There's an outside chance that as the minority populations become mainstream-sized, they may cease to act in perfect unison.
Not as long as the Republican party keeps going out of its way to be the white people's party, they won't.
I like the actual article slightly better than your representation of it, particularly for the point that the bigger issue will not be demographic change so much as changing rates of voter participation. The problem is that it's based on positing a bunch of things, that, as it turns out, aren't actually true. Thing one would be that, by most accounts, Hispanics as a whole voted differently in 2008 than they did in 2004, which made places like Texas a lot more contestable.
I like the actual article slightly better than your representation of it, particularly for the point that the bigger issue will not be demographic change so much as changing rates of voter participation. The problem is that it's based on positing a bunch of things, that, as it turns out, aren't actually true. Thing one would be that, by most accounts, Hispanics as a whole voted differently in 2008 than they did in 2004, which made places like Texas a lot more contestable.
I haven't read the article, yet. But:
1) I might look to history, especially of Irish-Americans, perhaps Scandanavians, Jews. I don't think German-Americans were ever a predictably coherent voting bloc. Blacks voted Republican for 70 years, and thern Democratic, but partly for reasons that don't necessarily match up with the categories you list.
2) Economic & regional factors. Is the rustbelt going to turn into an utter wasteland, depopulated, looking economically more like the Old South than it does today? Will rustbelt blacks start moving back to (parts of) the South?
(PS:Texas is sustaining its real estate prices, and is much less in recession than the rest of the nation. Good winds, lots of sunshine, easier attitude toward development and redevelopment. We'll tear stuff down to build urban rail. So don't worry about it, the 2020 reapportionate will give Texas 150 electoral votes.)
Well, Hispanics are sort of the key, aren't they? If the Republicans can triangulate a position that is pro-immigration while still anti-gay rights and anti-abortion, they could probably up their Hispanic share considerably. Alternatively, the changing demographics of Hispanic populations may mean that immigration ceases to be a litmus test. Also, there's the matter of Cuba. Who knows what the situation will be there in 4 or 8 years?
At least, the above is what I see as the conventional wisdom on the topic, which may be incorrect. Here in Minneapolis (as distinct from St. Paul), there's never been a large, cohesive, self-sustaining Hispanic community until just the last few years. And what's more, it's divided between Mexicans from a couple of specific Mexican states, and Ecuadorians, who seem more liberal, and yet less radical, than their Mexican neighbors. That's what I see from the outside of course, the internal complexities are opaque to me.
Time changes lots of stuff. The Wobegon district is 55% Republican now (with a Blue Dog Democrat Rep), but it was a hotbed of radicalism 70 years ago.
I'm not going to read the article now, but how does it deal with Perot when discussing 1992? Kind of a big deal.
Baseball is the right analogy: the 2008 Rays weren't exactly an obvious follow-on to the 2007 Devil Rays. Just as the 1994 midterms looked pretty different from the 1992 general. Forget 20 years, look at two: 2004 and 2006. If Sarah Palin hadn't been such a dope, 2008 might have looked a little different as well.
(And did you see that she's complaining about Tina Fey now?)
(Just to follow, I don't think JSM fully appreciated what a dope Palin was. It's his own fault, of course, for believing in snake oil salesmen like Kristol etc.)
7: This methodology doesn't care how anyone voted in 1992, so Perot doesn't figure in. It just takes the demographic breakdown of 1992, and applies the voting preferences of 2008.
Why was Palin picked and not Huckabee?
Even I don't have reflexive hatred for Huckabee. The media loves him! He played along with Stephen Colbert for like a 15-minute interview!
In the original post, fair s/b fare
/obligatory W-lfs-n
More substantively (note that I am commenting in the fine Unfogged tradition of not having read the article), I think the influence of the post-1965 wave of immigration is so overwhelming as to drown out almost everything else going on, and it's nearly impossible to predict what members of these sort-of imposed group identities ("Asian," "Hispanic") will do as an increasing share of their populations cease to be directly affected by it.
