09-15-2016, 12:31 AM
I have my explanation: the winning Party in a landslide ends up with incompatible elements within the Party. For example, the New Deal coalition of FDR depended upon blue-collar Northern workers, largely 'ethnic' and heavily Catholic and white Southern agrarian interests. So long as those interests rarely met they could vote alike out of shared distrust of Northern industrialists... and western agrarian interests. The 1952 election shows a large number of states going from Truman in 1948 to Eisenhower in 1952, many of which states would never go back to the Democrats (not counting the oddity of 1964) for at least 64 years. 56 if you count Indiana (a freak) and Virginia.
The Party that had been losing Presidential elections sought to form a new coalition for its victories and got one.
Now consider the 1980 and 1984 blowouts involving Reagan. After 1976, Democrats have never since won Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, or South Carolina, states that Hillary Clinton can win only in a 40-state blowout not likely to happen this year. Dukakis started to build a winning coalition for Democrats but fell short. Bill Clinton won big, but without Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, or South Carolina, with which he should have been a good cultural match. He did win a raft of states that Republicans usually won between 1952 and 1980: California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
So what happened? The Reagan landslides lumped together the well-educated, secular, socially-liberal but low-tax Rockefeller Republicans with the white racists of the Deep South and the Christian fundamentalists of the Mountain South. The Rockefeller Republicans were incompatible with the white racists of the Deep South and the Christian fundamentalists of the Mountain South. Western agrarians? So long as they rarely had to meet the racists and the Protestant fundamentalists they could stay in the same party with the white racists of the Deep South and the Christian fundamentalists of the Mountain South.
The Party that had been losing Presidential elections sought to form a new coalition for its victories and got one.
Now consider the 1980 and 1984 blowouts involving Reagan. After 1976, Democrats have never since won Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, or South Carolina, states that Hillary Clinton can win only in a 40-state blowout not likely to happen this year. Dukakis started to build a winning coalition for Democrats but fell short. Bill Clinton won big, but without Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, or South Carolina, with which he should have been a good cultural match. He did win a raft of states that Republicans usually won between 1952 and 1980: California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
So what happened? The Reagan landslides lumped together the well-educated, secular, socially-liberal but low-tax Rockefeller Republicans with the white racists of the Deep South and the Christian fundamentalists of the Mountain South. The Rockefeller Republicans were incompatible with the white racists of the Deep South and the Christian fundamentalists of the Mountain South. Western agrarians? So long as they rarely had to meet the racists and the Protestant fundamentalists they could stay in the same party with the white racists of the Deep South and the Christian fundamentalists of the Mountain South.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.