Our political class never seems to tire of bold claims that one or the other of America’s two parties is scheduled for demise. In recent years, these prognostications have come mainly from the left. Some, like John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira’s “The Emerging Democratic Majority” (2002), are sophisticated and nuanced, but in the hands of pundits they become little more than self-serving claims to moral superiority and electoral hegemony. The argument at its most typical and simplistic runs as follows: With the rapid increase in the number of nonwhite voters and the increasing acceptance of socially liberal lifestyles, Republican voters will find themselves outnumbered and outmaneuvered.
In “How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t),” the political historian and journalist Michael Barone politely asks the prognosticators to take it easy. The Democratic and Republican parties are, respectively, the oldest and third-oldest parties in the world for a reason. They are resilient and adaptive in ways that other nations’ political parties aren’t. When one party alienates some theretofore vital constituency, it picks up another, generally to the befuddlement of professional political observers.
