What will happen to American political parties after one of them wins and the other one loses the upcoming presidential election?
Natan Ehrenreich has a provocative theory. Call it winning by losing. He has written an article for National Review entitled How the Losing Party in This Election Could End Up Controlling the Next Era of American Politics. It’s behind a paywall, but here is his argument. . . .
If Harris loses and Trump wins, that would mean the end of woke identity politics in the Democratic Party, while Republicans would double down on Trumpism. In that event, a sane-seeming, FDR-JFK-LBJ kind of old-school pro-American liberalism would easily beat the next generation of Trump-style Republicans, setting up an “era” of success for the Democrats.
Conversely, if Harris wins and Trump loses, that would mean the end of Trumpism in the Republican Party, while Democrats would double down on woke identity politics. In that event, a sane-seeming Eisenhower-Reagan limited government conservatism would easily beat the next generation of woke Democrats, setting up an “era” of success for Republicans.
Thus, whatever party loses the next election will be in a position to dominate American politics for a long time.
If this were to be true, Republicans should be voting for Democrats and Democrats should be voting for Republicans. I see some other problems with this hypothesis.
First of all, it assumes that the losing party would purge its ranks of the losing ideology. But party leaders are pretty entrenched. And both the leadership and the base of both parties are populated with ideologues who would rather be ideologically pure than win elections. Otherwise, why not shift their party’s message now?
Also, Ehrenreich assumes that neither party will have sustainable success once it gets in power. If Trump makes America great again, surely now-great Americans would continue to choose the party that carries on his legacy, even against old-school Democrats. And if Harris gets elected, that might be because America has become a woke nation and will continue to be so.
And there are other reasons why a party once in power might stay in power. Democrats are stirring up the fear that if Trump is put back in office, this may be the last election, that Trump will refuse to step down, rule as a dictator, and put an end to American democracy. Trump gave support for that fear when he told a gathering of Christian voters that after voting for him this one time, they “won’t have to vote anymore.” (He later explained that he was talking to infrequent voters, urging them to come out to vote this time, after which they could revert to their usual non-voting habits.)
I don’t believe that a Trump dictatorship is his intent or is possible even if it is. I am more worried that if the Democrats win the presidency, the House, and the Senate, they could implement their agenda of granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. By creating two more reliably Democratic states, they would have four more Senators, which could give them a perpetual majority in that body. And they could also pack the Supreme Court by adding enough liberal justices to outvote the current majority of originalists on the court, removing a check and a balance on their power. The result could be a one-party government, like California already has, which could become very difficult for even an old-school Republican party to break through. And they could impose their progressive ideology with no restraints.
Finally, it appears that the Republican Party, even though Trump is its standard-bearer, is already rebranding itself to appeal more to the mainstream. In the course of a thoughtful discussion of Christians’ involvement in politics, Randall Fowler makes this observation:
Among many other things, the 2024 Republican National Convention marked the triumph of Log Cabin Republican attempts to purge the GOP platform of any references to traditional understandings of marriage, sexuality, and the human person. The Republican Party is visibly distancing itself from Christianity and social conservatives. And all pro-life language and policy stances on abortion have been removed from the party platform as well. In isolation, each of these moves may not represent a wholesale abandonment of Christian voters, and not all Christians agree on issues of abortion or marriage, but they collectively convey a party doing its best to rebrand itself in accord with prevailing secular norms.
Click the links for the evidence of what he asserts. Fowler, a professor at Abilene Christian University, says that Christians in politics want to be prophetic, but they keep playing different prophetic roles:
Republican Christians post-Moral Majority have typically wanted to be Moses (laying down the law) or Samuel (anointing the king). Our marginalization in the post-Trump GOP marks the end of that dream, although we are not yet Elijah consigned to the wilderness. Perhaps our model should be Nathan—the conscience of the kingdom, capable of rebuking the king when he falls astray but not estranged to the extent he is barred from the royal court. Doing this will require a renewed vigilance to ensure the spiritual health, theological seriousness, and moral formation of our own churches. May we be faithfully prepared for such a time, for it is coming soon.
In Ehrenreich’s terms, if both Democrats and Republicans revert to a more “normal” perspective, what that might mean is a single dominant ideology. It would be secularist, morally and culturally permissive, pro-abortion, opposed to free market economics, unrestrained in government spending, and championing big government. The parties would both agree on all of that, but would disagree on details. To see what that looks like, see Great Britain, where the Conservative Party has become almost as liberal as the Labour Party.
Christians who care about their vocations as citizens may have to emulate yet another prophet: Daniel in exile.
Illustration: Belshazzar’s Feast by Rembrandt – www.nationalgallery.org.uk : Home : Info, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67423
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