Predicting the Realignment – Part 1

The Democrats Come Home

Election talk is boring now. Everyone is either maniacally pushing for total Trump victory, or bemoaning it, some going so far as to say King Kong is a better choice. So instead of that, I think it’s prudent to observe some of the current trends within the two parties to get an idea of where they're going. 

Realignment is a buzz word in politics at the moment and it’s easy to see why: everyone believes the Nixon-Wallace coalition has broken and we’re gonna see some wacky electoral college maps before everything shakes out. But no one as of yet has tried to take a stab at what the post-realignment future is going to look like, that is until now. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in this two-part article series I will attempt to do exactly as the title describes and predict the realignment. Part 1 will be my predictions regarding the Democrats, and Part 2 will be my predictions regarding the Republicans.

To ascertain the future of Andrew Jackson’s party, we must first look at its present. Things do not look very good for Team Blue in 2024, no matter what some of my colleagues say. They’re facing down a populist coalition who’ve gotten wise to party machines (they think,) with several swing-state Governorships in enemy hands, coming off the worst President in American History, with an even worse candidate on tap who’s so bad they had to hide her for most of the already worst four years in American history, to say nothing of her VP choice. This is in fact the second candidate they’ve put forward, after the first (who is STILL the OFFICIAL sitting President of the United States by the way) unceremoniously stepped down after he said he’d never drop out, a process which the Democratic big guns have made jokes about on live broadcasts.

Whether such a series of bad judgments were planned or the fruit of its absence, the Democrats absolutely have a strategy now, even if it's not fully articulated or conscious. It is the belief of this publication that the Democrats have unceremoniously decided to not only throw the election, but do some house cleaning in the process, in much the same way they sacrificed McGovern and the Hippies in 1968. King Kong and A.W.A.L.Z. are two problems who are not only bad at what they do, stupid personally, and possess poor judgment; they’re also hated by their whole party. 

An election blowout against a (comparatively) safe candidate in Donald Trump (who really was only a millisecond away from having his head blown off and we’ve really all forgotten it,) will end two problem careers and consign them to eternal future irrelevancy, clearing the way for the real political players to step forward in 2028. And all it cost was four years of a Trump half as energetic and twice as willing to compromise as his previous self.

Which brings us from the present to the future: what will the Democrats do with their four years away from the burdens of power? Well first, we must look at the seeds they’ve planted in the present, which brings me to this past summer’s would-have-been blockbuster: Twisters.

The film’s talent roster was headed up by rising star Glen Powell of Top Gun: Maverick fame, who portrayed a somewhat memorable character in a forgettable slop film. Powell’s role as the bull-riding tornado chasing crazy country boy would have been a welcome reprieve from contemporary filmmaking if he didn’t immediately simp for the films “Genius 6.5/10 girl in STEM,” and if he wasn’t in charge of a crew of multiracial mystery meat. In the film, Powell’s character is backed by his castizo best friend, a really really light-skinned mulatta with dreads, a butch dyke, and a wise elderly black man.

I recently did a film review with Alexander August about my fraternity brother Paul Newman’s most famous film, Cool Hand Luke. The film is compelling, well-written, well acted, has interesting cinematography, and is heavily symbolic, unlike Twisters. But both films are attempting to accomplish the same goal, which I will describe as “Muscular Wokeness.” I promise, this has to do with the future of the Democratic party, so please bear with me.

The question of whether the woke is being put away is a good one to ask, because it will predict the behavior of its adherents in the next four years. I suggest that while it’s not being put away (its adherents are true believers though not all of them are radicals,) it is being reshaped into something more palatable for the Culture war-weary American public. Which brings me back to Mr. Glen Powell and his predecessor, Paul Newman.

Paul Newman was a mischling, but exceptionally good looking with a tangibly masculine life. His films all have some tinge of left-wing themes, very skillfully inserted into a muscular, masculine skin-suit where the viewer can’t help but start to hate everything keeping this good looking white man down. This was why the new left was so successful, they knew how to manipulate the preconceived notions of the American public to get their ideas past any defenses. See Edward Bernays.

The left of the early to mid 2010s is anything but the left of the 1960s and 70s. Their idea of cultural manipulation is ham-fisted and top down. Having a film remake starring a black woman in the place of a white man is about as subversive as an artillery bombardment. And after Trump’s success (Lord willing) three elections in a row, the left have been forced to re-learn some lessons they’ve forgotten, and to water some seeds which until now have been on the back-burner. 

Mr. Glen Powell is the ideal candidate for such. He’s young, has a memorable if slightly weird face (which is considered hot in this era,) and provides the perfect entry point for a new demographic the true believing Democrats now understand needs to be added to their re-constituted coalition. The left is re-calibrating the woke. Not putting it away, but putting it under a hard-charging country boy with a cowboy hat and an accent whose cool enough not to shut the ideas down, but committed enough to sit down and listen when a black woman is speaking. Which is the future of the Democratic Party.

