When asked if he were a member of an organized political party, Will Rogers responded no, he was a Democrat. Some things never change. The goings on surrounding the Republican contest for presidential nominee and even Speaker of the House have revealed multiple fissures within the Republican caucus so it’s easy to forget the large number of factions within the Democratic Party. Recently, in describing those factions to a Republican friend I identified three: progressives, the group I call “machine Democrats” or, occasionally, “party Democrats”, and reformers. To be sure there are overlaps among these groups but there are differences as well.
In a post of City Journal, Fred Siegel muses over the divisions within the Democratic Party that may make it difficult for the party to hold the White House in 2016:
The Democrats have ongoing strengths. The party has shown considerable unity even in the face of landslide losses in the 2014 midterms. On a wide variety of issues, however, the Democratic base finds itself at odds with the country’s so-called “swing†voters. This poses a problem for Democrats in 2016. On issues as varied as crime, environmentalism, late-term abortion, illegal immigration, free trade, and the Iran nuclear deal, serious splits exist among self-identified Democrats. The base’s leftward shift on these issues has party moderates shaking their heads.
The Democrats are deeply dependent on black votes. “African-American voters,†explains The Cook Political Report, “accounted for Obama’s entire margin of victory in seven states: Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Without these states’ 112 electoral votes, Obama would have lost decisively.†With Obama on the ballot, black voter participation exceeded white voter participation in 2012. The great fear among Democratic Party operatives in 2016 is that African-Americans will stay home.
There are similar issues with organized labor, environmentalists, and Jews, just to name three of the components of what is thought of as the “Democratic base”.
As I’ve said before if Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ candidate, the election may as well be held today—she has nearly 100% name recognition and just about everyone has already made of their minds about her. The great question is turnout. What the Republicans need to be wary about is nominating a candidate that mobilizes the Democratic base more than he or she does their own.
