Changing Party Coalitions: The Mystery of the Red State-Blue State Alignment

This book, based in substantial part on archival work, breaks outmoded
taboos on the American past and shows what really occurred in the
transformation of American politics and why.
Jerry F. Hough observes that the historic Democratic-Republican party
alignment was based on the great conflict between the North and the South
and on that among the hostile European-American "races." Both of these conflicts
basically ended in the 1960s and 1970s as European-Americans became
"whites." This made a party realignment inevitable, but the politics surrounding
the conflicts made it difficult to understand what was happening. As a
result, the political elites crafted a highly unnatural and unhealthy red stateblue
state alignment.
This political reality is not incorporated in the theories of comparative politics
and of nation-building, Hough explains, because it has been too encased in
this mythology. The 1950s through the 1970s was a period of great political turmoil
in the United States. The dramatic events of the black revolution, the anti-
Vietnam demonstrations, and the women's liberation movement caught everyone's
attention, but some of the most fundamental changes were less visible.
The relations between North and South were highly confrontational, but the
period actually led to the end of the historic North-South conflict that had
defined the American political system since the Revolution.
The two parties have been groping ever since to find a satisfactory new set
of coalitions, but they have thus far failed. The new divide, the red state-blue
state alignment, produces even narrower and more polarized electoralresults
in a society that is not fundamentally polarized. What is going on?
The author insists that narrow cultural issues are used as electoral platforms
in today's politics not because of their inherent importance, but because
of party strategies. He explains how we can return to the healthy debating role
that a two-party system is supposed to play in a democratic nation and why
this is so crucial.
Jerry F. Hough is the James B. Duke Professor of Political Science at Duke
University, where he teaches courses on the US Presidency. As a long-time specialist
on comparative political development, especially the Soviet Union, he
brings a rare perspective to the study of American political evolution. Expert
and student alike will find his revision of the conventional wisdom fresh and
thought-provoking.