Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

I would say that Presidents who win the same states except in extreme landslides (FDR is unlike Nixon and Reagan) have similarities of regional appeal, which includes temperament and the nature of their demographic appeal and their agendas. I can think of two Presidents who had similarity of temperament (both are -- perhaps this partially reflects the generational theory itself -- Reactive Presidents. I love to refresh people on this comparison. The similarities are remarkable when one consider that the two Presidents were in opposing Parties.

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When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS.

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.



gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red. [/quote]

The electric eel is loose! What?  Republican Eisenhower and Democrat Obama? They did win much the same states in their elections (Obama not getting the High Plains states or the Intermountain West aside from Colorado and New Mexico). OK, the political culture of America in 2008 and 2012 is far closer to that of the 1950s than partisan identity would indicate -- it is just that the partisan match to the political cultures of the states are mostly opposite in partisan identity.

So what changed in in American politics between 1952 and 2012? Let's start by saying what did not change. Eisenhower cultivated the Mormon vote for the GOP to get it to start identifying with conservative politics. Trump has some chance of blowing that. Ranch country is as strongly R now as it was in 1952, I do not want to go into the details on how ranch-area and farm-area politics differ; Iowa has voted D in all but two Presidential elections beginning in 1988, and Kansas has voted R in every Presidential election since 1968. Demographic realities have given California, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico large Hispanic minorities, and such now favors Democrats in statewide elections.

But note well: Eisenhower and Obama did very well with well-educated people, winning decisive majorities among both. Stevenson, McCain, and Romney did well with not-so-well-educated people -- and such makes a big difference. People with much trust in formal education as a necessity for the Good Life voted for Ike -- and Obama -- at least as the states suggest. The states with the lowest standards of formal education went for Stevenson (D) but against Obama (D). Ike won three states usually tough for Republicans even in good or great years, winning the states (Massachusetts and Minnesota) that were the sole states that hapless McGovern and Mondale won during 49-state landslides for a Republican, and Rhode Island, the only Northern state other than Massachusetts to vote against Herbert Hoover in 1928. Ike won all three twice, and no Republican has won all three once in any other election since 1924.    

OK, what about the Hispanics? Sure, many are poor, and recent immigrants might be ill-educated people who hold onto cr@ppy jobs. They insist that their kids do well in school so that they don't become a permanent under-class in America. In the 1950's such people would have gone for Ike. Today they hold Trump in contempt for an anti-intellectualism that reaches far beyond the usual wayward professor to the K-12 teacher. Note well that the Catholic Church has no use for the young-earth creationism that so many Protestant fundamentalists endorse. "Believe it or burn!"

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The ideal antithesis of Trump is an Eisenhower (if one is a conservative Never-Trumper) or Obama (if one is a moderate liberal) The two are more similar than one might expect. Obama elections are closer to those of Eisenhower than to anyone else -- even other Democrats. The political cultures of the states are essentially as they were in the 1950's, with biggest changes in demographics (the biggest one: the rapid growth of the Hispanic populations as shares of the electorate). Blacks have not gained as a share of the electorate, and Asians are heavily concentrated in states that are 'sure things' in recent years. Technology has changed, but that has more effect upon journalism than upon economic reality aside from the disappearance of many industrial jobs. (But industrial workers of an earlier era are getting warehouse and delivery jobs instead. If they are not involved in pressing records or assembling televisions they are handling them in a warehouse or delivering them to customers.   

The main change between the 1950's and now is that the Democratic and Republican Parties have largely switched constituencies. Eisenhower won the college-educated vote -- big -- and so did Obama. The constituencies for "Eisenhower" and "Rockefeller" Republicans, conservatives in style and personal life but progressive on civil liberties and the environment, have gone Democratic. Meanwhile the whites of the Mountain and Deep South have gone largely Republican. Asian-Americans have gone from Republican (concern about Communism) to Democratic (concern about the anti-intellectualism within the Republican Party).

OK, Republicans still have the plutocrats and executives and still have a hold over ranchers and Mormons as did Eisenhower. Democrats still have a strong hold over Jews, Mexican-Americans, and blacks.

MY OPINION:

I see Donald Trump as a political failure at the least, unable to add fresh support to the votes from  the constituencies that he needed for a bare election. Generational change in the electorate as younger votes who are much more Democratic than Republican supplant older voters who are slightly more Republican than Democratic die off. President Trump will need new support to win re-election in 2020 just to offset an electorate becoming more Democratic. Most people already recognize that Trump's economic agenda demands great suffering on behalf of existing elites of ownership and management. The Trump economy is a raw deal -- prosperity only for a few for which we are all expected to be grateful.

It's hard to measure political failure at this stage, as we have never had a President with such pervasive corruption as this one. Americans have shown tolerance of political corruption only in local machine politics, but not at the state level and not even at the level of the congressional district. Scandal is political ruin, but it is hard to measure it against an economic collapse that Trump has not yet inflicted upon us (and might not).

It will all be clear in mid-November of this year, and everything will seem inevitable. 

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Even if Eisenhower and Obama had very different curricula vitae  they had similar Presidencies, if in much-different parts of a generational cycle. Obama would have made a fine military officer, quite possibly reaching senior rank -- and Eisenhower looks like someone who could have been a fine attorney. To be sure, Obama did not win in Mormon Country or the High Plains, but otherwise Obama and Eisenhower won essentially the same states.

I can say this after three years of the Presidency of Donald Trump:

(a spoof of the introductory music to All in the Family):

Mister, we could use a man like Eisenhower again!