What happened to the Whigs in the 1850s? And will the same thing happen to today’s Democrats?
After the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams collapsed in the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Whigs arose to replace them as the alternative to the Democratic Party that took its nascent form around the legacy of Thomas Jefferson and which, at least in the early decades of our nation’s life, was organized to defend state sovereignty — and the agenda of slave owners — while it opposed banks and high tariffs. Andrew Jackson gave the party its national character. As late as the eve of the Civil War, northern Democrats such as Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas struggled to find ways to keep the increasingly warring internal factions together. He failed, even though the Whigs went under first.
Parties arise everywhere there are free elections. They are also never guaranteed to endure. The history of democracies is littered with the ruins of once mighty electoral coalitions that held together under one banner only to fall apart as stressed accumulated between their various parts.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR IN THE NEW YORK CITY MAYOR’S RACE
In the United Kingdom, the once dominant “Liberal Party” of the 1800s is long gone. The venerable Tory Party (its origins are in the late 1600s and its modern form emerged in the 1830s) is in real danger of eclipse by the emergence of the Reform Party which leads most polls ahead of the next general election which must be held in the United Kingdom not later than August of 2029. (It is likely that the Tories and Reform will enter into some sort of pact before that vote and govern as a coalition of the representatives of the anti-Labor Party vote which should be massive given the absolute failure of Labor under Prime Minister Keir Starmer to please anyone.)
In the United States, President Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015 and by force of will has remade the GOP over the course of a decade, combining all but a sliver of the voters who backed Mitt Romney in 2012 and adding to them a vast swath of the American middle class, especially men’s and women who work with their hands while standing for much of the work day. Trump has many triumphs, but his remodel of the Republican Party is the greatest among his many political achievements.
But the Democrats? They are lost and confused, struggling to agree on a message much less a leader and the ridiculous “Schumer Shutdown” alongside of next week’s elections —no matter their result— have put their internal incoherence on full display.
Four races wind up next week, and unless traditional Democratic nominees win three of four, the message of “doom ahead” will spread.
The Democrats will lose by winning if their formal nominee Zohran Mamdani succeeds in capturing the mayoralty in New York City. An anti-Semitic Marxist who campaigns flanked by “AOC” and Bernie Sanders, Mamdani represents a radical and self-destructive lurch to the far left that national Democratic leaders have resigned themselves too, though off-the-record they worry about the ascendency of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In New Jersey the Republican nominee for governor Jack Ciattarelli has combined genuine charisma and campaign chops with widespread anger at rising property taxes to put the mainstream Democratic nominee, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill in real danger of an embarrassing defeat. Trump surged in New Jersey in 2024, winning 46% in deep blue Jersey. Ciattarelli has built on that base with a “happy warrior” campaign against Sherrill who is dogged by the wealth she is alleged to have accumulated trading defense company stocks while a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and by a cloud over her time as a Midshipmen at Annapolis. If Ciattarelli triumphs, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will be in for withering criticism for timing his self-serving shutdown stunt to coincide with this race.
Schumer’s woes will increase exponentially if Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears pulls off an upset over former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA).
Spanberger has been burdened by the shutdown’s hard hit on federal employees in northern Virginia and by her refusal to denounce her party’s nominee for Attorney General, Jay Jones, whose repulsive texts wishing for the death of the then-House Speaker Republican Todd Gilbert and his children were made public early in October. Jones was revealed as a fringe extremist and his violent streak is an anchor on every Democrat in this era of shocking political violence.
Jones’ direct opponent, incumbent Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares should win handily, but Jones’ texts should have led to his exiting the race but the frozen-in-shock Democrats act everywhere like Spanberger did on a debate stage with Earle-Sears: exhibiting a stone-faced silence and cringe-inducing indifference to Jones’ slaughterhouse rhetoric when questioned about Jones shocking texts.
MAMDANI STANDS BY PLEDGE TO ARREST NETANYAHU DESPITE CRITICISM ACTION LACKS FEDERAL STANDING
So, there are four races to watch Tuesday. Democrats at the start of this year had every reason to believe they would receive a salve to the electoral spanking of 2024 with a new Democratic mayor in New York, new Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia and a new Democratic AG in Virginia —all from the moderate center of their increasingly left-leaning party.
Instead they are looking at a best case scenario of losing as least one and perhaps two or three of the four races while “winning” with the radical Mamdani, even as the ridiculous shutdown of the federal government heaps more and more scorn on the hapless Schumer