There may be a few in Bellevue, but I doubt enough to swing New York.
My choice would be Minnesota.
Minnesota was once the most Democratic state in the country. In ‘84, Ronald Reagan won 49 states. Walter Mondale won Minnesota. In that era, the Democratic Party was focused on the needs of the working class and labor unions, and held moderate positions on social issues in accords with their constituents’ wishes. Minnesota was and still is a state with a hefty chunk of farmers, factory workers, and other working class professionals. It was and still is mostly rural and suburban; the population is over 5.5 million, with Minneapolis and St. Paul accounting for just over 700,000 of that.
Over the past 30 years, the Democratic Party has shifted to neoliberal economics favored by Wall Street, favoring free trade, ok with increased corporate roles in almost everything, and showing minimal interest in private-sector unions. That’s now accompanied with extreme positions and intolerance of differing opinions on immigration, abortion, and a host of other social issues. This platform is a bad match for Minnesota, so it’s no surprise that the Democrat’s margin of victory has fallen in the state to the point where Hillary won by less than 45,000 votes. If the trend continues, Minnesota could easily shift Republican by as early as 2020.
Minn - St. Paul total area has 3.8 million people. That’s about 70% of the Minnesota’s total population. (the 700k number you listed is just within city limits of Minn. and St. Paul )
Could you fill me in a little more on these extremist Democratic positions that appears to be driving the hardy, down-to-earth people of Minnesota away from the party?
He said it - they’re showing “intolerence” of racists and fundamentalists, apparently. Implied in his comment is that they’re shoving something down somebody’s throat.
I’m not thinking Minnesota is likely to flip. If it does, that’ll mean a Republican landslide. The last Republican to win the state was Richard Nixon in 1972. Unlike neighboring Wisconsin, most of the federal and statewide offices have been reliably Democratic. Third party votes in 2016 made the race a bit closer than it would have been otherwise.
On abortion, a generation ago a large chunk of Democrats in Congress were pro-life. Today, a tiny number are, and Democratic activists are working to eliminate those few. https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/yw5j9x/where-have-all-the-pro-life-democrats-gone
The change on immigration has been equally clear. Many Democrats in Congress used to be proudly and outspokenly anti-immigrant. Now, virtually none are. Liberals have lost their minds over immigration | The Week
The party’s rhetoric has changed utterly in a very short time. Here’s Bill Clinton, when he was President:
All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.
That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace.
So Bill Clinton was strongly opposed to illegal immigrants, and vowed to spend lots of money getting tough on deportation. And he used the phrase “illegal immigrants”, not euphemisms like “Dreamers” or “undocumented workers”. I doubt there’s any Democratic politician today who talks on the issue the way Bill did not very long ago.
One cannot assume anything so far in advance.
The deep Blue states and the deep Red states are highly likely to remain that way in 2020, but no one can be sure.
If either party makes any foolish assumptions they deserve what they get.
Meh, maybe you’re right and MN stays blue, but I imagine a lot of people felt the same way about PA, WI, and MI prior to 2016. Here’s a brief rundown of MN’s voting history vs the outcome of the overall Presidential election (all numbers pulled from Wikipedia):
2016: Clinton won it by 1.52% while winning the national popular vote by 2.1%. Let’s call it R+~1/2-point that year (that is, slightly to the right of the electorate as a whole).
2012: Obama won it by 7.7% while winning the national popular vote by 3.9%. Call it D+3.8% (that is, a bit more to the left of the electorate as a whole)
2008: Obama won it by 10.3% while winning the national popular vote by 7.2%. D+3.1%
2004: Kerry won it by 3.48% while losing the national popular vote by 2.4%. Roughly D+5.9%
2000: Gore won it by 2.41% while winning the national popular vote by 0.5%. Roughly D+2.9%
1996: Clinton won it by 16.1% while winning the national popular vote by 8.5%. D+7.6%
1992: Clinton won it by 11.6% while winning the national popular vote by 5.6%. D+6%.
Overall, I think that trend line should be worrying for Dems, but YMMV, obviously.
These are your examples of Democrats becoming more extremist?
Potential problem with these comparisons is that they assume personalities don’t matter. Bill Clinton had charm and Minnesotans responded to that. Hillary Clinton had less, Minnesotans responded accordingly. I take this “trend” to mean that Democrats are likely to take the state, but the margins depend on the charm of the candidate. HRC had a lot of baggage (most of it not her fault, I believe, but rather due to decades of altogether bizarre hatred of her). A Democrat that can talk in proper sentences is likely to outshine Trump significantly in Minnesota. It’s early days, of course, but I’m okay with giving “Generic Democrat vs Trump” a 5% edge in Minnesota.
