Base Motives

How American politics became a battle among regional strongholds.

DIVIDED AMERICA

The Ferocious Power Struggle in American Politics

By Earl Black and Merle Black

Simon & Schuster. 286 pp. $26

Who will it be -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards? Rudolph W. Giuliani, John McCain or Mitt Romney? Or some last-minute contender such as former senator Fred Thompson or my old boss, Al Gore? Before any of the 2008 candidates start counting their electoral votes, they should read the latest book by Earl and Merle Black.

In their scholarly and ambitious Divided America, the Black brothers -- political scientists who have written extensively on the politics of my native South -- offer a thoughtful, thorough analysis of the undercurrents that have driven our polarized national politics in recent decades. Their clear text, supported by voluminous charts and graphs, illustrates how deeply divided the country has become -- and perhaps not along the lines readers will expect.

Think the Republicans run American politics? Think again. The authors' examination of voting patterns -- regional, religious, cultural, ideological, gendered and racial -- through the 2004 elections confirms that, these days, there simply is no truly dominant, national American political party. Instead, the Blacks stress the importance of "partisan regional strongholds" in understanding recent elections. These regional strongholds have been created largely by populations of white Protestants and minorities, plus non-Christian whites who often vote along partisan lines. Today, the powerful rivalry for the heart and soul of America is being waged between two minority parties. "America's close national battles," the authors conclude, "are the product -- the net result, so to speak -- of offsetting partisan and ideological preferences among the different groups of voters who predominate in the various regions."

The Blacks offer an in-depth analysis of partisan shifts in five regions of the country: The Democrats have solid bases in the Northeast and on the Pacific coast, while the GOP can rely upon the South and often harvest more votes in the Mountain/Plains states. The changing demographics and coalitions that each party relies on have left the Midwest, which features mixed patterns of partisanship, as the key electoral battleground.

The rise of regionalism suggests that the roots of America's partisan divisions go deeper than the razor-thin victories of the last two presidential contests. Rather, the Blacks argue, the hyper-partisanship that we are enduring today is rooted in the combination of electoral losses suffered by one or both major parties since the Great Depression, which ended "America's old sectional division between the North and the South." Recent election cycles have witnessed an underlying shift in party loyalty, not only in presidential elections but in congressional contests as well. The authors argue that "America's two parties are locked in a power struggle in which victory or defeat is possible in every round of elections for every national institution."

Should the 2008 candidates play just to their core constituents? The Blacks wouldn't suggest it. "Because they are minority parties in the electorate," the authors argue, "neither Democrats nor Republicans can secure national majorities simply by appealing to their most committed supporters." Any candidate hoping to achieve a majority in 2008 will need to target swing voters or "moderate independents," who constituted upward of "13 percent of the voters in 2004."

The authors also present strong evidence to back their theory explaining the recent winning streak of the Republican Party: In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan brought the GOP back from political irrelevance by connecting with disaffected Democrats who believed that he understood them. During this period, Reagan's party made significant inroads into the once solidly Democratic South by attracting people who thought their government had left them behind. But part of Reagan's strength was also his appeal to white Protestants in the Northeast, much of which resulted from his overtures to mostly Democratic white Catholics and his use of race as a wedge issue to draw anxious, working-class white people to the GOP. But as the Northeast has swung solidly Democratic, largely due to the relatively smaller percentage of evangelical Protestants and the larger numbers of minority and nonwhite Christians, Reagan's heirs can't count on his old playbook.

For those who complain that politics has grown increasingly shrill, the Blacks offer little optimism. They argue that both parties have become more homogenous, contributing "mightily to the ideological purification of modern American politics." This process of political cleansing has not only narrowed the range of ideas raised in our national conversation but also given rise to candidates who simply cultivate their messages to their party base -- messages derived from polls and focus groups, not convictions. With fewer ideas out there in the ideological marketplace to attract new voters, it has become politically treacherous for candidates to take a principled stand without knowing how it may affect their electoral prospects. These trends have also resulted in the rise of ideologues and purists posing as TV pundits and a plague of talk shows that aim more at scoring points than informing voters.

Perhaps the most alarming data in the book are found in the appendix, where the authors put forward an interesting electoral chart based on "states won by the same party in 2000 and 2004." For those of us counting the votes, here's the scoop: Democrats start off with 248 electoral votes, and the GOP starts with 274 -- more than enough to retain the White House in 2008. That's not a lock, but it is quite a head start. The authors identify only three small states -- New Hampshire (with four electoral votes), Iowa (seven) and New Mexico (six) -- that truly are swing states.

Overall, Divided America will give both major parties reasons to be optimistic about their electoral prospects in the future and hopeful about their ability to grow their electoral clout at the ballot box. Perhaps it will also give Democrats and Republicans alike a compelling reason to help change the divisive trend in American politics. *

Donna Brazile was campaign manager of the Gore-Lieberman ticket in 2000. She is the author of a political memoir, "Cooking With Grease."