In 1968, the Democratic coalition between the Progressive Dems led (first physically then spiritually) by the Kennedys, and the Old Guard Dixiecrats led by Strom Thurmond and co., broke apart when George Wallace ran as a spoiler and the South flipped to the comparatively moderate Nixon led Republicans (though it took a few elections to fully shake out.) The Democrats were forced to work with the Progressive Coalition alone and were functionally locked out of power for the next two decades, with the short exception of Jimmy Carter which only proved the impotence of the old coalition. Yet with the end of the Cold War, the Democrats reinvented themselves faster with Bill Clinton and the last ride of the Dixiecrats (which is why you’ll see Clinton/Gore campaign signs with Confederate flags) brought them over the edge into the era of neoliberalism.

Since then, the South has been solidly against the party it birthed, whether for unforgotten desegregation grievances, the old guard’s culture war, or economic realities. That is, until now. COVID and the Floyd summer was the culmination of many years of planning for a completely novel (though not as novel as you’d think) cultural force in the South: the Hicklib. Almost overnight, the sweeping majority of any Confederate cultural memory was wiped away, torn down, and renamed all across the South (though in some places more than others,) despite popular opposition. It may surprise some people but these changes did not come from outside the South; it came from the very town and county Governments which possessed these monuments, heritage areas, and named buildings. These Governments had largely been taken over from dying boomers by the only people who cared enough to do it: Hicklibs.

The hicklibs are a product of a South which has been largely poor and somewhat illiterate until well into the 21st Century. But with the laying of fiber-optic cables and the increasing availability of high-speed internet and television in the more rural areas, a still largely 19th century mind has been blasted with 21st century propaganda, with somewhat farcical 20th century results. Hicklibs are the few people who used the internet in Nowheres, Alabama, Nothing, Tennessee, or Who Cares, Georgia. Many of them welcome in out-of-staters who share their progressive values, unlike the crotchety old peckerwoods who still say “Negro” and drive trucks made before 1995. While these people aren’t a voting block in and of themselves, they have paved the way for a new coalition.

Unlike what many on the right think about the South, it is no bastion of Traditionalism. Historically, it has supported more free trade, more foreign intervention, more separation between Church and State (federally,) and more racial tolerance than the rest of the country. It is only its poverty which has made it seem more conservative, and now that the 21st Century is bringing mammon to the South, they’re starting to show their true colors. In fact, the most conservative state (actually and not just rhetorically) in the South is Virginia, which is looking to flip Red this November (though none are talking about it.) While many believed Georgia flipping Blue in 2020 was the result of election interference (it was,) that interference was done in an already flipping area. North Carolina is on a similar track.

The growing Southern middle class is made up of primarily millennials who lean blue, though they’ve given begrudging support to Trump given the fact that the left has gone bonkers. But the left is fixing itself. They know they’ve gone bonkers, and they know they’ll pay for it. And the Southern middle class will happily hop on the wagon with a New Democratic coalition, right alongside their black brothers which will return the South to Democratic hands where it (frankly) always belonged.

The only thing that has stalled this process (especially in Texas, the home state of the aforementioned Mr. Powell,) is Californian exiles. Contrary to popular belief on the Right, the Californian Republicans (which there are more of than Texan Republicans,) moving to states like Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, etc. have kept them red for much longer than was predicted. But many of them have started going back, and in Part 2, I’ll explain why this stream will turn into a fire hose. But make no mistake: this Southern flip blue is home grown, which is why it will stick. The only thing stopping it was the Confederate nostalgia, which has been cleared enough away in the minds of Southerners as much as in the physical world.

While obviously the whole south won’t flip at once (just like last time, the South didn’t consistently vote Red until 1984,) it will become a battleground instead of a base like it has been. Tennessee and Alabama will resist, and Florida will be red until the Boomers go to the great cruise ship in the sky, but Tennessee and Alabama will go the way of North Carolina and Georgia, if Nashville, Knoxville, Huntsville, and Birmingham are any indication, and Florida is too self-contained to have regional sway.

Like the Outlaw Country singers (who were all leftists, just look at their song lyrics,) leftism is finding a new muscular masculinity to champion it. Glen Powell will star in more movies as a multicultural cowboy, and capture the hearts of lib women everywhere. The Dems will become synonymous with Cowboy hats, particularly Black Cowboys (you notice they’ve been pushed a ton recently?) And alongside this shift in cultural messaging, the South with its newfound riches will become less solidly red and more purple, with a final destination that resembles the 1824 campaign much more than the 2024.

Walker Percy once wrote in one of his essays (this was in the 1980s mind you, but it still rings true today,) that Southerners have more in common with their ancestors in 1830 than in 1930, yet in both years their ancestors were voting Democrat. I think it’s reasonable to assume that Southerners in 2030 will be voting the same way their ancestors in 1830 and 1930 were. The Democrats are coming home, and their message will be much the same as it has been, just in a country accent this time. Mee-maw says trans rights.