Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

conix, "Why Both Parties Face Op­por­tun­ity and Dis­rup­tion in Equal Measure

Economic and social change helps Democrats keep the White House and city halls—while the GOP wins everything else."

Those two you have at the top of your post then for some reason you posted the Christie article and nothing of the article you
started with. I'm posting that article, with it's link, now not mainly to point that out, but chiefly because i reckon it is a useful read ..



Ronald Brownstein
November 10, 2015

Polit­ic­al power in Amer­ica today is di­vided like a lay­er cake that is blue at the top and bot­tom and red every­where in between.

Demo­crats have built two elect­or­al strong­holds. At the pin­nacle, they have won the pop­u­lar vote in five of the past six pres­id­en­tial elec­tions and car­ried at least the same 18 states each time—the most states the party has ever won in six con­sec­ut­ive races. At the base, Demo­crats now hold the may­or’s of­fice in most big cit­ies and gen­er­ate huge pres­id­en­tial mar­gins from those densely pop­u­lated areas.

But in between, as polit­ic­al ana­lysts Sean Trende and Dav­id Byler have noted, Re­pub­lic­ans con­trol more than three-fifths of the gov­ernor­ships and the most state le­gis­lat­ive seats since the 1920s. It has been that long since Re­pub­lic­ans held so many seats in the House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives; the party’s 54 U.S. sen­at­ors nearly equals its best show­ing since then.

Among the many vir­tues of Amer­ica As­cend­ant, the pro­voc­at­ive book pub­lished this week by vet­er­an Demo­crat­ic poll­ster Stan­ley B. Green­berg, is its re­cog­ni­tion that these con­trast­ing strengths each flow from the same cur­rent: an over­lap­ping gen­er­a­tion­al, ra­cial, and geo­graph­ic­al re­align­ment that has pro­duced mir­ror-im­age par­tis­an co­ali­tions that are an­ti­thet­ic­al in their val­ues and pri­or­it­ies—but are al­most ex­actly equal in size.

Green­berg makes clear he be­lieves that, un­less Re­pub­lic­ans make peace with so­cial changes they are now res­ist­ing, the un­der­ly­ing demo­graph­ic and cul­tur­al trends re­shap­ing Amer­ic­an life will in­creas­ingly tilt the elect­or­al bal­ance to­ward Demo­crats. But he’s also clear-eyed about the obstacles Demo­crats face in trans­mut­ing these cul­tur­al shifts in­to a true gov­ern­ing ma­jor­ity. Demo­crats will find more to cheer in this sweep­ing and deeply in­formed book than Re­pub­lic­ans will, but it of­fers in­sights neither side can ig­nore.

Like oth­er ana­lysts, Green­berg ar­gues that the trans­ition to an in­form­a­tion-age eco­nomy, grow­ing ra­cial di­versity, and changes in gender roles and fam­ily struc­ture are shak­ing Amer­ic­an so­ci­ety today as power­fully as in­dus­tri­al­iz­a­tion, urb­an­iz­a­tion, and mass im­mig­ra­tion did in the late 19th cen­tury. Today’s changes, he writes, are gen­er­at­ing op­por­tun­ity and dis­rup­tion in equal meas­ure: “While these re­volu­tions are tilt­ing Amer­ica’s tra­ject­ory up­ward, they are also pro­du­cing sud­den, sweep­ing and ac­cel­er­at­ing so­cial changes, evid­ent in the de­cline of the tra­di­tion­al fam­ily and the struggles of work­ing-class wo­men and men.”

Amid this tur­bu­lence, Demo­crats have built a heav­ily urb­an­ized co­ali­tion of minor­it­ies, the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion, and col­lege-edu­cated, single, and sec­u­lar whites (es­pe­cially wo­men), who mostly wel­come what Green­berg calls Amer­ica’s “ra­cially blen­ded, mul­tina­tion­al, mul­ti­lin­gual, re­li­giously plur­al­ist­ic so­ci­ety.” Each of those groups is grow­ing with­in the elect­or­ate, which means that if Demo­crats can main­tain their loy­alty, they will provide the party a widen­ing edge, es­pe­cially in pres­id­en­tial races.

