In reviewing Timothy Shenk’s new book Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, Democratic political consultants Stuart Stevens and Daniel Immerwahr made the following observation: “if the Trump era were a television series like “Game of Thrones,” Left Adrift would be the fascinating prequel… a riveting portrait of the moment when the subterranean plates of American politics began to shift… a clear-eyed account of how the left lost its political footing.”
On November 5th, in a stunning manifestation of just how far these underlying forces had shifted and how badly the Left had lost its footing, the American people chose Donald Trump as their 47th president in a shocking landslide that arguably represents the third great political realignment in American history.
While many will contest this interpretation, what is undeniable is that this electoral landslide has saved the country from the calamities of a narrowly decided contest, i.e., endless recounts, claims of fraud, lingering court challenges, and diminished faith in the ntegrity of our democracy.
A further way in which a landslide can promote the health of a democracy is that it compels the losing party to honestly examine what went wrong and seriously consider the changes they need to make if they are to regain electoral competitiveness.
In this vein, landslides provide a punishing wakeup call to parties that have strayed too far in the direction of policies that the American people view as extreme. In 1964 voters made clear that Barry Goldwater was too far right; in 1972 they deemed George McGovern too far left.
Three consecutive landslide defeats in the 1980’s drove Democrats back towards the center, as embodied by the Democratic Leadership Council led by Bill Clinton. Voters quickly rewarded this course change by making the Arkansas governor the first Democrat to win consecutive presidential terms since Franklin Roosevelt.
As prefigured in Shenk’s insightful analysis, which examines trends in British, Israeli, South African, and American politics from the turbulent '60s to the present, the crisis of liberal politics emerged from the growing cleavages within the traditional constituencies of the Left—most painfully between the working class and the educated elites.
Over time, this division evolved into a bitter cultural clash which pitted the traditional values of the working class, notably nationalism, against the quasi-ideological values of the elites, notably globalism.
For over a century Democrats, like their socialist counterparts in Europe, had been the champions of the working class and over time their efforts had uplifted the lives of countless millions. Today, however, the cumulative effect of the economic, social, and cultural dislocations described by Shenk, particularly the metastasizing growth of income inequality, led significant proportions of the working class, notably among minorities, to conclude that they had been abandoned by their longtime benefactors. This long-developing alienation would be a principal driver of the electoral revolt of November 5th.
Pundits and historians alike will long be scrutinizing the disparate elements of this paradoxical political landslide. Central to their inquiries will be explaining how a traditional party of the Right—Republicans—was in a relatively short time transformed largely by the efforts of one profoundly polarizing leader, Donald Trump, into a refuge for millions of voters who had long been devoted to and adherents of the Left.
For the Democratic Party, finding an answer to this question will be the highest priority. Absent an honest diagnosis, discovering a cure for the party's malaise will be impossible. This will be no easy task, for today's Democratic Party is riven by issues not just of strategy but of fundamental purpose and identity.
In his 1966 classic The Responsible Electorate, the father of modern political science, V. O. Key Jr., said “the perverse and unorthodox argument of this little book is that voters are not fools.” In the path to self-reform the Democratic Party must heed this advice—and begin by ceasing the lamentable habit of denigrating those American voters upon whom their future redemption will depend. Failure to do so will mean that their time in the political wilderness will be long indeed.
William Moloney studied history and politics at Oxford and the University of London and received his Doctorate from Harvard University. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Hill, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Human Events.