Looking at current demographics and trends, I'd gamble that Korean Americans will be heavily Republican in a generation, while Cambodian Americans will be diehard Democratic voters in a very similar way to poor and working-class urban black folks.* [I haven't looked at Japanese-American voting patterns, which would be an interesting question, given that Japanese immigration here has been more or less nonexistent for at least 25 years.]
I think the Indonesians are likely to lean Republican because most of them seem to be Christian refugees, and Republicans seem to be much more vocal about religious persecution of Christians. I haven't talked to enough Chinese Christians to have the slightest clue, and I also have no idea what proportion of Chinese immigrants they represent.
*Meaning black native-born Americans; not talking about African immigrants.
My sense -- again not having looked at the data -- is that Puerto Ricans are all already voting Democratic. (Since they're all USC, they can vote as soon as they turn 18.) The Mexicans I talked to before the election all loved Hillary, but slowly warmed up to Obama. Of course, a vast proportion of the Mexican-American population, especially outside the West/Southwest, can't vote because they are either too young or ineligible.
My sense is IF you were able to remove immigration, two remaining large influences on Latino voting attitudes at the federal level would be history of U.S. foreign-policy endeavors in their country of origin (a la the Cubans, but also Guatemalans, etc.), and the particular characteristics of the people who came - that is, many Argentines in the US come from middle/upper class backgrounds, highly educated, working professional jobs in their home countries. So keeping in mind that immigrants are *never* a representative sample of their home country is rather key.
Republican racism and nativism make lots of immigrants more Democratic than they'd otherwise be.
Why assume that whites will continue to vote in the same ratios? Unions are disappearing, and unions with white voters are disappearing faster. The UAW probably won't exist in 2020 except as a pension fund, and the "white working class" is disappearing with the unions. That means whites will vote in increasing numbers for the Republicans, or for the white party, as Howard Dean called them.
Also, immigrants are anti-gay, not pro-gay. If California was majority white, gay marriage would be the law of the land, so blame immigration.
One thing I'm wildly curious about (are there any researchers out there?) is the impact of gender on African immigrants' voting patterns. IME African women are keenly aware of educational and other limitations in their countries of origin, often emphasizing how dire it would be for their children to have to return to a place where school fees are the norm. Anecodotally this seems to lead them to a worldview that greatly values the opportunity (for their sons and daughters alike) available in the U.S., and focuses heavily on communal social responsibility, sometimes in language that sounds very Democractic.
African men more often seem to use a different type of power analysis for their view of the world, and to be preoccupied with a rather different set of issues that are more traditionally Republican.
But all of this is from a relatively few data points, albeit people from a number of different countries, and I have no sense of whether these trends exist at all or if they are wholly imaginary.
On preview: Shorter 11, see 12.
Puerto Ricans are all already voting Democratic
Without numbers, I'd say that's accurate among the diaspora (largely in NY, NJ, and FL). Keep in mind they can't vote in the actual presidential election, but they did get a Democratic primary on the island itself. Their own recent gubernatorial election on the island put a Republican (basically) in office, but that was more about corruption approaching Blagojevichian levels of bad.
As for Mexican-Americans, Rove targeted them as a "growth area" (pro-family, strongly Catholic, conservative socially {so anti-gay, anti-abortion stuff works well}). As far as I can tell the dumber corners of the GOP will continue to shit this bed on issues like immigration and English-only language prescriptions.
12:The way I see America, both parties (or factions) work off a model of maintaining a base and taking advantage of opportunities. I studied those electoral college maps 1876-1932 and didn't see enough of a pattern of change. Republicans will maintain their nativism, militarism, faux-populism and wait for Democrats to fuck up or the world to change.
I see little evidence that electoral majorities can be locked in, other than around charismatic leaders or other contingent factors.
But the country can be changed, at ground level and legislatively/policy. Reagan didn't gain permanent Republican dominance, but he did lower marginal tax rates, fuck, maybe forever.
