How the Obama presidency remade both parties

From the moment he took the oath of office, Barack Obama was destined to be one of America's most significant presidents, if for nothing more than breaking the 228-year streak of white men occupying our highest office. As his tenure draws to a close, it's becoming increasingly clear that he's been consequential in a whole variety of ways, from the scope of his policy accomplishments to the political state in which he's leaving the country. And one of the most significant legacies of the Obama era may be how it leaves the two parties.

Earlier this week the Pew Research Center published a fascinating report examining how the party coalitions have changed in the last quarter-century since Bill Clinton was elected, and particularly in the last eight years. Democrats and Republicans are locked in an increasingly bitter competition, not just because of the different policy courses they advocate but because of who they are.

In many ways, it's a story of the Republican Party staying the same while the country changes around it — and the Democratic coalition evolves with a transforming nation. Unsurprisingly, it's most obvious on race. In 1992, 86 percent of America was white; today it's only 70 percent. Yet in that time, the dominance of whites within the GOP has moved only slightly, from 93 percent of Republicans down to 86 percent. Over the same period, whites went from making up 76 percent of Democrats to only 57 percent today. While African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans haven't gotten more Democratic over that period — they were all extremely Democratic to begin with — their increasing numbers have meant that the Democratic Party has grown more diverse as the country's overall makeup has shifted.

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There's a similar pattern on education. The country has become more educated, with 33 percent of Americans now boasting a bachelor's degree, up from 23 percent in 1992. Yet the proportion of Republicans with college degrees ticked up only modestly, from 28 percent to 31 percent, while the proportion among Democrats went from 21 percent to 37 percent. Better-educated Americans are now much more likely to hold liberal values across a whole range of issues. At the same time, the white working class, about whom we've heard so much in this election, is becoming increasingly Republican, a move that has happened rapidly over the last eight years in particular. Whites who had never been to college split evenly between the parties in 2008. By 2016, they tilted Republican by 59 percent to 33 percent.

So the Democratic Party has remained that cosmopolitan, urban, multi-hued coalition that Barack Obama assembled to take him to the White House eight years ago. And while the country as a whole began to look more and more like that coalition, Republicans essentially said, "We'll stick with white folks, thanks."

Of course, it wasn't a consensus decision. In fact, it was the source of extensive internal debates. Party leaders wanted to reach out to the fast-growing Hispanic coalition, especially by passing comprehensive immigration reform, but that effort foundered on the opposition of House members from overwhelmingly white, conservative districts. As the racial backlash to the Obama presidency turned many occasional Republican voters into loyal partisans, the GOP's agenda of upper-income tax cuts, easing regulations on corporations, and weakening the safety net didn't change. That means that they're now a party with an upper-class agenda and a working-class base.

Some Republicans have been worrying about that contradiction for some time. In 2005, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam wrote an article for The Weekly Standard entitled "The Party of Sam's Club," in which they implored the GOP to understand its increasing reliance on white working-class voters and actually come up with some policy ideas that might appeal to them and improve their lives. Later expanded to a book and a mini-movement of "reformicons," this idea has been attracting young Republican intellectuals ever since, but it has never managed to find much purchase among the elected officials who actually determine the party's path.

That contradiction found its resolution in Donald Trump. Not that he actually offers the non-rich much in policy terms, apart from his vague opposition to trade deals (he'd renegotiate them so they're "great") and his occasional assurance that he doesn't want to cut Social Security. What Trump did more than anything else was peel off the genteel veneer that more elite members of his party put over the things they espouse, and offer up the most unadorned version of the same resentment and rage those Republican leaders had spent eight years cultivating in their voters.

There are some on the left who argue that the Democratic Party has itself forsaken the working class it traditionally fought for. But while you can certainly find instances where Democrats went along with elite-oriented policies, the truth is that their agenda — including an increased minimum wage, expanded worker protections, increased Social Security benefits, and higher taxes on the wealthy — is still firmly geared toward working people, even if Democrats also advocate for things like gay rights and action on climate change that may be of greater interest to their more economically secure constituents.

In other words, from a policy perspective Democrats have their bases covered in a way Republicans don't. The GOP, on the other hand, needs to keep its voters angry at Democrats, or at least uneasy about what they represent. Which brings me to the last data point from the Pew study I want to point out.

In 1992, Republicans were a slightly younger party than Democrats — 61 percent of Republicans were under 50, compared to 58 percent of Democrats. In the years since, the age distribution among Democrats hasn't changed much; in 2016, 52 percent of them are under 50. But the Republican Party has gotten much older: now only 42 percent of them are under 50. And that number has dropped by 10 percentage points just since 2008.

That's something we saw in this year's primaries, too: candidates appealing to a party base that feels increasingly alienated from the changes the country has undergone since they were young, and is eager to turn back the clock. Or, as you might put it, make America great again.

After 2016, these trends don't look likely to change: The party that nominated Donald Trump may well find the task of appealing to young, educated, and non-white voters even harder than it was before. Despite all the strength Republicans have at the state and local level, they're going to have to figure a way out of the place they've come to if they want to be competitive on the national level.