Username/OP combo!
You seem to be saying that “working class” and minorities are two non-overlapping categories. A party that doesn’t stand up for social issues is not focusing on the needs of those members of the working class who happen to find those social issues extremely important.
As to “uncompromising position on abortion”, do the words Stupak Amendment ring a bell? You know, the amendment to the ACA which would have made it the strongest anti-abortion legislation ever passed by Congress, which was proposed by a Democrat, and then unanimously killed by the Republicans in the Senate because it was the only part of the act they could kill, and they wanted to deny Democrats as much as possible?
I wonder if the Minneapolis suburbs have a decent amount of swing voters? College educated types with decent jobs. I know the Chicago suburbs do. People that voted Obama in 2012 and then voted for Republican Bruce Rauner for governor in 2014. They don’t tend to like the hardcore religion and abortion side of Republicans but aren’t exactly fans of Black Lives Matter protests either.
NC went for Obama in '08, Romney in '12 and Trump in '16.
Can you please quote the passage in which I said that? I don’t recall even using the word minority prior to now.
As a matter of fact, the Democratic Party has turned against some minorities. Catholics are a minority, for instance, and at times in the past the Democrats won the Catholic vote by more than 50 percentage points. That certainly isn’t true any longer. To find out why, one need only look at the case of Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Burwell, in which the Obama Administration fought for years to financially destroy a small charity organization that was devoted to helping the poor, solely because that organization chose to purchase health care for its employees that didn’t cover birth control. Last year the Trump administration ended the federal government’s battle to shut down the Little Sisters of the Poor. State-level Democrats promptly sued, demanding that the courts intervene and shut down the Little Sisters of the Poor, thereby preventing them from assisting the poor.
It seems safe to say that for most of their existence, the Democrats have at least been willing to allow Catholic charitable organizations to exist and practice their religion, which the First Amendment guarantees their right to do. I’d guess that 20 years ago, if anyone had taken a poll on the issue, most Democrats would have said that charitable organizations that help the poor are a good thing regardless of their religious viewpoint. It’s only in the past few years that the Democrats have decided to use the power of government to harass and shut down Catholic charities.
There are plenty of other minorities that have shifted away from the Democrats in recent years. Union members are a minority. They’ve gone form heavily Democratic to nearly split between the two parties. Rural votes are a minority. The Democrats have driven them away too. Veterans are a minority, and the Democrats don’t do well with them either.
Precisely. 20 years ago there were some Democrats who stood up up for a pro-life position. Today there are virtually none. The Democratic Party no longer stands up for the needs of working class, pro-life voters.
If you read the first link in my previous post, you’ll see that it says that the enormous majority of the Democrats who voted for the Stupak Amendment are gone from Congress. Only 12 remain, and they’ve been pushed into not actually doing much of anything on the abortion issue.
I remember doing a state by state analysis of all 50 states, comparing them from 2012 vs 2016.
In virtually every northern and midwestern state, the GOP did far better in 2016 than in 2012. Pretty much all the non western union statesin the civil war (the midwest and the northeast).
However outside that area, the GOP didn’t do better. The west coast, southwest, south, plains, etc. were all the same. Some moved left.
So if any states move right in 2020, it’ll probably be the civil war northern states. I know NH and MN were too close to call for a while. But I seriously doubt any state is more republican in 2020 than it was in 2016. The GOP has too many things working against them in 2020.
Yeah, it is probably safe to assume all blue states will remain blue in 2020. However they may not be in 2024.
At root, everything you talk about is because whites w/o a college diploma moved to the right in 2016. The democrats lost whites w/o a college degree by almost 40 points. In 2008 Obama only lost them by 14 points.
Also when peopel discuss minorities, they usually discuss people who do not fit into the stereotypical image of ‘America’ and who are at risk of persecution for people who do believe in that traditional stereotype of America. Non-whites, non-christians, immigrants, LBGT, etc. By that definition being in a union or being a catholic or being a veteran does not make you a minority. Nobody is trying to take away the rights of veterans. When people try to ‘take away’ the rights of catholics, they are trying to stop catholics from taking away the rights of other people.
You should take a look at this graphic. Most states moved towards the Republicans in 2016, from 2012.
In fact the only ones that moved the other way were: ID, KS, UT, TX, GA, AZ, VA, WA, IL, MD, MA, and CA.
12/50, and several of those just barely, and Utah only because a locally-popular third-party candidate was running.
Whatever though, we’re probably better off if you’re complacent, so carry on.
Minnesota was the Democratic state in the country when Minnesotan Walter Mondale was the dem candidate.
Dems won the Catholic vote by 50 points when Catholic JFK was the dem candidate.
Cherry picking.