Throughout the Trump era, progressive comments were frequent that their preferred political party represented a clear American majority, thwarted by undemocratic institutions and doomed to live under the rule of the conservative minority.
In the political context of 2016-20, this belief was exaggerated. Yes, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election with a minority of the popular vote. But more Americans voted for Republicans than Democrats for Congress, and more Americans voted for center-right candidates for president — including the Libertarian vote — than Hillary Clinton and Green’s Jill Stein.
In strictly majority terms, progressives deserved to lose in 2016, even if Trump didn’t necessarily deserve to win.
And the Republican structural advantages, while real, have not stopped Democrats from taking the House in 2018, the Presidency in 2020 and the Senate in 2021. These victories have extended the pattern of American politics in the 21st century, which has seen significant changes in alternating cycles, not the entrenchment of one party’s power.
The post-2024 political landscape, however, may look more like progressive depictions of its predicament in the Trump era. According to Cassandra’s calculations of that group, analyst David Shor, the convergence of 1) a Senate map unfavorable to Democrats with 2) their preexisting Electoral College and Senate disadvantages could easily produce a scenario in which the party won 50 % of the popular vote for Congress and 51% of the presidential vote—and end up losing the White House and facing an almost obstruction-proof Republican advantage in the Senate.
This is a scenario for progressive horror, but it’s also not one that conservatives should approve of. In recent years, as their advantages in both institutions have grown, conservatives have defended institutions like the Senate and Electoral College with variations on the argument that the US is a democratic republic, not a pure democracy.
These arguments carry less weight, however, the more consistently undemocratic the overall results of the system become. (They would completely fall apart in the scenario pursued by Trump and some of his allies after the 2020 election, in which state legislatures simply substitute their preferences for voters in their states.)
Electoral College legitimacy can be sustained if an occasional result of 49% to 47% of the popular vote goes the other way; likewise the legitimacy of the Senate if it leans a little to another party, but changes hands consistently.
But a scenario in which one party has retained the power to govern without majority support is a recipe for delegitimization and reasonable disillusionment, which no intelligent conservative column on the constitutional meaning of state sovereignty would adequately address.
From the GOP’s point of view, the best way to avoid such a future — in which the nature of Conservative victories undermines the government’s perceived legitimacy — is to stop being content with the advantages granted by the system and to work harder to win outright majorities.
You can’t expect one party to simply give away its advantages: there will never be a bipartisan constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate, in any imaginable timeline. But you can expect a party to show a little more electoral ambition than the Republican has been lately — seeking to win more elections the way Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon did, rather than settling for close races and pinning hopes on coups. luck.
Especially in the current climate, which seems dire to Democrats, Republicans have the opportunity to make the Electoral College’s grievance moot, at least for a while, simply by taking plausible positions, nominating plausible candidates, and winning outright majorities.
That means rejecting the politics of voter fraud paranoia — as, one hopes, Republicans will do in choosing Brian Kemp over David Perdue in the Georgia primaries. It means rejecting attempts to return to the libertarian politics of the Tea Party era, now championed in Florida Senator Rick Scott’s recent manifesto suggesting tax increases for the working class — essentially the right-wing equivalent of “defunding the police” in terms of political toxicity. .
And that means, and I’m afraid it’s beyond the party’s capabilities, to nominate a candidate other than Trump in 2024.
A Republican Party that has managed to win popular majorities in the Senate or Electoral College can still see them amplified by its structural advantages. But this is a normal feature of many democratic systems, not just the American one. It’s very different from losing the popular vote consistently and still being given power anyway.
As for what Democrats should do about their downsides — well, that’s a longer discussion, but two quick points for now.
First, to the extent that the party wants to focus on structural responses to its structural challenges, it needs clarity on what kind of electoral reforms would actually accomplish anything. That’s missing from the Biden era, where progressives wasted time and energy on bills that didn’t pass and that probably wouldn’t help the legend much if they did.
A different reform idea, state statutes for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, would also not have happened in the period, but it is far more sensitive to the real challenges facing Democrats in the Senate. So if you’re an activist or a legislator planning for the next brief window of when your party takes power, pushing for an expanded Senate seems like a more reasonable long ball to train your team’s pitching.
Second, to the extent that there is a Democratic path back to greater parity in the Senate and Electoral College without structural reform, this likely requires the development of an explicit faction within the party dedicated to winning back two types of voters (culturally Latinos). middle-class white workers and conservatives) who were part of Barack Obama’s coalition but have strayed to the right since.
This faction would have two missions: to pursue a research-tested economic policy agenda (not just the pro-business one supported by many centrist Democrats) and to constantly find ways to distinguish itself from organized progressivism — foundations, activists, academics — on cultural and social issues. .
And, crucially, not in the tactical style favored by analysts like Shor, but in the language of principle: right-leaning voters would need to know that this faction truly believes in its moderation, in its attacks on progressive principles, and that its members remain a thorn in the side of progressivism even after arriving in Washington.
At this point, Democrats dispersed politicians who somehow fit this mold, from West Virginia to New York City. But they don’t have an agenda to band together, donors ready to fund them, intellectuals ready to adopt them as their own. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention — and it could soon take over the Democratic Party.
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