Our parties aren’t about to collapse

Some days, the Republican Party seems on the verge of splitting up. Its congressional majorities couldn’t produce a health care bill and passed an omnibus spending bill its president regretted signing. Prominent never-Trumpers call for the creation of a new political party.

In special elections, Republican candidates fail to win percentages above President Donald Trump’s approval ratings, which nationally is at 42 percent. That makes Republicans fear and Democrats hope that Democrats will capture the House of Representatives in November.

Away from the limelight, Democrats have their schisms, too. Bernie Sanders types bristle as Washington campaign committees tilt against outspoken anti Trump primary candidates. Economic-redistribution i st Democrats are complaining that identity politics Democrats are hurting the party’ s chances.

But the talk of the parties going away or being replaced is overstated, and not just because institutional factors — the Electoral College, single-member congressional and legislative districts — tend to boil down voters’ choices to two parties.

Something more fundamental is at work here. The Democratic and Republican parties have existed for 186 and 164 years, respectively. Not counting churches, that’s longer than almost any other nongovernmental institution — longer than most businesses, volunteer organizations and local governments.

Over the years, they’ve changed positions on issues. Yet over the long haul, the character of each party’s electoral coalition has remained the same. The Republicans are formed around a core of people considered, by themselves and others, as typical Americans but who are never a majority — Northern Protestants in the 19th century, white married people now.

The Democrats have been a coalition of disparate groups seen as being somehow atypical Americans — white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, churchgoing blacks and highly educated gentry liberals now. They’re often at odds, but when they’ve stayed together, they’ve formed vigorous majorities.

The parties thus serve as the yin and yang, the two channels in which diverse cultural and moral views can find expression and efficacy, in a country that has always, contrary to current politically correct orthodoxy, been culturally diverse.

The balance between the parties has been unprecedentedly stable over the past quartercentury, with stances on moral issues being the factor most highly correlated with voting behavior. The changes in voting patterns in 2016 were highly consequential but by historical standards relatively minor; several million highly educated voters switched away from the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, while a few more million less educated whites switched toward him.

Sooner or later, the parties will adapt, as they have in the past, to these minor shifts in demographic support — and in response to events and emerging issues. 2018 Democrats, as the out party, have more room to maneuver and adapt to local terrain, as they did in the March 13 special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.

It’s not clear whether Democrats will take maximum advantage of this in Trump-trending constituencies, with the party’s base pushing for maximalist anti-Trump candidates in primaries. And it’s not clear whether Republicans can navigate the shoals in anti-Trump-trending constituencies when the president’s approval rating remains below 50 percent nationally. A couple of ill-timed tweets could really hurt.

But don’t look for our 164- and 186-year-old parties to wither or splinter. They have rebounded from far worse disasters (Democrats after 1920, Republicans after 1932), and they’ll almost certainly rebound from 2016 — and 2018 — too.

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