Successful American political parties are, by electoral necessity, coalitions that typically consist of strange bed fellows. The Democratic “Roosevelt Coalition” that began in the 1930s and survived well into the 1960s included both Southern whites and urban Jews from the northeast, two groups with little in common ideologically. The Republican Party has long accommodated both provincial Main Street businessmen and Wall Street internationalists despite their divergent economic interests.
As is true for rocky marriages, staying together requires avoiding contentious issues that will push parties to have, in divorce lawyer speak, irreconcilable differences. This means staying quiet on topics inviting, “If that’s the way you feel, I’m leaving.”
Today’s Democratic Party may be on the edge of disintegration over irreconcilable differences. For the last decade the Democrats have increasingly embraced radical race-related positions opposed by fellow coalition partners. These run deeper than the usual squabbling between partisan allies that can be papered over via backroom deals. Specifically, radical blacks within the Democratic Party seem spoiling for a fight, even if the fight ensures electoral disaster.
Here’s one possible break-up scenario. It’s the fall of 2024 and the ten or so Democrats, including President Biden, are competing for the party’s nomination. None are playing strong hands, and each assumes that getting 30-35% of the primary vote in key early states could anoint them as the front-runners. This is the classic strategy of winning a key bloc or two in a few primaries and then shifting to the center in the general election.
During the first nationally televised debate, the black moderator asks all ten candidates for a show of hands regarding one or more of the following racially charged questions:
- Do you favor reparation for the African American descendants of enslaved people?
- Is systemic white racism the number one problem facing black America?
- Is increased policing and incarceration the best solution to address sky-rocketing black crime?
- Do you support Black Lives Matter?
- Should affirmative action [recently sharply limited by the Supreme Court] be protected with a Constitutional Amendment?
- Should all white youngsters be required to learn about America’s historic racism and how this racism so deeply harmed African Americans?
The “yes” or “no” answers soon dominate the campaign, and no candidate can escape. Those who refuse to respond are nevertheless endlessly badgered, and the entire campaign quickly centers on race.
In past campaigns hot-button, divisive topics would be pushed off the agenda by party leaders for the sake of winning elections. Only centrists skilled at avoiding controversy would be certified as “serious candidates.” At most, those whose raised contentious issues like abortion would be told to “cool it” or allowed to escape controversy with banalities. But papering over a coalition killer is no longer acceptable in today’s politics. In fact, emotion-laden, highly acrimonious issues are now the red meat of fund-raising and for rallying one’s base.
What is new is the transformation of black politics from one of focusing on pragmatic goals such as voting rights to one of demanding tribute—a public act during which the subservient acknowledges their inferior position by paying tribute. Such tribute may be material or purely physical such as prostrating oneself before the ruler. It must be highly visible—a private letter assuring obedience does not count. Supplicants must feel pain; they are debasing themselves, and this element must be mutually understood or else the ceremony is just one of exchange, not tribute.
This shift from policy to tribute is predictable as item after item on the civil rights agenda has become law. After all, what’s next after enacting countless anti-discrimination measures, schools named after Rosa Parks, and election laws tweaked to elect dozens of black officials? The election of Barrack Obama did not the end “the movement;” it just signals a new era of demanding tribute.
Tribute-based politics dominates today’s college campuses where heated battles surround issues of minimal academic value—re-naming of buildings, tearing down statutes of slave-owning Founders, speech codes to eliminate terms like “master bedroom,” and requiring professors to sign diversity statements as a pre-condition to employment. Woe to the professor who even slightly offends a black student—endlessly groveling, pleading for absolution and usually all for naught.
“Winning” underserved prizes is also about tribute, In the entertainment industry there’s audience-killing effort to ensure that blacks receive a goodly share of Oscar’s, Tony’s and Grammy’s even if these prizes have minimal economic value or lack artistic justification. Tellingly, nobody dare asks if the prize was earned. Power, not accomplishment, wins the award.
Receiving tribute is especially visible in current TV commercials where a conspicuous disconnect exists between the black actor’s appearances and what is being portrayed. This is not an inadvertent miscasting. Featuring a scruffy, underclass looking black male portraying the TV husband of an attractive white “Karen” is not about selling the advertised product. It may even hurt sales. The mismatch exists to demonstrate black clout—we are so influential that we can force advertisers to hire us no matter how mismatched we are for the part.
