Posted on 07/23/2020 8:05:32 AM PDT by Signalman
Universal theories can have a certain tidy attraction. In science, they can result in revolutionary breakthroughs — Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity comes to mind. In the messy realm of human affairs, however, universal theories have a tendency to fall apart.
Ruy Teixeira, of the leftist Center for American Progress, provides a textbook example of a brilliant man developing a theory for determining the course of politics in America. In the 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, Teixeira and coauthor John Judis asserted their theory that minority voters who prefer Democrats grow as a share of the electorate by 2 percentage points every four years. This demographic shift would inevitably lead to Democrats’ long-term political dominance.
Practically speaking, this would result in the entire nation becoming like today’s California — a one-party bastion of modern leftism.
Now, Teixeira is out with an important essay titled “Demography Is Not Destiny,” which shows all is not on track with his prognostications.In a phrase evocative of a nomenklatura in charge of doctrine, Teixeira warns that the vanguard of the proletariat has indulged in a “dangerous misunderstanding” of his theories. The diverging problem, argues Teixeira, stems from Barack Obama’s 2012 victory and reelection, combined with the “bowdlerization” of his work at the hands of James Carville in his book 40 More Years — How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.
The cadre’s fatal error was becoming so convinced of their eternal triumph that they forgot that winning national elections still requires a sizable portion of the white working class — at least for the near future. This misled victorious leftists to assume that all they needed to do was to mobilize “black, Hispanic, (and) Asian” voters along with “unmarried” or “highly educated” women while taking advantage of a set of “interrelated social, economic and demographic changes, including the growth of minority communities and cultural shifts among college graduates.”
This unfounded optimism, Teixeira mourns, resulted in a “decade-long electoral disaster” as working-class whites grew hostile to the ideologies of “intersectionality” and critical race theory that slowly spread out from campuses.
Theorists and promoters of tribal politics were shocked that working-class whites, many of whom voted for Obama twice, would be repelled at the politics of victimhood and group identity. This shock metastasized into anger in 2016, explaining “Hillary Clinton’s infamous statement that half of Trump’s supporters belonged in a ‘basket of deplorables’ — the kind of gaffe that reveals what its speaker really thinks.”
Not to fear, though — Teixeira still believes in the inevitable power of numbers:
Demographic changes really do favor Democrats — to an extent … The party should proudly emphasize the ability of government to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. But its governing ideology could not present itself as standing in radical opposition to the country’s founding values.
To win, Democrats simply have to try not to appear anti-American or too crazy, while riding “a broader trend towards the Democratic Party among the growing professional class, with its permissive social values and support for active government … coming together in dynamic metropolitan areas rooted in the emerging post-industrial economy.”
There are a few fundamental problems, however, even with Teixeira’s revised thesis. On the whole, Teixeira still doesn’t seem to grasp that demographics both shape and are shaped by politics. It’s not a “one-way” relationship, it’s symbiotic.
First, and most obviously, politics isn’t a static phenomenon. Just as working-class whites shifted their allegiance from Obama to Trump in 2016, so too are other segments of the American electorate subject to evolving political preferences. For more than two generations after the Fifteenth Amendment extended the right to vote to all citizens, regardless “of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” black Americans voted Republican between 1870 and 1936 (when they could).
Second, demographics are malleable — it’s not at all as neat and clean as the bean counters at the Census Bureau would have us believe, and Americans are increasingly marrying across racial and ethnic lines. By 2015, 17 percent of all new marriages featured spouses of different racial or ethnic groups. For the most part, the children resulting from these unions will be classified by the U.S. Census as “minorities.” This presents a misleading demographic picture.
So, what are children born of two U.S. citizens, a mother of Chinese ancestry and a father whose parents emigrated from Ethiopia? The correct answer is, of course, they’re Americans. But for leftists like Teixeira, they’ll grow up to be part of a group with certain political behaviors somehow hardwired by the circumstances of the journey to America taken by their forebearers.
Beyond the issue of demographic classification, there’s a more intangible factor at play: identity. My 95-year-old father-in-law lives in my home. His parents emigrated from Sicily at the turn of the last century. The press described the new arrivals as “swarthy,” while on the streets they were often called “n—- wops.”
He describes entering kindergarten in upstate New York and not being able to speak a word of English. Fifteen years later, he was in the U.S. Navy in France in a place called Normandy. He still likes to sit in the sun, and his skin is darker than most Texans classified as “Hispanic,” yet he’s a “white, non-Hispanic.” If you ask him what he “is,” he’d look at you with puzzlement and then answer, “I’m an American.”
