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"Endangered Species" (magazine cover)

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"Endangered Species"
AuthorMichael Grunwald
PublisherTime
Publication date
May 18, 2009
Media typeMagazine cover

"Endangered Species" was the cover of the May 18, 2009 issue of Time. Promoting a story by Michael Grunwald in that issue titled "The Republicans in Distress", it was published following Barack Obama's historic victory in the 2008 United States presidential election, and featured an image of the Republican Party elephant mascot next to the words "Endangered Species".

"The Republicans in Distress" asserted that the Republican Party was in a "death spiral". In the years following publication of the Time issue, the Democratic Party suffered one of its least successful periods in history. The "Endangered Species" cover, and the story "The Republicans in Distress", have regularly been referenced in the years since their publication. Grunwald later remarked his story "didn’t hold up so well".

Background

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In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama scored a historic victory[1] over Republican rival John McCain, bulwarked by a major shift in voter support toward the Democratic Party.[2] Obama's victory in the presidential election was accompanied by major Democratic gains in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives; it was the first election held during a presidential election year since 1980 in which a party gained seats in both chambers of Congress.[3] Voter turnout in the election was higher than at any point since 1920[4] and Gamal al-Ghitani described the Republican loss as a "resounding defeat".[5]

The Democratic Party victory was cited as vindication of Ruy Teixeira's 2002 thesis which predicted that, within a few years, the Democratic Party would dominate American politics for a generation and "suffer from an embarrassment of political riches".[6] Following the 2008 election, James Carville wrote a book titled 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.[7] According to Douglas Heye, who served as deputy chief of staff to Eric Cantor, "the GOP was left for political dead".[8]

The historic victory of Barack Obama (pictured) and the Democratic Party in the 2008 U.S. elections led Time to declare the Republican Party an "endangered species".

"Endangered Species" article

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The May 18, 2009 issue of Time, published less than four months after Obama's inauguration, featured a cover story by Michael Grunwald titled "The Republicans in Distress".[9][10] The cover art of the magazine was a silhouette of the Republican elephant mascot set next to the words "Endangered Species" and Grunwald's article opened by declaring "Republicans have the desperate aura of an endangered species" and went on to describe the party in a "death spiral".[11][10]

In his 2010 book, Permanently Blue: How Democrats Can End the Republican Party and Rule the Next Generation, Dylan Loewe describes Grunwald's article as one painting "a disturbing picture for a party still reeling from the 2008 election".[12]

In 2017, Jane Mayer wrote that the Time cover "captured the zeitgeist" of the period immediately following Obama's election.[13]

Aftermath

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In 2010, the year after "Endangered Species" was published, the Democratic Party began one of its least successful periods in its modern history.[14]

In 2010, Republicans regained a majority in the House of Representatives with the biggest electoral victory any party had scored in the lower chamber since 1938.[15] In the 2014 United States elections, Republicans overturned the Democratic majority in the Senate and wrested nine state governorships from Democrats.[16] In 2016, the Republican candidate Donald Trump was elected to succeed Obama as President of the United States and, by the time Obama left office in January 2017, Democrats had not only lost control of both chambers of Congress, but had expanded their state-level losses to include 13 governorships and 816 state legislative seats, the most substantial setbacks the party had suffered since the 1950s.[17][18][19] By 2024, more Americans identified with the Republican Party than with the Democratic Party for the first time since 1992, according to Gallup.[20]

Grunwald later remarked on his article that it "didn’t hold up so well".[21]

Reactions

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Writing in 2017, Larry Sabato reflected that the line of thought that led to the Time cover "should have set off alarm bells among election analysts, because these sort of predictions are made all the time and rarely turn out".[22]

According to Time itself, in the years since their 2009 cover story, Republican politicians have "love[d]" referencing it.[23] Mitt Romney cited the cover in his 2010 speech to CPAC.[24] In 2011, Michael Steele referenced the Time cover in making the case for his success as Republican National Committee chair.[25] And, in 2015, Pete Sessions, in a letter to Republican members of Congress, wrote that "in 2009 the Republican Party was declared an “endangered species” on the cover of Time Magazine, yet six years later there are more Republicans in the House than at any other time in nearly 90 years".[26]

References

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  1. ^ "2008: A Look Back at President Barack Obama's Historic Election". NBC News. November 7, 2016. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  2. ^ "Inside Obama's Sweeping Victory". pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  3. ^ DiSalvo, Daniel (January 9, 2009). "The Magnitude of the 2008 Democratic Victory: By the Numbers". The Forum: 4. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  4. ^ "First person: UCL on Obama victory". ucl.ac.uk. University College London. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  5. ^ Al-Ghitany, Gamal. "Social Significance of Obama's Election". carnegieendowment.org. Carnegie Endowment. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  6. ^ Hounshell, Blake (January 25, 2022). "Confessions of a Liberal Heretic". New York Times. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  7. ^ Switzer, Tom (November 4, 2010). "New progressivism didn't last too long". Newcastle Herald. Retrieved November 18, 2024. But what's happened to Obama? After all, his historic presidential victory two years ago, we were told, had heralded a political realignment in the US. Democratic strategist James Carville wrote a book entitled 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation. Time magazine's cover put the Republican elephant under the headline "Endangered species."
  8. ^ Heye, Douglas (November 18, 2024). "The crucial point we're missing after the Virginia election". CNN. Retrieved November 7, 2021.
  9. ^ Cooper, Michael (November 5, 2010). "Debunking the Myths of the Midterm". New York Times. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  10. ^ a b Hauser, Jeff (March 2018). "The Do-Nothing Discipline". The Baffler: 82–90.
  11. ^ Mayer, Jane (2017). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday. p. 9. ISBN 0307947904.
  12. ^ Loewe, Dylan (2010). Permanently Blue: How Democrats Can End the Republican Party and Rule the Next Generation. Crown. p. 24. ISBN 030771800X.
  13. ^ Mayer, Jane (2017). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical RightDark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Knopf Doubleday. p. 9. ISBN 0307947904.
  14. ^ Trende, Sean (November 17, 2016). "November 19, 2024". RealClearPolitics.
  15. ^ "Republicans Win Control of House With Historic Gains". ABC News. November 2, 2010. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  16. ^ Roberts, Dan (November 5, 2014). "Republicans win majority in US Senate, giving party full control of Congress". The Guardian. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  17. ^ "Under Obama, Democrats suffer largest loss in power since Eisenhower". quorum.com. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  18. ^ Rodgers, Tessa (November 9, 2016). "Donald Trump Wins the 2016 Election". Time. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  19. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (January 10, 2017). "The Democratic Party's down-ballot collapse, explained". Vox. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  20. ^ Archaki, Liam (September 18, 2024). "For First Time Ever, More Americans Are Republican Than Democrat". The Daily Beast. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  21. ^ "Mike Grunwald, Journalist". The 92 Report. Harvard University. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  22. ^ Sabato, Larry (2017). Trumped: The 2016 Election That Broke All the Rules. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 211. ISBN 1442279400.
  23. ^ "Kevin McCarthy's Gamble on a "Big Tent" GOP". Time. April 22, 2021. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  24. ^ Smith, Ben (February 18, 2010). "Romney: 'Obama fails to understand America'". Politico. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  25. ^ Feldmann, Linda (January 3, 2011). "Michael Steele: opponents at RNC debate say party 'needs to be fixed'". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved November 19, 2024.
  26. ^ Kane, Paul (September 29, 2015). "GOP whip race shapes up: McHenry vs. Sessions vs. Ross". Washington Post. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
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