The Emerging Conventional Wisdom

There seems to be a new conventional wisdom about the state of the Democratic Party emerging, expressed here by Marc Ambinder:

Forget the horse race numbers for a moment: if the surveys are accurate, the polarization within the Democratic Party has reached critical levels. Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee — that’s (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.

In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they’d be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee — I believe that’s the highest number recorded for that question, too.

The percentage of Clinton voters who say they’d choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they’d definitely vote for Obama in a general election.

James Carville, writing in the Financial Times, sees the fault lines a little differently, distinguishing between what he calls “Party A”

There are two main parts of the Democratic party. The first and fastest growing is what I refer to (somewhat uncreatively) as “Party A” Democrats. Party A Democrats tend to be urban or suburban. They are traditionally better educated, white, more affluent, heavily female, socially liberal and reform-oriented. Examples are candidates such as Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, Gary Hart, Mike Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean.

and I’d call “technocrats” and “Party B”

The other side of the party is a more broad coalition of working class people who are generally less affluent, less educated and look to the federal government to soften the harsher edges of capitalism. They tend to be either urban or rural. I refer to them as “Party B” Democrats. They favour increased funding for federal programmes from Medicare to unemployment compensation to subsidised student loans. This wing of the party has included labour unions, older voters, African-Americans and non-college- educated young voters. Party B Democrats have been much more responsive to classic “I’m on your side” Democratic rhetoric. Candidates from this faction include Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and (uncomfortable as he seemed in this ideological space) Al Gore.

or populists. The Louisianan, Carville, is an interesting standard-bearer for that particular set of distinctions. Huey Long, the Kingfish, was a populist technocrat.

I’d also point out that Carville’s two sub-parties are different groups of rent-seekers, the former group seeking consultancies, the second hand-outs.

Although Mr. Carville notes the implications of our winner-take-all system, namely, that our two main political parties include elements whose goals are actually in conflict each other, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the corollary, that somehow the Democrats and Republicans each manage to come together and elect candidates and I have no doubt that will be the case in this election. In my view the lengthy primary season hasn’t fomented new faultlines, it’s only exposed the ones that have been there all along.