The Collapse Of The Democratic Presidential Majority

The two Clinton victories do not mark a break in a pattern of mediocre Democratic performance in presidential elections. The 1996 presidential victory was combined with Republican retention of both houses of Congress. We find little evidence here of a resurgence of the kind that could spark even the most optimistic Democratic activist to speak of a new or renewed Democratic majority, or even of a new or renewed Democratic presidential majority. Bill Clinton's re-election is a great triumph for Bill Clinton; it is certainly a good thing for the Democrats. But it was clearly a very personal triumph that neither generated across-the-board gains for the Democratic party in 1996 nor created a stable basis for the party's electoral success in the future. Nothing that happened in 1996 suggests that the dealigned electoral politics that have dominated the last thirty years is coming to an end. In 2000, Bill Clinton moves from electoral politics to electoral history. The forces that twice elected him enter the uncertainty that characterizes all electoral politics in a dealigned age.