Is America's Political Stalemate Really So Impossible to Break?

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May 22

The other day I was talking to a friend about my blog series, “Paths to a Democratic Supermajority,” which explores what it would take to achieve a leftward political realignment in the coming decades.

“You’re playing into the two-party doom loop,” he said, half joking but also half serious.

"Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop” is the name of a book by Lee Drutman, which argues that our broken electoral system is fueling ever-intensifying polarization and the only off-ramp that will save us are reforms to turn the U.S. into a multi-party democracy.

In this analysis, today’s political stalemate is so entrenched that people like me who dream of a decisive victory for their team are not just wasting their time; we may be part of the problem — since stepped-up mobilization on one side will always produce a counter-reaction, fueling the doom loop but never breaking it. “Escalation will only make things worse,” Drutman writes. “The only way out is to deescalate.”

A recent book on the 2020 election, “The Bitter End,” reinforces the idea of immutable electoral battle lines, or what the authors call “calcified politics.” They say that fewer voters are willing to “defect from their party” and that there is “thus less chance for new and even dramatic events to change people’s choices at the ballot box. New events tend to be absorbed into an axis of conflict in which identity plays the central role. And this means smaller fluctuations from year to year in election outcomes.”

This view — that America is frozen into a 50-50 nation — has become conventional wisdom in many circles.

But is it actually true? I don’t think so.

In fact, a huge swath of Americans doesn’t have strong partisan attachments and/or only vote episodically, if at all. This means that wooing existing party loyalists to switch sides isn’t a prerequisite for building a new majority. Instead, either of the two parties could achieve such a breakthrough by holding onto their current voters while also winning enough new support in key battleground states and congressional districts to have a reliable governing majority. Given today’s slim electoral margins, is it so hard to imagine that one of the parties might find a formula that gets them to, say, 55% in the places where it really matters and then sustains that formula for an extended period?

Not at all. I can see scenarios for either side breaking through the stalemate with the right set of moves that combine both mobilization and persuasion strategies.

A “MAGA-Lite” Majority?

Let’s start with the potential of a realignment that favors the GOP. The elements here might include continuing a populist move to the center on economic issues while capitalizing on cultural and status anxieties in a way that doesn’t come across as too racist and misogynist, or scarily anti-freedom.

Glenn Youngkin used this MAGA-lite formula in his winning race for Virginia governor, where he embraced a culture war agenda yet also presented as a mild soccer dad. The result: He won in a blue state by galvanizing right-wing base voters while improving on Trump’s performance with moderate voters. He mobilized and persuaded.

Trump himself had a good shot at realigning U.S. politics when he took office in 2017. Imagine if he focused more attention on infrastructure and defending programs like Social Security and less on tweeting offensive garbage, killing the ACA and passing tax cuts for the rich. Oh, and then let’s say he wore a mask when COVID hit.

It’s hard to imagine that counterfactual scenario given who Trump is, but even so, he did grow his coalition by 14 million votes between 2016 and 2020 — a coalition that excited the right, activated many politically disaffected Americans and also pulled in former Obama voters. If Trump weren’t such a scary demagogue, it’s easy to imagine that he could have grown that coalition further — and without triggering such intense “resistance” from the other side.

Quite apart from the counterfactual of a more normal Trump, Youngkin showed how to rally the MAGA base without terrifying people. If he can do that in a blue state, some Republican may be able to figure out how to do it nationally — maybe even Youngkin himself in 2028.

A Bigger Blue Tent

Democrats have an even better shot at realignment with the same formula of growing their base while also appealing to a broader swath of voters.

I say “better” for two reasons.

First, there is a very large number of likely Democrats among the citizen voting-age population who currently don’t vote in key states, along with competitive congressional districts. A 2022 memo by the Center for Voter Information, for example, pointed out that only 38% of CVAP people of color in Texas are registered to vote. Demography may not be destiny, but it clearly favors the Democrats — and nowhere may that be more true than the potential for millennials and plurals to transform the electorate as they age and vote at much higher rates, heavily favoring Democrats.

Second, the Democratic Party has a strong recent track record of connecting with moderate voters. Biden did it in 2020 and governors like Jared Polis and Gretchen Whitmer have done it since then.

Given all this, I don’t think that my blog series on a Democratic supermajority is a pipe dream or, worse, a recipe for further escalation of toxic polarization.

The series looks at the potential to combine mobilization and persuasion efforts across key states and districts to secure an enduring governing majority. I argue for much bigger investments to catalyze higher turnout among New American Majority voters and also ramping up promising new efforts to help Democrats do better with white moderates in rural and suburban areas.

Doubling down on intense partisan or ideological appeals is not part of the strategy. Nor is expanding the Supreme Court, adding new states or eliminating the filibuster. I don’t see any of that as essential to building a Democratic majority and some of these moves would turn off disaffected nonvoters or persuadable moderates — while also triggering counter-mobilization by the GOP base.

Doom is Not Preordained

Some argue that both parties are so beholden to their extremes that it’s become impossible for either to reinvent themselves in a way that connects with a lot more voters. I don’t agree with that, at least not when it comes to the Democrats, who are getting rapidly better at managing a coalition that pulls in both left and moderate voters.

To be sure, this is a tricky balancing act in that making concessions to moderates runs the risk of demobilizing the base, while moving too far left can have lethal consequences for Democrats trying to win office in purple or red America. But it’s clearly doable judging by how the broad “Biden coalition” is in pretty good shape as we head into 2024. It’s easy to imagine expanding the reach and appeal of this coalition in the coming years.

Others will argue that today’s Republicans will not tolerate minority status. Drutman writes: “Historically, when groups lost power and can’t see legitimate democratic means to take back power, they turn to extra-democratic means. The Republican Party would become even more driven by outrage.”

While that does sound plausible in today's tinderbox environment, this is actually not how things have played out in the past. After being locked out of the White House for 20 years in the mid-20th century, Republicans embraced much of the New Deal to get back in with Eisenhower and then Nixon, while the Democrats moved to the center to win power with Clinton.

In any case, if Democrats do pursue the kind of inclusive majoritarian strategy I’m suggesting, many GOP voters might not be so scared. We progressives should actually believe the story we tell about the promise of a multiracial democracy — which is that it's not about zero-sum tradeoffs. Rather, we'll all be better off.

As for the Republicans, if they do keep losing elections they won’t help themselves by doubling down on extremism. That would only isolate them further from moderate voters.

We can see this dynamic already. As he seeks reelection, Biden is trying to set up a choice between a pragmatic Democratic Party that gets stuff done and a GOP controlled by irresponsible fanatics taking away our freedoms. Plenty of MAGA Republicans seem more than happy to play into Biden’s hands.

So even today, amid what many call a permanent stalemate, we can see the outline of a realignment scenario — one whereby Democrats tack toward the center, but carefully in ways that bring along their base, while Republicans keep heading out toward the fringe.