Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics is one of the better analysts of basic political trends out there, so I was looking forward to his new book The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs – and Who Will Take It. I was fortunate enough to snag a review copy for RedState, and found it to be a fairly persuasive argument that our general assumptions about the implications of any given election are usually wrong. It was not exactly a groundbreaking argument for me, but then I’m already familiar with Sean’s writing on RCP.
Sean makes three claims in The Lost Majority:
“First, that the 2010 midterm elections were a result of Barack Obama and the Democrats misreading both their mandate and how they had been brought to power, imagining a realignment in 2008 when, in fact, none had occurred. Second, that the emerging partisan majorities described by theorists from both parties are mirages. Third, that the entire concept of realignments/permanent alignments, which underlies much of the misbegotten analysis of the 2008 elections, is bankrupt and should be abandoned.” (page xiii)
The first claim is not exactly going to be controversial to anybody who isn’t a Democrat; the second and third are perhaps more likely to be matters of some controversy to ideologically-minded readers. They should not, however, be dismissed out of hand; after all, there were a lot of very book-smart people advising the Democrats in 2009 and 2010 who based their opinions on the belief that long-term partisan majorities are inevitable and that alignments are possible The collapse of their models should at least be seen as cautionary.