I ran this article a while back. It appears worthwhile to reconsider it. The following is slightly edited.
The realignment theory of American politics is badly overworked. Nonetheless, there have been occasions on which American politics did re-align, and there are indications that another realignment is advancing.
What were the arguable realignments? In some order, the first was the collapse of the Federalist party at the start of the nineteenth century. The second, due to The Little Magician Martin Van Buren, was the revival of the two-party system.
The parties were the Democrats (under several names) and the Whigs. The Whig party was never entirely competitive with the Democracy, but it soldiered on. Each party had a northern and southern branch, which ran on somewhat different positions but compromised on a set of positions agreeable to both factions. The compromise ensured that neither the northern nor the southern position on any issue was dominant. What were those issues? The most important issue for many Americans was preserving the Union, to which any other issue was secondary. As the 1850s were approached and entered, the two other issues were immigration and slavery.
That takes us to the sometimes forgotten third realignment. The Democratic Party had been adequately balanced between North and South, but at some point, the Democratic Party did poorly in the north, and the southern Democratic Party became dominant. Compromises over, in particular, slavery faded within the Democratic Party because the northern wing of the Democratic Party was too weak to force a compromise. However, as the southern wing of the Democratic Party became stronger, it also became more effectively dominant in the South. That change was the third realignment.
The fourth realignment was the emergence of a unified abolitionist party in the north. The path to this party was somewhat complicated because the anti-immigration party, the American Party, might have become the dominant wing of a unified American-Free Soil Party. In 1856, the entirely new Republican Party almost won. Opponents of its candidate, John C. Frémont, circulated the rumor that he had converted to Roman Catholicism. Frémont had not, but this rumor cost him a victory in Pennsylvania, among other states.
As 1860 approached, the obvious choice of a Republican presidential candidate was Stanton, but it was clear that Stanton could not possibly carry Pennsylvania because of his stances on certain issues. The Republicans instead settled on Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s position on slavery had been made clear in his Cooper Union speech. He opposed the extension of slavery into areas where it did not now exist, but promised that slavery would be left undisturbed in the South. His position did not mollify the South, leading to the War of the Slaveholders’ Rebellion.
Following that war, the fourth realignment led to the circumstance that the Republican Party almost always won outside the South, and the Democratic Party essentially always won inside the South. Indeed, the Republican Party essentially did not exist South of the Mason-Dixon line.
After all, the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, which meant that it was unelectable in the South. Barring catastrophe, which happened several times, the Republican Party was sure to win.
This situation lasted, with occasional irregularities, until 1932, when the Great Depression led to the collapse of the Republican Party across much of the country. That change was the fifth realignment, in which the Democratic Party became identified as the party of the working man, and the Republican Party became the party of the relatively well-to-do and educated classes. There were, of course, exceptions to this description. Since 1932, the Republicans won once with a war hero (Eisenhower), and a second time (Nixon) when an unpopular war disrupted American politics.
We now reach 1980 and the sixth realignment. The sixth realignment had been a trend first described by Kevin Phillips in his book “The Emerging Republican Majority.” Phillips’ book describes what appeared to be happening to American politics; namely, the Republican Party was becoming stronger and stronger in the South. Once that crossover occurred, the Republican Party would have a dominant majority in American politics, at least most of the time. Having read the book several times, I shall note that Phillips did not in his book advocate for a Republican strategy to take advantage of this trend. Instead, he simply described the trend, somewhat like a tide table describing the rising and falling tides.
The sixth realignment mainly affected the South, and at first mostly at the presidential level. At the county courthouse level, where state legislatures and Congressmen were effectively chosen, the Democratic Party continued to predominate for much longer. There were irregularities. George Bush the Elder failed to win reelection against William Jefferson Clinton. George Bush the Younger, in a wide variety of ways, turned out to be less than successful. He was highly unpopular by the end of his term, so he was replaced for two terms by a Democrat, President Barack Obama.