The process of becoming American may take longer now than in the past, as a segment of elites see an advantage in political Balkanization. But it still occurs. We see this in Texas, where large segments of middle-class Hispanic residents, many with roots stretching back to the very founding of Texas, view themselves as “Texans” or “Americans” rather than some sort of hyphenated variant. This also manifests in voting behavior, with Hispanics leaning more to the right in Texas than at the national level.
In California, however, this is not so much the case. There, immigration from Mexico is often more recent than in Texas and more frequently from the poorer regions. The political implications of this undermine Teixeira’s thesis.
There remains another challenge in attempting to win political power by appealing to “tribes”: math. Any system aimed at electoral dominance by dividing people into groups then using the power of government to redistribute resources from a disfavored group to the favored group will soon find itself out of groups to take resources from.
We see this today in California with state college admissions. In a drive to include more minorities, colleges are running out of white, non-Hispanic students to exclude and therefore must, mathematically, start to exclude qualified Asian students. What happens to that reliable bloc of the electorate then?
Lastly, Teixeira’s vision of an emerging majority “coming together in dynamic metropolitan areas rooted in the emerging post-industrial economy” is crashing against the unyielding reality that leftist politics — really, any utopian organizing principle — cannot work in the real world, at least, not for long.
The woke legions of Antifa looting and burning down the urban cores while calling for “defunding the police” may have an unintended electoral effect on Teixeira’s unmarried and college-educated women. Fear does that to people. So long as the new left’s “permissive social values” include the destruction of property and looting, the acrid smell of the burning local Apple store may cause a shift in political priorities for urban residents who, just a year ago, took freedom from fear for granted.
Democrats realize that being born into a particular ethnic group doesn’t make you a Leftist. Demographics is not destiny. That’s why they always demand illegal immigration. They need a steady stream of desperate people that feel dependent on them and have no sense of loyalty to this country. But the grandchildren of these new Democrats will likely want the nation that they were raised in to flourish, and so will have to be replaced.
Even looters don’t like to be looted—that is true for every human.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
“minority voters who prefer Democrats grow as a share of the electorate by 2 percentage points every four years”
ENTIRELY due to mass legal AND illegal immigration
Shut it down and MAYBE you get the nation back
But may be too far gone now
The US has a middle class. People don’t like to give up their stuff for some marxists and their ideology
... and then people manipulated by trained Marxist along with crowds of angry white Democrats (after a 99 year hiatus no less) started burning down black communities.
The thesis that the growing population of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians will ensure Democrat victory in the future is bunk:
(1) . The black population is not growing at all. The "browning of America" just refers to the population growth of (mostly white) Hispanics and Asians.
(2) In fact, if you define black as the descendants of American slaves, the black portion of the population is actually shrinking. Currently, about 1 in 7 American "blacks" are foreign-born, and that portion is growing. African immigrants do not view themselves the same way as American blacks and are not nearly as beholden to the Democrat Party as American-born blacks. In fact, I know a number who are Reagan conservatives.
(3) The "Hispanic" population is growing, but they intermarry more than any other group and, after a generation or two, many tend to view themselves simply as white (see articles on "whiteshift"). It's the same thing that happened with European Catholic immigrants generations ago. Moreover, between 30% and 50% of them vote Republican to begin with. Many of the most prominent Hispanic politicians are Republicans.
(4) The "Asian" population is growing, but it is ethnically very heterogeneous, and their politics are not uniform. Many more Vietnamese, Filipino, and Chinese voters went for Trump than the average Asian. Like Hispanics, between 30% and 50% of Asians often vote Republican. Asian-Americans are well-educated and tend to assimilate quickly, and assimilated groups tend to vote like "whites." Asians also suffer open racial discrimination from leftist elites (particularly in college admission) and from blacks.
(5) There is a pretty good chance the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 will either be Asian (Haley) or Hispanic (Cruz).
Unfortunately, demographics are destiny. It’s just not happening as fast as Democrats hope. 30% of the Hispanic vote is solidly conservative. 60-64% are solidly Democrat. The reasons for this are: some Hispanic countries are just better than others. Believe it or not, Mexico is one of the better countries, as is Chile, Argentina, I think Uruguay. People from there, assuming they are legal, will typically vote better and even commit less crime. Chile for example has only a 2% murder rate, which is equal with most non-Democrat cities in the United States. Mexico is far worse, with perpetual leftist governments and mass corruption, but once in the United States, their crime rate is equal to whites. But then you get Latinos from countries like Guatemala and the level of violence, lack of education, and perversity is just on an entirely different level.
Consequently, Hispanics are a mixed bag, but generally the split will be, and will always be, 60-30, even after many generations. It maybe even gets worse, as the more upperly mobile they are, the more they vote. The stupid is stuck on that 60% and they do not consider themselves American. Maybe education can fix it, but education is entirely in the hands of the left. Until we have patriotic education, we just can’t fix the one’s we have.
