Democrats Face Fate Of WhigsElite parties defined by opposition to a single man do not have good prospects for success.
By R. Jordan Prescott
February 26, 2022
Republicans have become increasingly confident of recapturing Congress in 2022. That feeling began last November with Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in a tough race for the Virginia governorship, and looks forward to scores of planned Democratic retirements in the House. Meanwhile, Democrats fear Youngkin’s victory and the new wave of culture wars over school curricula mean Trumpism remains potent despite Trump’s defeat. The Democratic Party is right to be nervous—history is unkind to political coalitions forged in opposition to a single individual.
In the early 1800s, America was led by an elite comprising the nation’s banking and merchant class who favored using the federal government to nurture the country’s economy. Those in opposition included small farmers, frontiersmen, and slaveholders. The clash between these interests came to a head in the 1820s over the establishment of a national bank and tariff rates. The elite favored the bank and higher rates; the opposition, without a leader around which it could rally, was powerless to stop it.
General Andrew Jackson, a charismatic war hero, emerged as a champion for the opposition in 1824 when his run for the presidency revealed an incipient populist revolt against the status quo. Jackson lost this first bid, but he won a dramatic rematch four years later. His 1828 victory thrilled his supporters, but it horrified the elite; they feared Jackson would establish a dictatorship cheered on by an illiterate mob.
In 1832, the defeated elite rallied around Henry Clay, a stalwart advocate of a strong federal government. Clay believed an unapologetic defense of a national bank would ensure his victory. Clay was spectacularly wrong and Jackson was re-elected in the first landslide in American history.
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In the wake of Donald Trump’s stunning upset in 2016, one can detect the same machinations at work in the fractious Democratic Party.
After the Cold War ended in 1992, an elite comparable to the Whigs had emerged, again in favor of banking, financial, and commercial interests, but on a global scale across both parties. Between 1992 and 2016, the two parties generally supported greater international economic integration, free trade, and unrestricted immigration; dissenters to this consensus rarely gained political traction.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee and embodiment of this consensus, emerged as the heavy favorite to win the presidency. Clinton, however, like Clay, represented an elite that was disconnected from the country’s economically disadvantaged. More emphatically, it was oblivious to the mounting discontent. Within the party, this dissatisfaction manifested itself in the form of Bernie Sanders, who mounted a strong challenge to her from the left.
Clinton eventually prevailed but she underestimated how much Republican Donald Trump’s populist America First message would resonate with those who felt forgotten by a disdainful elite, much like Jackson’s supporters. Only after Trump won did the enmity between Clinton liberals and Sanders progressives vanish.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/democrats-face-fate-of-whigs/
