At one time or another, we’ve all endured the jaw-grinding, hair-pulling frustration of listening to some know-nothing right-winger accuse Democrats of being “the real racists” because they were the party of slavery and Jim Crow. They’re right about that fact, of course, though wildly wrong about the conclusion they draw from it.
Americans, children living in an eternal present that we are, have to exercise great force of will to recall that the way things are isn’t the way things have always been. Our political system has been dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties for so long—160 years—that one might easily, and mistakenly, assume they’ve represented the same two opposing forces of liberalism and conservatism for as long as they’ve existed. But as the nation has evolved, the parties have evolved with it, undergoing radical changes in the coalitions of voters and regions that have supported them and the issues that have divided them.
We live under what political scientists call the Sixth Party System of the United States, a system that has lasted longer than any of the U.S. party systems that came before it—yet another reason why we have a hard time comprehending that it has not always been thus. We’re due, possibly overdue, for the phase shift that brings us into the Seventh Party System. And the quasi-fascist candidacy of Donald Trump may be bringing us to the tipping point . . . which I’m not certain is a good thing.