15: Whoops, thanks for the clarification, Stanley. I was only talking about Puerto Ricans on the mainland, but I totally failed to mention that.
strongly Catholic
Except for the ones joining Pentecostal churches, which is a small fraction but AFAICT a growing one.
People are tired of my carp and catfish, so here are some sting rays
And I also happen to think it is policy that changes politics, rather than the other way around. Obama apparently believes that good politics can create good policy. He's tragically wrong.
Anyway I hear statements like:"X out of Y Presidents since Z"...too few datapoints. And Congress may have been Democratically controlled for umpteen years, but the margins of majority and the ideological makeup varied a lot.
I would have like that so much fucking better without that goddamn scuba diver.
As white union members disappear, replaced by non-union white voters, they won't be voting Democrat . . .
Fifty-seven percent of white men favored McCain, but 57 percent of white male union members favored Obama. White gun owners cast 68 percent of their votes for McCain, but 54 percent of white gun owners who are also union members preferred Obama. Among white weekly churchgoers, McCain scored a landslide, receiving 70 percent of their votes. But Obama had a slight edge (49 percent to 48 percent) among white weekly churchgoers who were union members. Similarly, 58 percent of white non-college graduates voted for McCain, but 60 percent of white union members who didn't graduate from college tilted to Obama. Overall, 53 percent of white women cast ballots for McCain, but [pollster Guy] Molyneux found that a whopping 72 percent of white women union members favored Obama.
It may be that the political benefits of unionization are greater than the contract-negotiation benefits. That's what makes it hard, though, because the political benefits of unionization are delayed and diffuse and uncertain.
7: (And did you see that she's complaining about Tina Fey now?)
Paranoid fears about celebrities and the press, long lists of enemies, irrational jealous resentment of a Kennedy - she really is Nixon's spiritual daughter, isn't she?
No more masturbating to William Zantzinger.William Zantzinger.
I once got into a dispute with someone whose internet handle was Zantzinger. That infuriated me -- which is totally out of character -- because it was like taking the name Hitler. But it was his real name.
Republican racism and nativism make lots of immigrants more Democratic than they'd otherwise be.
And the imperialism has driven away those immigrants who would be sort of fine with the racism. Iranians used to vote en bloc for Republicans...
Iranians used to vote en bloc for Republicans
Really? Everything Ogged (pbuh) has said about Iranians fits with that, it's true.
My honey's mother: "Who was that terrible man, that democrat?"
Me: [guessing, with foreboding] "Jimmy Carter?"
My honey's mother: "Oh, that dreadful man! With his human rights nonsense! The Republicans were always very good to the shah, very cooperative."
My understanding is that Muslim-Americans in general historically broke Republican, before Bush the younger.
The super super irony is that the Ayatollah absolutely hated Carter because he gave refuge to the Shah (and for other reasons), so he helped Reagan get elected. Reagan operatives definitely had a part in this; whether Khomeini was manipulated or in on the game, I don't know.
Some of the few unquestionable genocidal fascists I've met in my life have been elite immigrants from third world counties ruled by authoritarians. They explicitly and non-jokingly expressed exterminationationist opinions.
My honey's mother sincerely believes that the Shah's education and modernization policies were bringing enlightenment and prosperity to the people---and worked for the children's ministry in some capacity---so I'm reluctant to allow her to be lumped in with the genocidal fascists, even though, damn, she is a weird terrifying woman.
I was thinking about a certain Iranian I knew, but yes. I take it back re Ma Honey.
Like Saddam, the Shah was a secularist, promoted education, allowed women to walk alone in public places and drive cars, etc.
Ogged's subtler power: I don't believe in analogies, so don't read that as one.
As far as I can tell, the Shah may have been a little stupid and quite paranoid, if sort of vaguely well-intentioned. Fucking monarchy.
Is there a faction of Iranians who resent Republicans for the coup in the fifties?
The most fascist-sounding elite immigrants I know are from Israel.
Is there a faction of Iranians who resent Republicans for the coup in the fifties?
