Democrats' Dilemma

View from the Harbor:

The failure of Democrats, despite their best efforts, to capture the presidency in the past two elections has produced a spate of angst-filled self searching. Why did the Republicans win? Was it the fault of flawed candidates? Was it the evil genius of Rove? Was it the stubborn ignorance of the American people? Was it electoral fraud? Was it a failure to find the right "message?" What to do? What to do? Should the party swerve to the center? Should it adhere more strongly to the ideologies of the left? Where, oh where, will it find a charismatic candidate? What if we get rid of the electoral college? Surely there must be a scandal somewhere that will rouse a righteous American people against the Republicans! The questions go on and on.

Missing in all of this is a realistic assessment of the potential of the Democratic Party to compete effectively in national elections. Democrats are accustomed to think of themselves as the "majority party" based on their long-term dominance of Congress. But that fails to recognize that, although the Democrats have historically done well in local and state-wide elections, they have consistently failed to attract the allegiance of a majority of Americans.

Democrats see themselves as a party in decline. Some would date it from the Gingrich revolution of 1994; other would trace it back to Reagan; still others would view passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the turning point. But all of these fail to recognize the long term structural disadvantage that has afflicted the party through most of its recent history.

A few simple statistics tell the story. Since World War II America has held fifteen presidential contests. In nine of those elections one of the major parties has received an absolute majority of the popular vote. Only twice has the majoritarian candidate been a Democrat. Can you name them? That's right. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter [Jimmy Carter!] in 1976. No other Democrat in the modern era has won a majority of the popular vote. Democrats like to sneer at Dubya as the "fifty-one percent candidate" but thirteen out of the last fifteen Democratic presidential campaigns have failed to reach even that level. By contrast, during the same period, seven Republican campaigns have received an absolute majority of votes. Put it another way. In head to head matchups, when there is no third party movement to split the vote, the the Republicans win nearly eighty percent of the time. What is more, in those nine head to head matchups, the Republicans received on average 52.6% of the vote while the Democrats received only 45.6%.

Democrat weakness is confirmed if we look at the two head to head contests in which they were able to gain an absolute majority. Both were exceptional in a number of ways. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson benefited enormously from two factors. First, the Republican party had been traumatized by Goldwater's insurgency and that caused many northeast moderates to vote Democrat or to simply sit out the election. Secondly, Democrats were able to capitalize on the enormous swell of sympathy and rage generated by Kennedy's assassination. Probably of less importance was the Johnson campaign's effort to brand Goldwater as a dangerous radical, although many Democrats remember that as one of their party's great successes. The Carter campaign of 1976 was also extraordinary, coming in the wake of Watergate and the Nixon resignation. Once again the Republicans were traumatized and their candidate, Gerald Ford, had been seriously damaged by the controversy over the Nixon pardon. Carter ran a far from perfect campaign, but was carried to victory by the national reaction to the Nixon scandals. In both cases Democrat victory resulted less from the party's own efforts than from traumatic outside events.

Of course, you will never get a Democrat campaign advisor to admit that. They have to sell the idea that an effective campaign will produce victory. The result has been that for decades now Democrats have been trying to replicate the conditions of victory, looking for a charismatic candidate who can generate the popular enthusiasm associated with the memory of JFK, or a Republican scandal to rival Watergate. Here's a hint, guys, it ain't gonna happen. No living candidate can match the young prince of the Camelot myth. Even a live JFK couldn't. The public memory of Kennedy, which emerged after his death, bore little resemblance to the real man. And, there is not going to be another Watergate. That scandal came as a tremendous shock to a public that still held their leaders in generally high regard. Incessant Democrat scandal- mongering since then has produced a broad cynicism toward all politicians that ensures that no scandal will ever again produce that kind of reaction. That hasn't stopped Democrats from trying to turn every policy disagreement into a scandal. Quit trying, guys. Watergate was a one time thing and all you are doing is to poison the nation's political culture.

The pattern is clear. In normal election years, when the parties go head to head, the Republicans win. They win with mediocre candidates and they win against strong, charismatic Democrats. In this context the past two elections look a bit different. Both Gore and Kerry ran better than average campaigns, scoring a bit better than the Democrats usually do, and Bush ran slightly behind the Republican average. In other words, the Democrats did not screw up. They ran efficient and effective campaigns, and they lost as could be expected.

What about those elections in which neither major party won a majority? There the Democrats have done much better, winning four of six contests and averaging 47.1% to the Republicans' 44.0. In 1948 Harry Truman won with 49.5% of the popular vote, a remarkable feat considering that he faced opposition not only from Republicans but from dissenting Democrats -- Strom Thurman's Dixiecrats and Henry Wallace's Progressives. But this was the last gasp of the Roosevelt coalition. In 1960 John Kennedy won a narrow victory in a notoriously fradulent election with 49.9% of the vote. However, the official total includes a number of southern Democrats who actually voted for Sen. Harry Byrd, rather than for Kennedy. It is altogether possible that Nixon, rather than Kennedy actually won a plurality or perhaps a majority of the popular vote that year. Eight years later Nixon won with only 43.4 percent of the vote because George Wallace drew 13.5% of the popular vote away from the major party candidates.

Come forward to the 1990's. Bill Clinton's legendary political skills, even when matched against weak Republican candidates, were insufficient to gain him a majority of the vote. In 1992 he received only 43.0% and four years later won with 49.2% because Ross Perot split the Republicans drawing respectively 18.9% and 8.5% of the popular vote. The final election of the six was in 2000 when several alternative candidates, most notably Ralph Nader [2.7%], Pat Buchanan [0.4%] and Harry Browne [0.4%], drew sufficient votes to keep both major party candidates below 50%. In that year Al Gore received 48.4% and Dubya got 47.9%.

Here the pattern is less clear, but certain things stick out. First, Democrats stand a much better chance of winning the presidency when the normal political process is disrupted by challenges from outside the two party system. Secondly, in recent years at least, Democratic success has been far less a product of their own efforts than of Republican disarray.

What to make of all of this? Simply this. The fate of Democratic candidates for president rests less on their own efforts than on what happens to the Republicans. Whether they tack left or toward the mainstream, whether their candidate is reminiscent of JFK or Hubert Humphrey, whether they raise more money than the Republicans or not. None of these, nor any of the currently debated strategies and tactics, are likely to be determinative. If the Republicans are united and competent they will win. What Democrats must do is to maintain their candidate's viability as an alternative to the Republican if he or she should stumble or if a minor party should mount an effective challenge to Republican hegemony.