by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
If I may be so bold as to offer my thoughts on the topic of the New America Conference where Ezra's speaking today ...
In The Two Americas, which I still think is the most insightful book on politics written in the past three years, Stan Greenberg argues that electoral realignment occurs in American politics every thirty or forty years. Usually when this occurs, there is a short-lived left-right synthesis that allows for bipartisan cooperation where there previously was none, loosens government from its usual function of preserving the status quo, and leads to a "transformation" that rearranges the public's voting patterns over the span of a decade or two. The question of can thus be rephrased "Is the American electorate on the cusp of a realignment?", ending the post-Reagan political consensus that kept the debate focused on "lower taxes", "smaller government", "free markets", "strong foreign policy", and "traditional moral values", whether or not government policy went in that direction. And the evidence that we'll arrive at a substantially different frame just over the next hill—it isn't incredibly strong.