A good first step, in any case, will be to completely cut the illegal and legal pipeline, or limit immigration to the upper classes of countries like Chile or Argentina who understand what socialism does to their pocket books.
Because it was always bogus. People have been using “demography is destiny” to predict permanent majorities for ages, and they have always been wrong.
I hope that’s true, but I have never seen the 50% number. If you can support that, then this would be very good news for the country. My understanding is that the average is stuck at 30%.
I think the outcome in Mexico would be quite different if they didn’t have a US as a pressure vent and a cash cow. Either they would have become Venezuela by now, or the people would have come to their senses, dumping the Socialists.
The US doesn’t have another US for people to escape to, or to finance the Revolution. So, again, either we (and thus the world) become Venezuela, or we come to our senses.
I haven’t seen 50% in a Presidential election, but in 2004, 44% of Hispanics and 43% of Asians voted for Bush. Locally, it is not uncommon at all for Republicans to win the Hispanic vote in statewide elections in Texas.
Only about 30% of Hispanics voted for Trump, but there is no reason to assume that is a permanent, nationwide condition.
Agreed. That demographics haven’t yet given total power to the Democrats doesn’t mean that it’s not working in their favor because they most certainly are. This is especially true of immigration-driven demographic changes.
As you say, necessary steps are a serious and sustained efforts to end illegal immigration and quickly identify and deport illegal aliens who do make it in or overstay., and at a minimum a large reduction in legal immigration.
I worry though that the time where permanent legislative reductions in immigration could be enacted has passed. Even when public support for reducing legal immigration enjoyed majority support the idea was bitterly opposed by the GOP donor class and stooges like Paul Ryan and Sam Brownback, and so it never came to pass. Now it appears public opinion may have shifted.
For the first time I’ve ever seen, Gallup shows larger support for increasing immigration than decreasing it. It used to be that support for reducing immigration or maintaining current levels always battled it out for majority or plurality status while support for increasing immigration always trailed in a distant third. I don’t know if that is a result of white liberals going fully left in immigration whereas they used to be more restrictive, or if it’s a result and reflection of the demographic shifts over 40 years of mass immigration have already produced, with most of those millions of immigrants and offspring of immigrants naturally wanting more of their own to come. Maybe it’s both.
The only counter I can put forth to that is that the poll doesn’t inform respondents of the current levels they are being asked about. If they were told that it was over a million legal immigrants per year, would more still favor increasing that than support reducing it?
An interesting Harvard-Harris poll approached the issue in a different way by providing respondents a series of numerical ranges of preferred annual immigration. By that measure, a solid majority chose numerical ranges that represent a reduction in current levels of legal immigration.
So as with many issues, it probably depends on how the question is asked.
Anyway, the point I was going g to make before veering off on that tangent is that talk of certain immigrant groups becoming less Democrat over generations, even if true, is more than offsetby the large and continual annual influx of new immigrants who are very pro-Democrat.
bkmk
I think that 44% of Hispanics nationally for GWB in 2004 has been credibly refuted by analysts from both left and right. 40% was more likely the most he got.
As far as statewide races in Texas, I think the number of times a Republican has won or broken even with Hispanics in a high profile race is quite low. Cornyn may have in 2014 when he had token opposition. GWB may have in 1998 when he won re-election as governor. I don’t think there are many other examples.
I’ve read that Asians used to go for the GOP, but that’s when the Asian American population was made up more of those who had fled communist tyranny, like the Vietnamese. But as Asian immigration moved towards other sources it has become reliably Democrat, with i admit, some big swings at least in midterm elections.
I agree that Hispanic and Asian preference for Democrats need not be a permanent state of affairs. But I have very little hope of reaching a break even point so long as mass immigration continues. If we had a 1920-like cutoff followed by decades of low to moderate immigration then I think the chances would be much greater.
Most “hispanics” (not an ethnic group) in America are actually....brace for it.......White. Over time they tend to identify as White. Just like all previous immigrants, they tend to become more Republican over time. In addition to that, they are more religious and socially conservative than the national average. The vast majority of the growth has been among hispanics nationwide. The next largest group experiencing rapid growth are Asians.....and the Leftists are fervently discriminating against them for college admissions because they tend to come from intact homes which value education and they tend to work hard.
I wouldn’t bank on a majority of either group backing Democrats permanently.
I wouldn’t bank on a majority of either group backing Democrats permanently.
I would. You’re dreaming. Look at the map of CA and TX. Every border county but one in TX is Democrat. A literal blue wave coming north. They will never majority support a MAGA GOP when Free Stuff Democrats are another option.
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