The time is coming when the two parties undergo a historic realignment. Prior to 2000 the defining feature of the political landscape had been either divided government or Democratic control of the House. We now face a completely altered landscape for the forseeable future--single party control by the GOP. The party that controls the federal govt WANTS to spend money, they WANT to raise taxes, they want to control the states. The party out of power has the opposite concerns. They don't want to be taxed because the money would be better spent at the local level. They don't want the opposing party to spend money at the federal level because the ruling party inevitably creates patronage and strengthen their position. They want local control.
Now, look at these two maps to discover another reason for the upcoming realignment.
This map is the 2004 election results with red counties and blue counties.
Now, visit this site and construct a map of income by county. What you see is not surprising on the one hand but politically very significant on the other. What you see is that the bluest of the blue counties in the electoral map above are also the richest of the rich counties on the census map. Why is that important? It is important because if the GOP carries out its plan to dramatically cut taxes and reduce the scope of federal spending the beneficiaries are going to be US the urban blue staters.
Sending "our money" back to us means that we can spend that money on more progressive causes than the GOP would ever approve in Washington. Remember too the biggest welfare queens are the red states. Cutting government revenue reduces the transfers to red states with their increasingly rabid right wing governments. We should also increasingly move to stop these transfers and subsidy programs.
So here is my proprosal for realignment. The Democratic Party needs to peel away some part of the Republican coalition. Let's take the wealthy economic conservative, socially liberal, pro-environment side and produce a coherant liberal party. That leaves the Republicans with their religious conservative base and a good bit less money than they had before and frames the conflict between the two parties much more on cultural issues and less on economics. The Obama-Keyes battle shows what a pure culture war election can look like. I think the liberal party wins that battle.
Lets hold Republicans to the no new taxes pledge. Indeed, lets dramatically raise the ante and quicken the moment when the governing party will have to either raise revenues or hurt its base. The other thing to note is that we Dems ARE the trade party. Our political base is centered in the areas where international trade is crucial. It is the red state areas that are more vulnerable on trade. Let's help ourselves by promoting free trade. Free trade is also a strong liberal value.
On the gun issue, we need to move towards a more libertarian position. Suburban voters evidently don't care about this issue and it is not clear that we win anything here. If we are going to be liberals then lets do it there. We can also be for allowing markets to operate more efficiently with respect to prescription drugs. We are a pro-gay rights party, pro-civil rights, women's rights.
We also need to be against corporate welfare but remember that corporations are NOT our enemy...the people who run those corporations live in our cities, they are socially liberal and rationalists so they are our allies. Also our target voters are working in these corporations.
The GOP is going to be struggling very soon with a split between the social conservatives who are going to ultimately have a big government agenda and the economic conservatives who are going to watch their influence wane. We are the minority party now and if we want to be a majority we have to take some of their voters. Let's get the richer liberal economic conservatives and let the GOP have the poorer social conservatives.