I met a guy who shoulda been in this contingent. He resented the Shah and the CIA and the mullahs and all kinds of people; however, he had somehow managed to become a seriously successful exporter in exile and owned a giant Fifth Avenue apartment. He was a cranky, mean old man, but I suspect Bush Jr. managed to lose his vote anyway.
I'm not sure exactly how much the 1950s coup can really be laid at the feet of the Republicans, to be honest. Sure, it was under Eisenhower, but Truman and even FDR had had some interfering policies towards Iran before then, and besides, the whole thing was engineered by Kermit Roosevelt in the CIA with very little oversight (not like anyone knew what the fuck they were doing or whether it could possibly work).
Which ethnicities would be alienated won over by the evangelical God-hates-fags arm?
blacks, hispanics
I haven't talked to enough Chinese Christians to have the slightest clue, and I also have no idea what proportion of Chinese immigrants they represent.
The Chinese (mainly Tawianese, I think, which makes it different because of the anti-communism factor) Christians my parents have come into contact with have been generally Republican. Overall, though, I don't have a sense of the party breakdown of Chinese immigrants.
35: I hadn't realized Kermit was such a hardcore Republican.
Wasn't Mossadeq quite the woman-educating, westernizing secularist his own self? I know he was a big fan of the US.
Ogged had a post linking to an article on 1953.
37, 41: yeah, I guess I was oversimplifying to blame Republicans. But I sort of have the impression that the Dulles brothers were the Cheney and Rumsfeld of their day, though I don't really know enough details to make the comparison.
Movie report. Ok, this is interesting.
Last week or so I watched Oleanna twice, directed by Mamet, starring William Macy. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon originated the roles on stage. Now I don't know why Pidgeon didn't do the movie, but Debra Eisenstadt was quite fine as the female lead.
Now Eisenstadt was Pidgeon's understudy for Oleanna on stage, and apparently wrote a screenplay based on the experience. The Limbo Room. It is about an career understudy getting a chance when the lead actor and actress, and backstage relationships get...complicated...over an onstage rape scene.
Not great, but interesting. Feminist. And more, about power relationships in theatre.
Is fantasy baseball anything like pocket pool?
46: In fantasy baseball the wanking is right out in the open.
I've been told by my Iranian friends that after the revolution two groups had to leave Iran: rich conservative shah supporters and radical communists. I was also told that said two groups still hate each other. But I have no idea what their relative proportions are. My friends were communist descended and may have overestimated their own importance.
I was at events in Portland right before the Shah was overthrown where there were four Iranian factions: Muslims, two kinds of Communists, and centrist dissidents. There also presumably spies for the Shah. Members of one group would take pictures of members of the other groups and send them back to Iran so that dossiers could be built on their enemies.
My friends who filled me in on this were a Communist (Tudeh) and a secular liberal. I would occasionally meet Khomeini's supporters, but they increasingly wouldn't talk to me.
John, that was my experience of Iranian emigres in the San Gabriel Valley at the same time, too.
49/50. Also mine in Britain. But there were also MeK people, who hadn't quite gone mad by that point.
Most of the Iranians I know had their political affiliations removed along with part of their nose cartilage. The rest are in the Muttonhead Quail movement.
52 is making me laugh, even though I'm not entirely clear what it means.
53: famous error from spelling "correction" in an AP or Reuters story, iirc.
Considering that less than half the children in kindergarten are white, the Republican Party is in an unsustainable position. The Repubicans are also caught in a demographic trap where they will lose more votes than they gain while making a play for groups that are currently non-Republicans. As Bush's immigration bill debacle showed, when the Repubicans pander to Hispanics, they lose more votes than they gain.
The best way to look at the future is that Asians are the new Jews, Hispanics are the new blacks and the problem for the Republicans is that no group can be the new mormons.
Image what will happen in 2020 and past when the real election for president bill occur during the Democratic Presidential primary and the general election will be moot.
54: Yep.
My favorite recent example is Reuters accidentally referring to Pakistan's Muttahida Quami Movement as the Muttonhead Quail Movement.
