One Reality Republicans May Take Away from This Election

I would also like to add one little second thought on whether this election will force Republicans to face unpleasant facts.  Last time I was skeptical, believing that while reality is extremely difficult to deny when it comes to election outcomes, more complex and remote realities will remain deniable.  But I am beginning to think that was too glib.  I personally would not put too much stock in people who direly warn that Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections.  Quite simply, the popular vote from 1992 onward has been fairly close.  But I think Republicans are finally beginning to face facts and realize that their glory days of 1980 to 1988 are not coming back.

It was never any mystery to me why Republicans hated Bill Clinton so much.  He was a Democrat and he was President.  Nothing more was needed.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won an electoral college landslide over Jimmy Carter of 489 to 49.

In 1984, Reagan won an even greater landslide against Walter Mondale, 525 electoral votes to 13.

1988 was less overwhelming, but the senior Bush nonetheless won over Michael Dukakis by the the comfortable margin of 426 electoral votes to 112.  Democrats were developing the reputation (in the words of David Barry) of not being qualified to plug in an electric blanket, let alone win the Presidency.  And Republicans developed what every conservative professes to hate the most -- a sense of entitlement.  In particular, they developed a sense of entitlement to the Presidency and to assume that the sorts of electoral landslides that had gotten as a matter of routine in the 1980's would be theirs forever.  This sense was strengthened when the senior Bush fought the Gulf War, 1990-1991 against the advice of many Democrats, made a quick and easy victory, and seemed invulnerable going into the 1992.  Then a recession hit and the Democrats won.

It should be noted, by the way, that what brought Ronald Reagan to power was the stagflation of the 1970's -- a combination of a weak economy and double digit inflation.  Reagan agreed to back Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve in the painful but necessary measure necessary to break the inflationary spiral -- tightening the money supply, no matter how painful, until inflation cried uncle.  With Reagan's backing, Volcker put the squeeze on the economy, raising interest rates as high as 20%, and throwing the economy into a severe recession.  But the inflationary spiral was broken.  As soon as Volcker was satisfied that inflation was under control, he let up on the brakes, and the economy quickly rebounded.  It was at the very peak of growth (returning to capacity) at the time of the 1984 election.  I recall well at the time that George Will mocked overly enthusiastic Republicans who thought that Reagan has repealed the laws of business cycles and that we would have prosperity forever.  And, indeed, no one came right out and said so, but certainly the implied promise was that, after suffering so severe a recession in 1981-1982, we would be rewarded by never experiencing one again.  As long as this appeared to be the case, Republicans continued to win the Presidency by landslides.  But inevitably, recession reared its ugly head again, people were shocked to realize that the business cycle was still with us, and Clinton won.  Republicans dismissed his victory as an anomaly because Ross Perot was running a third party candidacy.  Republicans presumed that every vote for Perot would otherwise have gone to a Republican and were therefore able to dismiss Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 as illegitimate, because he never won a popular majority.

In 2000, the junior Bush won a razor-thin electoral majority of 271-267 and actually narrowly lost the popular vote.  But because the states that went for Bush were less densely populated than the ones that voted for Gore, they were geographically larger, and electoral maps created a misleading impression of a strong Bush majority.

In 2004, Bush did win the popular vote and had a more comfortable electoral margin of 301-237.  But, once again, geography was misleading, and his advantage in rural areas made his margin of victory look much wider than it really was.  Thus, although Republicans should have recognized that their glory days of the 1980's were long gone, they looked at the electoral map and saw a landslide.

In 2008, the country suffered its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and, unsurprisingly, the incumbent party lost.  Obama got an absolute popular majority a strong electoral college victory of 375-163.  The peculiarities of geography made this victory appear less than it was, but the impression of an overwhelming red state majority was no longer possible to maintain. Republicans still refused to accept the results.  Just as the 1990's wins of Bill Clinton could be dismissed as anomalies because Ross Perot's third party candidacy skewed the results, Obama's 2008 victory could be dismissed as an anomaly because of an economic crisis and unrealistic expectations as to what he could do about it.   Republicans assumed that if they only held the line for four years, the natural order would reassert itself, and the would once again hold the White House, as was their right.  They could still dismiss three of the last five Presidential elections a anomalies that would not be repeated.

Then 2012 struck.  This election was not so easy to dismiss as an anomaly.  This time there was no third party candidate to skew the results.  The economy was lackluster.  And yet, the Democrat won once again.  Furthermore, the electoral map was vary similar to the last one, suggesting that a stable coalition was in place.    The contrast to what certain Republican pollsters had been predicting was stunning.

Electoral map by the Examiner, predicting a Romney landslide

What happened, so far as I can tell, was that the Democrats won an election under unfavorable circumstances, one that cannot be explained away by a third party candidate or an economic crisis.  And suddenly Republicans are beginning to recognized that their landslides of the 1980's are over for the foreseeable future.  Worse yet, they are beginning to come to grips with the fact that the presence of a Democrat in the White House is not some sort of bizarre anomaly, or an outrage against the natural order, but a normal occurrence.

If they are able to assimilate that into the world view, then we may, indeed, begin to see the beginning of the decline of the madness.  At least I can hope.