Rebuilding The Party (Part 1)

As with much of what I’ve written over the past several days, this is not the conversation I expected to be having one week after Election Day. I bought into what so many others bought into—the prevailing narrative that Trump was going to lose; that Hillary Clinton’s win would empower and unify Democrats even further; that a Republican civil war would break out, leading to the potential demise of the party.

Instead, it is the Democrats who are suddenly faced with civil war, or at least civil unrest. There is talk of a challenge to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The race for DNC chair will feature several candidates, and put on display deep divisions over the party’s future. A sitting Democratic senator over the weekend called Harry Reid “an embarrassment”. Meanwhile, Republicans are largely unified behind the president-elect, with most members of the #NeverTrump movement taking a hopeful, wait-and-see approach to the incoming administration.

Between a surprise presidential victory, retaining control of the House and Senate, and holding a near-record number of governorships and state legislatures, the arguments from just a few months ago that the Republican Party was about to go extinct seem even more laughable today. But while it is the Democrats who have had their divisions suddenly exposed for the nation to see, the GOP still has serious challenges ahead.

While the Democrats’ loss of the presidential election was unexpected, the results from that loss—the brewing internal conflict, the increasing power struggle between various factions—is not. Democrats have been largely united for the past eight years because they controlled the White House, and because Barack Obama has been and continues to be extremely popular within the party, across nearly all factions. When a party holds the presidency, it closes ranks—it’s okay to disagree occasionally, but at the end of the day keep your arguments private and unify behind the leader of the party.

The party out of power, by contrast—for the last eight years represented by the Republicans—has no single leader around which to unite. Their agenda is often blocked. Failure follows failure, and eventually the finger-pointing begins. A major electoral loss, such as that suffered in 2012, only increases the division and debate about how to change the party’s fortunes.

From what I just described, it would be easy to assume that Republicans are now sitting pretty, with nothing to worry about, while Democrats are in deep trouble. And right now, from an electoral perspective, you would rather be a Republican than a Democrat. But the eight years of Barack Obama will have long-lasting, negative repercussions for the Democratic Party, beyond even the surface debates over liberal policy and the number of gubernatorial and legislative seats lost.

Unifying behind Obama did not magically make all of the party’s divisions go away, and its factions permanently unite. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are large national organizations, comprised of millions of members who must constantly balance the competing interests of those members. Republicans have conservatives, moderates, and libertarians; populists and defenders of Big Business; evangelicals and nonreligious voters; blue-collar and white-collar workers; isolationists and interventionists.

Democrats, meanwhile, have liberals and moderates; urban professionals and the inner-city poor; African-Americans and Hispanics; union members and the CEOs of large corporations; atheists and Muslims.

It is obviously impossible for either party to completely satisfy all of their disparate constituencies. But over the past eight years, Republicans, as the opposition party, have been able to air their grievances in the open, to the point where the narrative is tired and familiar. Democrats, in the majority and under increased pressure to unify, have not, with the result that many serious issues and fissures within the Democratic coalition have gone unanswered.

Now, the roles are reversed. In the short term, this is bad news for Democrats, who over the next few months will see a sudden explosion of the discontent that has been for the most part bottled up during the Obama era, given voice to only occasionally in primaries (Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign against Clinton is likely only a taste of what is to come). But in the long term, Democrats will (presumably) work out their differences in open debate.

Now, it will be Republicans who will be under increased pressure to unify, without dissent, behind the now-undisputed leader of their party. We saw the results of this attempted coercion of unity at the Republican National Convention, and in the #NeverTrump movement. While in the short term it could lead to much-needed conservative reforms, such as the repeal of Obamacare and the securing of national borders, it could be just as damaging to the party in the long term, as the Democrats are now learning. (I discussed a similar principle, involving the pressure of party loyalty on Republicans and conservatives during the Bush administration, a few weeks ago.)

Of course, if Trump governs as a conservative, while giving all factions of the party a fair hearing, it will lessen the long-term damage. Solid, good-government reforms that the GOP has been talking about for years would go a long way toward healing the party if Trump were to actually help put them into practice. And the choice of Reince Priebus as chief of staff is a promising start. But the president-elect still has a long way to go, and his government will have to be dramatically different from his campaign. The upshot is that both parties will likely be facing negative repercussions from a Trump presidency.

On Thursday, I’ll focus on the question of whether constitutional conservatism will still have a role in Trump’s Republican Party, and the ramifications of the party being led by someone with no obvious ideological commitments.