54: Oh. It was the nose cartilage part that was making me laugh, really, though, because the handful of Iranians I know have strong noses, but I have no idea whether Ned was alluding to such a thing along with the fact that Western assimilation would call for a button nose, so it has just made me smile.
What makes people think that, if the US turns towards ethnic voting blocks, that whites won't vote as a block? The less secure whites become as a majority, the more likely they are to vote their ethnic interests. Iowans can vote for Obama while there are no blacks in Iowa. If 20% of Iowa were black and hispanic, how many white Iowans would be Democrats, much less voting for Obama.
Maybe California is the future of US politics, with a permanent Democrat majority. But even California cannot raise taxes indefinitely, as is becoming obvious, nor can it pass gay marriage. And whites, the people with money, are in a permanent tax revolt. Reagan conservatism began with a California tax revolt, and I wouldn't be surprised if Californians started to vote for Republicans if the Democrats raise taxes in the middle of a recession.
superdestroyer
Is this the previous commenter "destroyer", like, super-charged, or is it someone altogether new? One wonders.
with a permanent Democrat majority
In that case, I can't imagine it being stable. I suspect as in the past, a third party would rise with a different mix, and the GOP would die.
California's problem is low taxes and an insane referendum process for amending the Constitution.
I don't know why the Republicans wouldn't just change rather than be replaced. You're right, a permanent Dem majority does look unstable. Either the Democrats propose cutting taxes or voters can choose to vote Republican. Or taxes can be hiked again, and white flight will continue, until it goes bankrupt and has no choice but to cut taxes to lure businesses and taxpayers back.
61: And that Bitch, Ph.D. character. Never forget the menace she represents for their young people and koi.
59: I was hoping it was the old (previous) destroyer, who was enjoyable.
Rather, I should say voters are more likely to vote Republican than for the Republicans to be replaced by a third party. Predictions of new parties are far more common than new parties.
65: I meant only that if you have a "permanent majority" and the 2nd party is failing to effectively counter it, that this is precisely the ripe ground for a 3rd party (in the US system). I wasn't commenting on how likely that situation was, at all.
I mean, is this not essentially how the R's replaced the Whigs? It would require a sufficiently divisive issue in the R's, but I could see a social vs. fiscal conservative split plausibly doing it...
If the Republican core constituency gains control, and if they're happy to keep losing while keeping the faith, Democrats could be in power for awhile. There's enough spread within the Democratic Party to have a lot of internal politics. Seemingly you end up with rightwing Democrats being the swing vote between the liberal Democrats and the clinically insane Republicans who think McCain was too liberal.
BJK's comments on taxes make no sense to me.
RON PAUL FOR, UM, SOMETHING!
Sales and income taxes are at 9%. Property taxes are capped, but that's just property taxes.
Democrats have over 60% representation in California but California doesn't govern by majority rule. You need more than 2/3 + a governor to get anything done.
Cause and effect, bjk. "That's just property taxes" -- WTF? Property taxes are an emormous part of the mix.
California suffers more from low taxes than from high taxes, but the local culture and political system favor low taxes.
Forget about manliness, guys. Boring.
It's really interesting over here, motherfuckers.
Stop spamming the thread, Emerson.
13: I don't think this is fair. Someone - Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com, probably - looked at exit poll data and found that there's a correlation between minorities and supporting Proposition 8, but it's not as strong as it looks. Yes, it's true that if blacks and hispanics had opposed Proposition 8 as strongly as they had supported Obama, it would have failed. But then again, if no one over 60 or something had voted, it would have passed. Like with a lot of other gay rights issues, race was less predictive than age.
59/63: Unfortunately, it's not. This superdestroyer is a one-trick pony, absolutely obsessed with the danger of minorities causing one-party dominance under the Democratic Party and, therefore, constantly growing government. Google superdestroyer one-party state sometime.
I tried my best to get people irritated, John, but no interest. It looks like people would rather hate on hipster megachurchs. It's more fun making fun of uncool white people.