(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Small Data Point and Some History [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-10-26 I live on the border of two blue states (in Washington just across from Oregon). So nobody pays much attention to how we vote for president, but I’ve seen something new. I live on the outskirts of the Portland metro area, east of Vancouver. Where we live is purple. We have some left leaning people and I saw a lot of Trump flags and yard signs in 2020. In August of 2020 the day before the Patriot Prayer guy got killed in Portland, I ran into the same people holding a rally in the next town over from us. There were guys running around with AR-15s and body armor and they were parading down the street in trucks with multiple Trump flags. In the news footage of the unrest in Portland the next day I saw some of the same trucks in downtown Portland. Here there was a lot of Trump-philia 4 years ago. I have seen few Trump flags this year. There are a lot of political signs around here on major roads. The mix of Democratic and Republican signs is about 50/50. I see few signs on people’s houses. For the past 21 years we have also gone to an apple growing area in Oregon every October and stock up for the winter. It’s a very red part of Oregon. In election years I look at the political signs that are out. We went with a friend from Boston in 2012 and she commented how depressing it was that there were Romney signs everywhere. I think that was the year with the most signs. I don’t recall ever seeing any signs for a Democratic candidate. We made the trip today and while there were few signs around, I did see two Harris-Walz signs. There was one place with a giant Trump flag on their gate along with something else that said something about Jesus. It was too much text in too small a space to be able to read it while driving past. They also had an upside down American flag poster on a sign. But that was the only Trump political sign I saw in the entire area. Seeing any Democratic signs up in this very red part of the state is a sign of change. Historians have a theory about political systems in American politics. These are eras where one party or the other has the narrative (the other party can win the presidency, but the party with the narrative controls things). Each era of a political system lasts about 40 years on average and the end of one is marked with several signs: 1) The change happens after a few years where there is a lot of talk about the country falling apart and the party that controls the narrative has pretty much run out of new ideas. 2) Usually the last president of a system has a president from the narrative party and their administration is seen as a failed presidency. Most of the worst presidents on the annual presidents survey are these one term failures. 3) The president that establishes the new system is usually from the other party and goes down in history as one of the better presidents. 4) The party that is coming to power usually does well in the midterm before the new president. 5) The election that sweeps in the new president who starts the new system is often a re-alignment election where the coalitions that tended to vote for one party or the other switch sides. Often there is a trend for a while, but the new president cements the new coalition. For example Southern whites started moving towards the Republican party in 1968, but Reagan’s victory in 1980 cemented them as Republican voters. More recently we’ve been seeing educated whites and women moving towards the Democrats for several years now. The presidents who brought in new political systems are: George Washington Andrew Jackson Abraham Lincoln Teddy Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt Ronald Reagan The Teddy Roosevelt change was the only time the same party retains control, but the party was taken in a new direction by Roosevelt. This time Trump was the failed one term president and Biden has been able to start the change, but we’re not done yet. I think he’s been the most effective president of my lifetime, but few want to give him credit for it. Kamala Harris could be the one to carry the country into the new political system and we would be looking at a realignment election that changes voting patterns for the next 40 years. During the Reagan era there was a lot of pressure for Republicans to always fall in line and never consider voting for anything else. Loyalty was a big thing. Casting Democrats as not just the opposition, but as evil was part of this along with a whole conservative media ecosystem enforced this. Trump has been so over the top in his criminality, incompetence, and extremism that Republicans who have marched in lock stop with the party for 40 years are rethinking voting Republicans for the first time in many years. The solid Republican coalition is showing signs of cracks. This election could be one where the patterns change and we finally end the era of trickle down economics and where the Republicans control the national narrative. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/26/2279906/-A-Small-Data-Point-and-Some-History?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/