By- Suzie-Q @ 8:15 AM MST
The New Party
August 27, 2008 11:37 PM
Huffington Post- By- Thomas B. Edsall
The nomination of Barack Obama will test whether the new Democratic coalition has grown strong enough to fend off Republican assaults to produce the first presidential victory for a non-Southern candidate in 44 years – and the first victory for a black in the history of the nation.
The Obama campaign has accelerated a transformation already underway in the Democratic electorate. 2008 appears likely to mark the death knell for what remained of the New Deal coalition – the coalition that was crucial to the early elections of such politicians as Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy.
In its place is a Democratic alliance that initially emerged during George McGovern’s 1972 campaign, became competitive in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, and that now appears to be solidifying as the core of the party: a combination of “haves” — socially liberal, well-educated whites, especially the young, and “have-nots” — black and Hispanic minority voters.
This new Democratic Party lacks the economic coherence of “the party of the working man and women” that united under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and remained powerful through the 1964 election of Lyndon Johnson. On the one hand, in the new Democratic alliance, minorities generally place top priority on traditional bread and butter issues, while relatively well-off whites are more concerned with ‘post-materialist’ issues such as abortion, women’s rights, sexual autonomy, self- expression, and a shared hostility to evangelical and other traditional religious agendas seen as repressive.
As the new center-left coalition has formed, it has proven repeatedly vulnerable to Republican attacks, capitalizing on backlash against the socially liberal, pro-civil rights, and anti-war views of Democratic activists. Using issues ranging from affirmative action to gay marriage, from black rates of crime to Democratic distaste for the use of force (national defense, gun control, mandatory sentencing, etc.) — the GOP has pushed socially conservative and conventionally patriotic working-class and Southern whites into the Republican fold.
Democratic presidential victories over the past 48 years have been restricted to white male nominees from below the Mason-Dixon line: Johnson in ’64, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
University of Maryland political scientist Thomas Schaller, author of the 2006 book Whistling Past Dixie, argued to the Huffington Post that Obama “has a chance to peel away more upscale, well-educated, environmentally friendly whites, including some men,” but he risks losing “downscale whites.”
Schaller is a leading advocate of a Democratic strategy that effectively abandons much of the South. “Republicans have squeezed every last vote out of their mostly white, largely Southern, highly divisive, screw-the-coasts national strategy,” Schaller contends. “The changes to come [benefiting Democrats] will be brought from the three-quarters of America found [in the north] or “west of the Mississippi River.”
I really enjoyed Bill Clinton’s speech last night and Biden was awesome!
The Biden family, especially Joe’s mother, who Obama called “Mama Biden” seems to be very down to earth.
I watched Mama Biden as she fought back the tears, watching her son on the stage, a son who stuttered as a youth and now is running for Vice President of the United States. What an awesome story and family!
I agree – this convention has been so different from the ones the past years – we haven’t had a candidate so electrifying since JohnF…
When Bobby was killed, the air went out of the country. We had 8 years of prosperity when Bill was Pres – it took 8 years for Bush/McCain to squander everything this country had…
Bush/McCain
Bush/McCain
They are truly
One in the same….
Obama/Biden ’08 – VOTE!
You couldn’t help but get emotional during the speeches. I cannot understand why anyone would want to vote for more of the same with McCain. With Obama and Biden, there is reason for hope.