A realignment if Trump can keep it: 2024 results signal a new political era
Donald Trump’s victory, combined with Republicans regaining the Senate majority and keeping control of the House, made 2024 a bad year for Democrats.Signs suggest it could be something even worse: a historic defeat that puts Republicans in the political driver’s seat for a generation or more.That’s because the exit poll showed that more voters said they were Republican than Democrat — for the first time in a presidential election since 1928.Such a result hasn’t happened since talking pictures were new and Babe Ruth clobbered homers in the original Yankee Stadium.No one alive today has ever voted in a presidential race where this has occurred.Certainly, Republicans had won elections in the nearly 100 years that have passed since then.But they were always fighting uphill.
They had to convince voters who leaned toward the Democrats to give Republicans a chance.That’s why winning candidates like Dwight Eisenhower called themselves “modern Republicans” and pledged to keep the welfare state that Franklin D.Roosevelt’s New Deal had created.That’s why the two Bushes campaigned as “kinder, gentler” candidates who were willing to expand government.Even Ronald Reagan made sure to tell his fans that he had voted four times for FDR.His famous “there you go again” quip to President Jimmy Carter helped him win, but few recall that he said it in response to Carter’s accusation that Reagan opposed Medicare and would threaten the popular program.Reagan’s comment emphasized that he had never been opposed to the principle behind the massive entitlement program and would not try to repeal or seriously change it.Each of these men knew they needed Democratic votes to win.
And getting those votes meant they had to concede important policy points that more partisan Republicans strenuously opposed.Republicans forgot that fact at their peril.Newt Gingrich’s historic 1994 victory gave Republicans control of the House for the first time since 1952.Polls even...