We now reach the emerging seventh realignment. The seventh realignment replaces the 1932 outcome that the Democratic Party was the party of the working man and working woman, and the Republican Party was, in particular, the party of the educated and the well-to-do. That division appears to be in the process of inverting. Just as the deep South moved from being solidly Democratic to being solidly Republican, the Democratic Party is moving from being the party of the working man to the party of the educated, and vice versa. Indeed, the author has read claims that the most reliable single indicator of Democratic Presidential vote in a district is the percentage of college-educated voters in the district. Both parties are now tending to exaggerate the least fortunate aspects of their directions. Republicans are tending to advocate for belligerent ignorance, such as the anti-vaxxer and global warming denier cults. Democrats are tending to advocate for belligerent identitarianism and belligerent anti-meritocratic diversity advocacy.
The seventh realignment also appears to be disrupting the notion that some racial minorities, notably African-Americans and Hispanics, can be counted on to vote very solidly Democratic, while Whites vote somewhat heavily Republican. The Hispanic vote has recently moved toward the Republicans, and the African-American vote, especially among African-American men, has started to trend in the same direction. African-Americans are still very heavily Democratic, but less so than in the past.
The trend is just that, a trend somewhat obscured by the character of the recently-past Republican president, but there are still statistics that indicate where things are going. For example, roughly a third of the population has attended university, while approximately two-thirds have not. Each group is trending rather heavily towards one of the two major parties, the college-educated toward the Democrats and the non-college-educated toward the Republicans. However, the Republican group is much larger. As the Republicans extend their support to Hispanics and African-Americans, the Republican Party once again appears likely to become the dominant majority party.
As an additional feature, note sortation. Districts that lean Democrat or Republican have been leaning more and more heavily Democratic or Republican. As a result, many districts (for examples, Massachusetts, Alabama, Wyoming) are effectively under one-party government, in which the opposition has almost no chance to win an election. (While first-past-the-post voting schemes tend to favor a two-party system, they also work just fine with a one-party scheme.) It appears that Democrats are more heavily concentrated into a smaller number of districts, supporting an emerging Republican strength.
Where does this realignment lead third parties?
For Greens, Libertarians, and supporters of the Constitution Party, opportunities differ. The Green Party faces the severe challenge that it has advanced by being more progressive than the bulk of the Democratic Party. Now the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has a say out of proportion to its numbers, meaning that the Green Party will have difficulties making itself visible as a distinct party.
The Constitution Party changed its platform some time ago so that it became a Christian nationalist party. A substantial emphasis of its platform at one time was opposition to abortion, but for a national party, that issue seems likely to fade. The Supreme Court has made this issue a state rather than a federal issue. In states where the anti-abortion cause is strong, the Republican Party has slurped up the antiabortion support. In other states, the position is a liability.
The Libertarian Party has an opportunity in the middle, but it likely appears that it will be on the unfavorable side of a substantial number of issues. The Libertarian national party moved away from pro-choice, notwithstanding the wording of the platform to the contrary. That change only appeals to a small minority of the population. The Libertarian Party is for open borders, a position not well supported nationally.
Finally, the Libertarian Party has advocated for free trade, based on a variety of economic theories. Unfortunately, at least to this author, those economic theories are wrong. In particular, the claim that free trade means that goods are more affordable, because they are cheaper, ignores the effect of globalization on salaries. For the vast number of Americans rendered unemployed due to globalization, the price of goods has become infinite. Why does this result appear?
For Americans who are employed, wages are relatively constant, while globalization means that the price of goods falls. As a result, for employed Americans, the number of hours of work needed to purchase a particular good falls. However, Americans rendered unemployed by globalization no longer have an income. The number of hours they must work at their non-job in order to buy anything becomes infinite. If you average those infinities into the average number of hours of work needed to buy an object, the average number becomes enormous. Free trade, on average, has thus made goods more expensive.
The Libertarian Party has the further challenge, which shows no signs of abating, that the party has been taken over by the Mises caucus, most recently identifiable by its de facto support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is not obviously that championing Russian fascist militarism is a route to success.
Having explained why the Green, Libertarian, and Constitution groups all have serious challenges, this analysis does not propose a solution. Indeed, it is not obvious to this author that there is one. One alternative would be to identify states that effectively have one-party governments, such as Alabama, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Wyoming, and attempt to become the second party in those places.
