Why the Democrats lose elections

National Review, Dec 18, 1987 by George F. Will

Why the Democrats Lose Elections

WHEN EARL WEAVER was manager of the Baltimore Orioles he would charge at umpires shouting, "Are you gonna get any better, or is this it?" Many Democrats, weary of watching the Democratic Party flounder in presidential competition, are ready to rise up and shout like that.

During the last forty years, the party's fall has been long and hard. Democratic presidential candidates have won a majority of the popular vote only twice in the last ten elections. Beginning with 1952, Republicans have dominated Democrats in electoral votes 3,245 to 1,518. Since Eisenhower entered politics, the Democrats have lost six of nine elections and received 12 per cent fewer popular votes than the Republicans. Just under one-quarter of today's electorate was eligible to vote in 1952. That means three-quarters have voted only in what is, at the presidential level, a Republican era.

In the nine elections beginning with 1952, 39 states, with a total of 441 electoral votes (171 more than the 270 needed to win), have voted Republican five times or more. Thirty-three of those states, with 322 electoral votes, have gone Republican in six of those nine elections. Seventeen states, with 143 electoral votes, have gone Republican in eight of the nine. Monomaniacal Arizona has voted Republican in all nine.

The Democratic Party has no comparable base of states strongly disposed toward it. There are only nine states that have voted Democratic in five or more of those nine elections. These states, plus the District of Columbia, have a paltry 81 electoral votes.

Who is the most potent Democrat of the last two decades? Jimmy Carter. Do not scoff. You can look it up. In a span of five elections (1968 through 1984) he is the only Democrat to win more than 43 per cent of the vote.

It is true that in 1984, in the teeth of the Reagan gale, Democrats won 65 per cent of all contested elections. In the 1986 competition for approximately 7,500 state legislative seats, Democrats gained 180 seats and now control 68 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers, a gain of five. (Peculiar Nebraska, with its unicameral and nonpartisan legislature, does not count, except to Nebraskans.) In politics as in baseball what happens in the minor leagues matters because that is where the big-leaguers grow. Attractive state legislators often get promoted to the national legislature.

Nonetheless, minor-league gains are cold comfort for clear-sighted Democrats. They know that repeated Republican successes in presidential contests cannot be hermetically sealed at that level. A party that wins the White House consistently enough will, in time, win the courthouse. Ours is a presidential system. The Presidency is the agenda-setting and tone-setting institution from which radiate influences that permeate all levels of politics.

Many Democrats say that the Republican run of successes is a fluke produced by a series of weak Democratic nominees. But in the last four elections the Democratic Party has tried to sell the country McGovern, Carter twice (successfully only against an accidental President), and Mondale. Four such "aberrations" consecutively are not aberrations. They reflect a single strong propensity to misread the electorate's mood.

Part of the Democrats' accelerating problem is a by-product of the political chemistry of concentration. As moderately conservative Democrats drift away to the Republican Party, the ratio of liberals to all others in the Democratic Party rises. This makes it steadily more difficult for a moderately conservative Democrat to win a presidential nomination. And that hastens the flight of the less liberal Democrats. And so it goes.

APRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE has two crucial resources-- time and money. If nothing is tied down, time and money cannot be economized. The Democrats' problem in 1980 and 1984 was that no region was tied down --not even the Northeast. Today the Democrats' biggest headache is the once-solid South. After the 1990 census, the 11 Southern states will probably have 148 electoral votes, over half the 270 needed to win. Furthermore, as David Broder notes, "In every presidential election since 1956, the candidate who has won the largest number of electoral votes in the 11 Southern states has walked into the White House. That is true of no other region. The Midwest and the West voted for losers in 1960 and 1976; the Northeast in 1968." So in 1988 it will have been nine elections since the South backed the losing horse.

Mindful of their region's importance, the Democratic-controlled Southern state legislatures arranged the Southern regional primary, which, coming hard on the heels of New Hampshire's primary, will select a number of delegates equal to nearly 60 per cent of the total needed to nominate. What have they wrought? Neither they nor anyone else knows. The principal purpose of the Democrats who proposed this regional primary was to increase the influence of their region in the party's nominating process. But it is easy to imagine a circumstance in which open primaries (which eight of the participating states have) would defeat this purpose. Suppose the "slingshot effect" of Iowa and New Hampshire slings two liberals toward the South. Suppose the regional primary becomes, on the Democratic side, essentially a referendum on the candidates who finished first and second in New Hampshire --say, Dukakis and Simon. Conservative Democrats might wrinkle their noses, curl their lips, and migrate to the Republican side of the primary, leaving the Democratic primary largely in the possession of liberals. The black vote would remain loyal to the Democratic Party and would become even more powerful in that primary. All the white candidates other than the first- and second-place finishers in New Hampshire might be too short of cash to continue, but Jesse Jackson's campaign, if it is like his magical mystery tour of 1984, will be running on adrenaline, churches, and free media. It is conceivable that Jackson could win the regional primary that Southern Democrats hoped would move the party toward moderation.