After Barack Obama’s historic victory the future at first glance looks bright for the Democratic party. But newly elected governments traditionally face an electoral backlash and Obama has the additional problem of managing the expectations of his millions of supporters and activists. Their cause may be helped by the Republicans, who will spend the next four years in a fight for the soul of their party as reformers battle for control with the evangelical wing and its new figurehead, Sarah Palin.
Obama swept to the presidency winning 28 states, over two-thirds of electoral college votes, and the largest popular vote ever recorded. Although the Democrats fell short of a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the Senate, they picked up seven seats and are still in the running for two more. Whatever happens, they are well placed to rely on the support of moderate Republicans to pass crucial legislation on healthcare reform and a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce carbon emissions. In the House they had a net gain of 20 districts.
The demographic shifts are also positive for Obama. He enjoyed swings of seven points among African-Americans and nine points among Hispanics. Both these groups increased their share of the vote. More notably, 2 million more young people turned up at the polls than in 2004 and voted by 58 per cent to 40 per cent for Obama. Research suggests that the political opinions and voting patterns of young adults persist throughout their lives.
But governing parties often face reverses in their first midterm elections as Bill Clinton found to his cost in 1994 when his party lost eight senators and 54 congressional representatives. Indeed, George W Bush – against a backdrop of 9/11 national unity – is the only postwar president to make gains in both houses at his first midterm election.
Comment is Free America contributor Ken Gude says that after winning roughly 50 seats in the last two House of Representatives elections, ‘this is the high watermark for the Democrats.’ It seems unlikely, for example, that newly elected Democrats will retain their seats in traditionally conservative areas like Idaho’s 1st congressional district, Alabama-2 or the Appalachian New York-29. But Gude points out that the pendulum will probably not swing back quickly to the GOP either. Certainly in the Senate, the 2010 election will probably be a non-event. Retirements are likely to be at a minimum and most incumbents appear safe. Although California’s four-term Senator Barbara Boxer may face a tricky challenge from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, some polls are suggesting that John McCain faces an equally tough reelection against Arizona governor Janet Napolitano.
Another reason for progressive optimism is the sense of purpose in the Democratic party after eight years of disastrous rule by President Bush. ‘The two Houses of Congress and the White House are more aligned in their priorities than they have been for 30 years,’ says Gude. ‘There is an equally good chance to experience a governing majority that accomplishes what people want them to accomplish.’ This view is shared by Ruy Teixeira, a political scientist based at The Century Foundation, who says: ‘Obama can buck the trend by doing stuff: get the economy out of the recession, get out of Iraq, and introduce a programmatic change that people believe in.’
In attempting to do this, Obama faces arguably his toughest challenge. The next two years, perhaps even the first 100 days of his administration, will give observers a sense of whether he is the super-liberal painted by McCain’s unsuccessful attack machine or the cautious, moderate listener that many in his campaign claim. Certainly after the primaries he changed his stance on issues as diverse as the Iraqi withdrawal timetable, free trade, and intelligence surveillance. In light of his unprecedented fundraising prowess, Obama also took the pragmatic decision to go back on a previous promise to accept federal funding.
All these moves made the so-called ‘netroots’ community twitchy. Lane Hudson, a Washington DC-based blogger, points out that Obama actually spent little appreciable time cultivating these groups and instead reached out to new communities of young voters using his Facebook-style social networking site, My.BarackObama.com. Obama has to ensure that compromise in government does not undermine his message of ‘change’ and turn off both the blogging community and his new army of dedicated young followers. ‘He has a tight rope to walk,’ says Hudson.
But Obama also has an unprecedented tool at his disposal to ensure that this backlash does not take place: an email database of more than 10 million supporters and an estimated 6 million phone numbers. Alan Rosenblatt, an expert in online advocacy, wrote recently for PoliticsMagazine.com that Obama has two complementary paths open to him. First, he must ‘keep the community alive’, allowing him to ask his supporters to write to Congress or their local newspaper on progressive but contentious pieces of legislation such as climate change measures or new regulations for the financial sector. Second, Obama should ‘reinvigorate Edmund Burke’s delegate model of representative government … [by] creating an official White House social network that invites all voters in and opens the door to the governing process’.
Hudson also counsels that Obama should ‘go and start lowering expectations and explain that you cannot turn around Bush’s mess right away’.
Bush’s legacy of electoral success but governing failure has left the Republican party in a quandary. After a second decimation in Congress, the Republicans have to regroup. But without the cathartic process of electing a leader of the opposition behind whom to rally, the battle for the soul of the party will continue until the primary elections in more than three years. Some Republicans, such as Senator Mel Martinez, point out that the old strategy of appealing to white males is a losing one. Although Obama barely improved on Kerry’s performance among white working-class voters, this group comprises a declining share of the electorate. After a vitriolic, populist debate over immigration during the primaries, the rapidly expanding Hispanic population unsurprisingly voted for Obama by a factor of two to one. This was critical in flipping Nevada, Florida and New Mexico.
On the more traditionally conservative wing, Republicans are calling for a return to the culture wars of Nixon, Reagan and Bush. ‘John McCain was the best candidate that the Republicans could have picked to win, but the worst to lose,’ says Gude. ‘Pure Republicans believe that they sold out on their core principles and unilaterally disarmed their ideology.’ These groups cite the swings of around 10 per cent towards the Republicans in large swathes of rural Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee as evidence that candidates like Palin can still mobilise the base. But Gude regards this as ‘a catastrophic direction for them to take. It would not even be good for Democrats because one thing that could be good for government is solid and responsible opposition.’
As Michael Lind of the New America Foundation opines in a recent article for Salon.com, this election could signal the fourth roughly 70-year period in American history. Each previous ‘Republic’ – as he describes it – started with an iconic figure (Washington, Lincoln, FDR) expanding federal powers before a backlash took place 35 years later. That may be a bit much after what was not even a landslide victory, but Obama is the first progressive urban in the White House since JFK and if he can utilise the considerable political capital that he has amassed and restore America’s economy, unity and prestige in the world, it may very well be a watershed moment in its history.