ONCE IN A GENERATION

‘CRITICAL ELECTION’

Republican domination for decades?

POLICY FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: DO APPOINTEES REALLY MATTER?

By Alan Z. Forman

The Democrats just got walloped but they refuse to comprehend the debilitating fallout from it yet.

For they were annihilated not just by the Re-publicans… but by the entire country.  

And not simply beaten to a pulp by President Trump, but unlikely to recover for at least a generation, depending on how successful (or unsuccessful) the 47th President turns out to be. 

The jury however is still out on that, and may well be for quite some time to come. But if the country perceives the outcome of an election as a landslide, then that’s just what it is: a landslide. And in the current case, a mandate as well.

In America, in politics, as with the stock market, perception is often more important than reality.

Case in point:  The Democratic Party has fallen victim to what all indicators portend to be a seismic shift in the national electorate — a “critical election” — as identified by the great political scientist of the late 20th Century, Walter Dean Burnham, a protégé of the legendary V.O. Key, Jr., who was the most prominent political theorist to ever study voting patterns and behavior in the United States.  

Among other prescient observations, Key likened politics to a “contest” linking the changing patterns of public opinion to the governmental system.  And Burnham identified what he termed “Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics” in his landmark 1970 book that focused on how party systems in America generally prevail for several decades but are then upended by an election so momentous as to literally crush the party in power and bring about long-term change in voter thinking and identification. 

In Burnham’s thesis a critical election occurs in every generation, when a charismatic president gets elected and brings about a tectonic shift in voter identification in the country, literally decimating the party in power.  The latest occurred in 1932 with the landslide victory of Franklin Roosevelt over incumbent President Herbert Hoover, when the country — which had identified as Republican since Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900s — metamorphosed virtually overnight and became Democrat… which has endured to this day until it crashed and burned on November 5, 2024.

Burnham thought the Reagan election of 1980, when Jimmy Carter and the Democrats were soundly repudiated, would turn out to be a critical election, but the monumental shift failed to occur despite domination by the GOP for the next three presidential terms… only to be upended by Bill Clinton’s stunning reversal of the trend in 1992.

THE GREAT GURU OF WOKE

The Trump election of 2024 however appears to be quite different:  The Democrats have been left not just leaderless but in total disarray by Donald Trump.  Not even the Great Guru of Woke, Barack Obama, can save them from themselves, nor has he been able to rise and lead the party, having decimated his credibility with his own constituency by ordering young black men to vote for Kamala Harris solely because she’s black (and female), and then doubling down in subsequent days when the constituency turned against him.

His lavish properties and lifestyle also do not enable him to identify favorably with the working class.  Whereas Trump, despite his billionaire status, is able to do so with ease:  for example, riding on a garbage truck and “working” at McDonald’s.

(Had Obama not been so imperious as to refuse to walk back his racist order to the young black men, he might have survived the indiscretion and continued as party leader — but that’s a topic for another time.)

Time will tell if this thesis holds up, but all indicators are that it is the order of the day.  The Democrats have no leader, and no identifiable purpose going forward.  For all the handwringing and recriminations — and blame, yes blame — that’s being bandied about in feeble attempts to explain their massive failure and betrayal in the years leading up to and including 2024, they fail (or refuse) to recognize their real dilemma:  They are doomed to futility caused by the debacle of their own making.

Instead they scramble mightily to sabotage in advance everything the President-Elect may try to do, irrespective of and tone-deaf to the damage that any failed presidency does to the country, regardless of which party may be in power.

The first major party realign-ment in America happened when Vice President Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Re-publican, defeated incum-bent President John Adams, who was a Federalist, in 1800; when Democrat An-drew Jackson came to power in 1829; when Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, was elected in 1860; and in modern times, when Franklin Roosevelt overwhelmingly defeated Herbert Hoover in 1932 following decades of GOP domination since the early part of the century. 

What defines these elections as “critical” is that national party identification shifted dramatically and continued until the next “critical election.”  As such, America has been a Democrat country since FDR — but now appears to be shifting to Republican domination.

The incoming Trump Administration promises to be a model of efficiency, notwithstand-ing the political opinions of its admirers and detractors.  It matters little who the Presi-dent’s nominations and appointees to the cabinet and other top jobs are:  None of these people will be making policy; they will merely be administrators assigned to carry out the wishes of the White House.

It’s patently obvious that policy will be made personally by President Trump, in concert with his longtime aide and trusted advisor Stephen Miller, who as Deputy Chief of Policy is now the most powerful person in Washington next to Trump himself, tasked with enforcing all edicts from the White House.

THESE EMPLOYEES ARE ADMINISTRATORS

Miller will be the President’s policeman and enforcer, and he will oversee every federal department and cabinet secretary; and if anyone steps out of line that person will be reprimanded and/or fired straightaway.  It does not mean the Cabinet’s not important — it is — but we need to understand that these employees of the President, even at the highest level, are administrators, not policymakers.

The Senate would do well to recognize that in the confirmation process.

How this plays out will determine the effectiveness of the Trump Revolution.  But what-ever happens, it will be a dramatic change from the leaderless government the country has been subjected to in recent years — and which continues into the present — where no one seems to know who’s making major decisions or who’s in charge.

The Left’s been rendered leaderless, its head has been chopped off. It may well not recover for at least a quarter-century… maybe more.

So, welcome to the new world order in Washington!  If Key and Burnham’s thesis is correct in 2024 (as it has been historically proven), it will be the way of life in America for many years, and possibly even decades, to come.

alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org