The realignment of American politics began early one morning in January 1992 outside a paper mill in Berlin, N.H., as a Republican underdog shook workers’ hands.
Coos County’s blue-collar voters had been solid Democrats for generations. But presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, the irrepressible insurgent challenging George H.W. Bush and the national Republican establishment, targeted them. It worked. Buchanan took Berlin and Gorham while finishing a strong second to Bush, who went on to lose to Bill Clinton in the general election.
Buchanan’s populist outreach was a precursor to this century’s political realignment. (Running on a campaign of tax cuts and tariff increases, Buchanan shocked the GOP establishment by winning the 1996 New Hampshire Primary, though Sen. Bob Dole won the nomination and lost to Clinton.)
Unlike Donald Trump, Buchanan was a happy warrior who paired hardball politics with a delightful, if stern personality. Like Trump, he understood that the GOP was losing credibility with its rank and file supporters. His unsuccessful presidential bids shook the party’s elite, but they took no lessons from his campaigns. Neither did the Democrats.
When the Tea Party movement emerged after the 2008 elections, mainstream Republicans again dismissed it as a distraction. They didn’t realize it was a fire alarm. Democrats chuckled at the GOP’s internal battles when they should have understood that American politics were ready to change.
Where did that lead? To 2016, when mainstream media and establishment politicians from both parties were blindsided as Trump’s angry populist campaign, built on celebrity, chutzpah and lies, deftly mobilized blue-collar voters to seize control of the stodgy GOP and ambush the over-confident Democratic nominee.
Tuesday’s election showed that the Democratic Party learned nothing from its 2016 embarrassment. Kamala Harris failed miserably at rebutting the Trump campaign’s depiction of her as an elitist who is blind to the issues that matter most to the average voter. Rather than offering a credible, detailed platform of change and economic growth, Harris embraced every part of President Biden’s mixed record while doubling down on Trump’s negatives. But those repulsed by Jan. 6 and other misdeeds were already on her side. They couldn’t vote twice. The critical swing voters who distrust both parties instead prioritized pocketbook issues over morality and civic decency.
That should not be a surprise. It is how populist politicians are winning elections in other countries.
Where do we go from here? If “we” are the voters who considered neither Trump nor Harris acceptable, we should hope for more political upheaval. Why? Because our antiquated two-party system is broken and little will change until it is replaced. The GOP has discarded its conservative tenets of fiscal prudence, small government and support for democracy in favor of higher spending, tax cuts and autocracy. Democrats too often give short shrift to the actual concerns of struggling families, instead embracing divisive niche issues that appeal to the comfortable and the mainstream media.
The one good thing about Trump’s sweeping triumph is that it might move America closer to a true political realignment. The Democrats and the traditional GOP have failed us. A new party or two is needed.
So is patience. Third parties have too often been attractive options for just one election before disappearing, remembered only as spoilers. In the end, Ralph Nader, George Wallace and Ross Perot failed to make a difference. But a new party built over several election cycles might matter if constructed from the bottom up, not the top down. Small factions can have outsized influence in gridlocked legislatures. A center-right coalition might elect candidates similar to Phil Scott, Charlie Baker, Jared Golden or Joe Manchin to Congress. Progressives frustrated by their minority status as Democrats might flourish as a rump party that could demand concessions for support on key issues, much as Vermont’s Progressive Party has done since the 1990s. Multi-party systems work in Canada and many European democracies by forcing compromises on divisive legislation. Why not here?
Otherwise we might as well resign ourselves to many more years of unproductive culture wars that will continue to poison our politics while derailing serious discussion of the deficit, health care, housing and other real issues. Let’s not do that.
Charlie Perkins helped direct the New Hampshire Union Leader’s political coverage for several decades as a reporter, editor and newsroom leader. He lives in Enfield.