Compelling white Democrats to embrace positions on race that will cost them votes similarly displays political power. That’s the entire purpose of this exercise—extracting tribute. Absent homage, the debate moderator would instead ask innocuous questions about how to boost black test scores and then receive bland response about better pay for teachers, more computers etc. that would soon be forgotten.
A racially divisive primary season followed by their nominating convention will be a nightmare for the tribute-minded Democratic party. Those Democratic aspirants who reject the radical black agenda will struggle in primary states with a sizeable black population where they will be opposed by prominent black leaders themselves anxious about more extreme black primary rivals.
The Democrat’s national nominating convention in Chicago may be particularly explosive, perhaps a throwback to the violence plagued 1968 Chicago convention. There will certainly be demands for a black, perhaps black female, to head the ticket. And resistance will likely come from members of other victim coalition partners who feel that it is now “their turn.” Pressures will be put on whites for platform planks on reparations, de-funding the police, and ending mass incarcerations even if the odds of adoption are miniscule. Radical delegates will be emboldened by recent events in the Tennessee Legislature. Debate with bullhorns. Visitor galleries will be filled with locally recruited “youths” to join the raucous floor demonstrations. Millions will now watch race-inspired pandemonium that, almost guaranteed, will also include more violent disturbances outside the convention hall.
Meanwhile, those who previously opposed reparation, teaching CRT, favoring stronger policing and the like—largely older white males—may be ignored if they failed to shine in primaries. The convention may come to resemble the Democrat’s 1948 nominating convention where much of the party’s southern wing bolted and formed the States Rights Party that ran Strom Thurmond for president. Thurmond received 1.2 million popular votes and carried four states with a total of 39 Electoral College votes. Outside of the official Democratic convention, the party’s hard left assembled to nominate Henry Wallace under the Progressive banner. Wallace received over one million votes but failed to carry a single state.
The 1948 multiparty fiasco may repeat itself as existing cracks in the Democratic coalition grow. “Blackness” as a political brand is becoming less popular, and many Asians, Hispanics, and other past dutiful coalition members are becoming uneasy about endorsing the radical black agendas. Unmarried well-educated white women, a core Democratic constituency, may also become uncomfortable with a presidential candidate who favors community-based therapy, not jail time for rapists.
Faced with this acrimony and mayhem, white Democratics in states with tiny black populations may go entirely local and distance themselves from the national party. This is hardly an unusual pattern and candidates can surely run without party labels in their campaigns. The 1950s “national Republicans” in the South voted for Eisenhower for president but remained loyal Democrats in state and local elections. During the 2020 election the name “Joe Biden” was often omitted from local Democratic campaign literature.
Conceivably, the 2024 presidential campaign may fracture current political alignments, and do so for decades. The new and slimmed down Democratic core may now consist of blacks, less well-educated Hispanics, and well-educated affluent whites (especially academics), militant feminists and gay activist, extreme greens, and government employees. The old “Democrat” label may officially be replaced by the “Progressive” brand. This new Progressive Party will favor even greater spending and strive to transform the United States into a multicultural, open borders welfare state, together with de facto racial quotas and draconian measures to stifle the greatest demon of them all—white supremacy.
This transformation would not be the first time a major political party imploded and then vanished. For example, the Whig Party was created in 1833 and elected four presidents before collapsing into oblivion in 1856. It once enjoyed solid support from businesspeople, professionals, Southern planters, and social reformers. Prominent Whigs included John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Zachary Taylor. At one point it controlled both the House and the Senate. Nevertheless, by the 1856 election multiple issues, particularly slavery, and the rise of rival parties fractured the Whig coalition and it never recovered. Many of the northern Whigs switched to the newly created Republican Party.
This fracturing, even the shrinking of the Democratic Party is hardly a disaster for the black radicals responsible for its shrinking. The emergence of Republican domination at the national level may reduce but hardly end today’s racial spoils system of preferences and set asides. Ironically, blacks may benefit from being the major player in a smaller party that seldom can win the presidency but nevertheless controls many cities and enjoys a sizeable presence in dozens of state legislatures. Republicans are not about to cut funding to the Detroits and Baltimores, let along de-fund the countless largely futile social engineering programs. Black radials will still get their share of the booty, and for them, this is what matters.
By Robert Weissberg