At the same time, Re­pub­lic­ans are amass­ing enorm­ous mar­gins from groups who are the most un­easy about these cul­tur­al changes: older, blue-col­lar, non­urb­an, and re­li­gious whites. By fiercely res­ist­ing these trends—on is­sues from im­mig­ra­tion to gay mar­riage—Re­pub­lic­ans have es­tab­lished un­chal­lenged con­trol over 20 states Green­berg de­scribes as the “con­ser­vat­ive heart­land.” But in his most pro­voc­at­ive ar­gu­ment, Green­berg main­tains that this very suc­cess threatens the GOP with a “death spir­al” in pres­id­en­tial elec­tions be­cause “the battle for tra­di­tion­al val­ues … only fur­ther ali­en­ate[s] the Re­pub­lic­ans from the bur­geon­ing new elect­or­ate.”

Green­berg sees a struc­tur­al prob­lem for Demo­crats, too. Their dom­in­ance of cul­tur­ally lib­er­al pop­u­la­tion cen­ters al­lows them to win pres­id­en­tial (and most mu­ni­cip­al) races. But they can’t suf­fi­ciently ex­pand their geo­graph­ic­al reach in con­gres­sion­al and state elec­tions without de­vel­op­ing more com­pel­ling solu­tions to the eco­nom­ic strains bat­ter­ing fam­il­ies, par­tic­u­larly those without ad­vanced edu­ca­tion.

That’s far easi­er said than done. Green­berg pre­scribes an agenda of eco­nom­ic pop­u­lism, polit­ic­al re­form, and help for work­ing par­ents. But white work­ing-class sus­pi­cion of Demo­crat­ic pri­or­it­ies runs deep. While party strategists like Green­berg long hoped that health re­form would con­vince work­ing-class whites that gov­ern­ment could be­ne­fit them, polls show they mostly view it as a wel­fare pro­gram for the poor. The Demo­crats’ con­sist­ent move­ment to­ward the left on so­cial is­sues com­pounds their prob­lems in more cul­tur­ally con­ser­vat­ive (and pre­dom­in­antly white) ex­urb­an and rur­al com­munit­ies. The com­bined res­ult is a sys­tem­ic Demo­crat­ic de­cline bey­ond the bound­ar­ies of cos­mo­pol­it­an urb­an cen­ters that now tilts both the House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives and state le­gis­latures, even in many swing states, to­ward the GOP.

As long as Re­pub­lic­ans res­ist Amer­ica’s demo­graph­ic trans­form­a­tion, Green­berg is right to be­lieve that Demo­crats will re­main favored in most pres­id­en­tial elec­tions. And he’s also right that, just as in the late 19th cen­tury, the policy in­nov­a­tions that cit­ies are pur­su­ing (on is­sues like uni­ver­sal preschool) will provide a policy mod­el for Demo­crat­ic pres­id­ents to come.

But even if Demo­crats can hold the White House in 2016, they face a long, un­cer­tain climb to reac­quire enough power in Con­gress and the states to broadly ex­pand the ideas they are in­cub­at­ing in the cit­ies. As the na­tion ca­reens through the tu­mul­tu­ous cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic trans­itions Green­berg so deftly de­scribes, it seems more likely to con­tin­ue to di­vide au­thor­ity than to em­power either party to im­pose its pre­ferred vis­ion of Amer­ica’s next chapter.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/newsdesk/red-blue-power

So as i see it the Republicans are failing at gaining the presidency because of their, fair or not i see it as Bible inspired, rigidity on social issues. While the Democrat's problem
is overcoming the extreme Congress obstructionism we've seen during Obama's time, and the certainty GOP supporters have that the biblically inspired obstructionists are right.

To encapsulate, the Republican's have to challenge some of their stuck-in-the-mud traditional and overly negative thought processes. Not easy for many. While Democrat's
have to market and sell their more enlightened and positive progressive policies better. Not an easy sell to a rather overly fearsome and to some extent misinformed public.

Hope both parties have great success on those two scores. Success in both would lend to a continuing vigorous, successful and secure USA.

No sweat. We all make mistakes.