The Democratic Party in the Age of Obama: Yes We Can or No We Can't?

In the years preceding the electoral earthquake triggered by the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress and Barack Obama's 2008 election, political junkies were treated to a full shelf of books diagnosing what ailed the Democratic Party. If that catalog of publications is any indication, the party's problems were many and insurmountable. Among other critiques, national Democrats were deemed too soft to trust on foreign policy and defense issues including, and especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the handling of the growing threat of global terrorism.¹ Democrats and liberals were chastised for losing voters otherwise sympathetic to their economic policies by being "out of touch" with Americans' social and familial values,² and specifically for a secularized politics that offended voters' religious sensibilities.³

Democrats were blamed for both having lost the center by becoming too liberal,⁴ and for losing their liberal base by becoming too corporate or centrist.⁵ The party was faulted for its inability to attract sufficient support from white voters, particularly suburban whites⁶ and white men.⁷ Regionally, national Democrats were advised to either find a solution to their festering Southern problems,⁸ figure out ways to win outside the former Confederacy,⁹ or try to swing key voting blocs regardless of region.¹⁰ A new campaign finance law sponsored by Senators Feingold and McCain, that banned the soft money donations Democrats had relied upon for years to maintain some degree of fundraising parity with Republicans, was pronounced the "Democratic Party suicide bill."¹¹ More broadly, Democrats and liberals were pilloried for allowing Republicans and the conservative movement to dominate them not only strategically and tactically,¹² but rhetorically as well.¹³

By election night 2008, however, the political narrative had reversed—the focus of the partisan doubt shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, and the national punditry began asking how the Republican Party had fallen so far, so fast. Now, with Democrats expected to lose significant numbers of Senate, House, gubernatorial, and state legislative seats across the country in the 2010 midterm elections, the post-Obama future of the Democratic Party is causing center-left critics to wring their hands again. Were the very successful Democratic cycles of 2006 and 2008 in fact an affirmation of Democratic policy prescriptions and politics, or merely a rebuke of Republicans during the George W. Bush era? Did Obama save his party or was his election merely the result of a terrific campaign waged by a superior candidate during a favorable electoral cycle? Is there such a phenomenon as "Obama Democrats," and what is the meaning of this movement and its future?

The Obama Coalitions

Perhaps the best way to begin answering these questions is to deconstruct how the 2008 Democratic coalition assembled by Barack Obama differed from previous winning Democratic formulas. As Phil Klinkner and I demonstrate,¹⁴ then-Senator Obama built two new coalitions in 2008: one for the Democratic primary to defeat Hillary Clinton, and another for the general election to defeat John McCain.

The first coalition was unlike that of any previous winning Democratic presidential nominee. Obama paired the historically insufficient so-called "wine-track" voters—the liberal core of young voters, urbanites, and college-educated whites—with strong support from African-Americans and a sliver of independent and moderate Republicans. Clinton's residual support among the so-called "beer-track" coalition of older whites, Latinos, non-black women, and rank-and-file Democrats helped her amass roughly eighteen million votes, about the same number Obama received. But because Obama more efficiently translated his votes into Democratic delegates, the Illinois senator manufactured a small but insurmountable delegate lead.

Obama built his second unprecedented coalition outward from the first, capitalizing on the recent growth of African-American and Latino voting populations, and ratcheting up their turnout along with that of younger and first-time voters to forge a winning combination Democrats had long dreamed about but could never quite assemble. Among the many contrasts between the Obama electorate and the one that sent Bill Clinton...