believe it&#8217;s happening <em>right now</em>, whereas I see a decade<br />
or more before the threat could become acute.  But it remains an outside<br />
possibility.</p>
<p>The more likely long-term outcome would be that the Republicans themselves<br />
split along small-government vs. cultural-conservative lines.</p>
<h3>Case Green: Green Party Triumph</h3>
<p>The Democratic-left refugees run more to the Reds.  Greens get some<br />
of them, but absorb a larger cohort of the centrist/DLC refugees and<br />
evolve into a stronger and less left-wing party as a result, one with<br />
prospects to increase its mass appeal.  In effect, they become the<br />
successor party of the Democrats and the familiar Democrat/Republican<br />
seesaw resumes, with the Greens out of power most of the time.</p>
<p>I rate this one very unlikely.  The problem is that if it were<br />
possible for the DLC to come up with a new, centrist platform and stem<br />
the long-term decline in their base, this scenario (dump the lefty<br />
moonbats and reposition) is exactly the scenario they&#8217;d be engineering<br />
<em>themselves</em> as a means of institutional survival.  Since they<br />
don&#8217;t seem to be able to manage it, I doubt the Greens (who are even more<br />
Red-infiltrated than the Democrats) could either.</p>
<h3>Case Gold: Libertarian Party Triumph</h3>
<p>The left runs to the Greens and Reds.  The centrist/DLC types join<br />
the Libertarians.  Small-government-Republican types drift to them, a<br />
process which accelerates as it gradually weakens the holdouts inside the GOP.<br />
At equilibrium, the Libertarians effectively replace the Democrats while<br />
the Republicans become more and more a hard-right party of evangelicals<br />
and nativists.</p>
<p>The key to Libertarian success in this scenario is gun owners.<br />
This is the largest single captive bloc in the Republican voter base<br />
at 50% of American households, one no less a politician than Bill<br />
Clinton has identified as the swing group in the 1994 election and<br />
subsequent Democrat disasters.  The Libertarians succeed by prying<br />
them loose from the Republican base.</p>
<p>As a libertarian and a gun owner, this is the one I&#8217;d most like to<br />
see.  However, I rate it unlikely.  While I believe libertarian ideas<br />
could be much more effectively marketed than they are, the LP has<br />
proven almost comically inept at actually doing so.  Post-9/11, its<br />
isolationist foreign policy is a non-starter as well; I do not think<br />
Americans will buy this until they perceive that the threat of Islamic<br />
terror has been broken.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m, frankly, skeptical that the LP can overcome its own history<br />
effectively enough to grasp this opportunity.  But I&#8217;d love to be<br />
wrong about this.</p>
<h3>Case Red: Reds Triumph</h3>
<p>This is Michael Moore&#8217;s wet dream &mdash; a major comeback for American<br />
Marxism.  It only happens if the Angry Left turns out to have been correct<br />
about the DLC/centrists sabotaging their efforts to tap a huge pool of<br />
naturally leftist voters.  After the centrist/DLC types have faded from the<br />
scene or gone to the GOP, one of the Red parties successfully markets<br />
itself not just as a replacement for the democrats but in a way that<br />
peels off a significant part of the Republican voter base.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve listed this one for completeness.  I think it&#8217;s wildly<br />
unlikely, because I think the Angry Left&#8217;s belief that it can become<br />
the vanguard of a mass movement is a drug dream.  I don&#8217;t believe<br />
there is any group in the majority-Republican voter base that is<br />
vulnerable to a Marxist pitch, so even if they cornered all of the<br />
Democrat base they&#8217;d still be in a minority position.</p>
<h3>Case Blue: New Centrists</h3>
<p>The lefty refugees dissipate themselves among the Reds and Greens.<br />
The centrist/DLC types either keep the Democratic rump or boot up a<br />
new party that abandons the socialist-economics and identity-politics<br />
side of the Democrat platform, fights the War on Terror hard, and<br />
remains strongly liberal shading towards libertarian on other social<br />
issues. The result is, in effect, a new party of classical liberalism<br />
&mdash; the Barry Goldwater Democrats.</p>
<p>As in Case Gold, their key tactical move is to peel gun owners out<br />
of the Republican base.  Over time, small-government Republicans drift<br />
over from the GOP, which goes harder-right in consequence.</p>
<p>Nowadays I think this one is more likely than Case Gold.  The key<br />
to it may be the blogs, in which I see a kind of pro-War-on-Terror<br />
libertarian centrism emerging as a new political force.  The blogs<br />
have been far more successful than the Libertarian Party at creating a<br />
movement with mass appeal, quasi-libertarian attitudes, and enough<br />
influence to have already arguably scuttled one presidential campaign<br />
(Kerry&#8217;s, over Rathergate).
<p>Case Blue is different than Case Gold in that the new centrist<br />
party is not tied to libertarian ideology and pursues a<br />
neoconservative foreign policy.  This is the future in which &#8220;Glenn<br />
Reynolds for President!&#8221; doesn&#8217;t sound crazy.</p></p>
