The OP seems to think it’s a sure thing. Doesn’t hurt to list all the reasons why it’s not.
[QUOTE=adaher;17791098
Yeah yeah, and free markets and low taxes and making it easier for people to start businesses and thrive is also not a “white issue”. However, there are issues that benefit everyone, but some groups are more interested in them than others. For example, immigration is a top priority issue primarily to Latinos. For whites, it’s down the list behind, well, just about everything else. Climate change is primarily a white liberal priority, whereas for Latinos and African-Americans it tends to rank far behind more immediate economic concerns. There’s also the cultural differences, since a lot of voters are less issue-oriented and see politics as us vs. them. RIght now, there’s a big divide between churchgoing Americans and non-regular church attendees. The former are overwhelmingly Republican and the latter overwhelmingly Democrat. As the party becomes dominated more by Latinos, it will become less about believers vs. non-believers and more about Catholics vs. evangelicals. Where does an increasingly vanishing secular liberal minority go? The Green Party?[/QUOTE]
Low taxes don’t make it easier for people to start businesses, the tax rate really has little to do with a business being viable.
For many whites, immigration is a top priority, as in let’s keep the the Mexicans away from our jobs and our white wimmenfolk.
Global warming is an issue that affects everybody, even though many drink the corporate koolaid that denies science.
One would probably think that churchgoers trend Republican if one thinks God is Republican. But it depends which church. White evangelicals trend Republican, black Baptists not so much.
No, but African-Americans’ tendency to be churchgoers is what made them more opposed to gay marriage than average. Without the first black President very publicly embracing gay marriage, it would probably still be the case that African-Americans would be more hostile to it than whites.
While the gay marriage battle is now pretty much won and in the past, it will be harder to advance on social issues with a rather socially conservative Catholic majority dominating the Democratic Party.
None of this is a radical prediction. We’ve seen this before. Used to be that both parties were very socially conservative. The rise of the secular left is what led to all this social change. Importing a lot of very religious people from the third world is going to cause the parties to return to the older dynamic and the secular left will be a tiny minority again. While that won’t result in things going backwards, it will tend to stop forward momentum.
Those demographics, including Latinos, are becoming more socially liberal – not the reverse. When has any major demographic become more socially conservative over time?
If you’re predicting that America will become more socially conservative, that’s a pretty ahistorical prediction. We’ve always gotten more socially liberal over time.
Actually, Catholics are very socially liberal, on most issues. The Church opposes capital punishment, opposes war, and is strongly in favor of programs to help the poor. About the only issues where the Church is conservative are gay marriage (which is, as you note, pretty much a done thing) and abortion. And even there, I’ve met a fair few Catholics who vote Democrat because of their opposition to abortion, because the Democrats have been better at getting results than the Republicans have.
Sure it’s still a long time, but if Hillary does runn and in all likelihood get the nomination, I don’t see why any of the GOP candidates, Paul, Cruz, Rubio, Santorum, or whoever can legitimately challenge her even if history shows the party usually changes after 8 years.
Reasonable candidates like Huntsman will still get annihilated in the republican primaries. Too bad intelligence and reason aren’t requirements to get the nomination…
THey won’t become more socially conservative so much as they won’t advance further, or advance much more slowly. And of course one way where we’ll go “backwards” is that religion and government will become even more popular together than it is now. Prayer in schools might make a comeback.
But no, I’m not predicting that abortion will be outlawed and gays marginalized again. Just that the next bright ideas liberals get about social change will find a more skeptical audience if we have a more religious country tomorrow than we do today. THat’s why Europe is ahead of us in terms of social progress, less religion, with just a few exceptions(mostly Catholic countries). We’ll probably fall behind them a little bit more. Actually, they might too, given their increasing Muslim populations. Actually, they might really go backwards.
White catholics. Latino Catholics are about as liberal as their governments are. When you import foreigners, you import their politics. It happened with Europeans, it will happen with Latinos.
Huntsman isn’t even running unfortunately. I love that guy. On the bright side, I get spared the sight of Democrats destroying his reputation.
The reason the candidates you mentioned can challenge Clinton, aside from weariness with the current party in the White House, is youth vs. experience. Youth usually wins. Ask Richard Nixon, Bush 41, and John McCain.
If the war in Iraq and Syria is an issue, a Rand Paul nomination would screw the coalitions up but good if Clinton is the nominee. Although I’ve noticed most Democrats don’t care how many foreigners we kill when it comes right down to it. Social Security is more important. They’ll support Clinton and grin and bear it while she bombs Iraq and Syria into the stone age.
I see no reason to believe this is the case.
It never left. Anyone can pray in school if they want. This has always been the case. The government just doesn’t let schools set aside extra time or facilities for prayer, since everyone can already prayer during breaks, lunch, recess, etc.
These sound like rectally derived predictions. I don’t buy it.
No idea what this means – in America, the government of Latino Catholics is the American government.
Have you listened to Rand Paul lately? He seems just as gung-ho as any Republican right now.
He’s gung ho the way John Kerry gets gung ho. He’ll never out hawk Clinton nor will he ever want to.
And I’ll concede you could be right about my thoughts on the future being wrong. The future is always murky. But again, the Democratic party will change as it becomes more minority-dominated. The rise of the “limousine liberal” faction of the party has been well documented. At the very least, the party will return to its more working class roots. WHich means more working class values all around. The Democratic Party has not historically been particularly socially liberal compared to the Republican Party until fairly recently, perhaps because so many working class Americans abandoned the party for Reagan in the 80s, leaving the more wealthy liberals in charge. If the Democrats import working class people, then that returns the balance of power more to the way the party was in the 50s and 60s. Minus the racism of course. Hopefully minus the racism. On the bright side for many liberal Democrats, the Wall Street liberals will also find themselves on the outs. Which is another reason why I can see a resurgence of a liberal Republican faction in the Northeast. The reason the Northeast is Democrat-dominated is in large part because Democrats stopped hating on Wall Street.
You’re truly a force of nature, adaher.
Stop saying demographics doom the Republican party. It’s a heck of an assumption. Party coalitions change. The Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party of 1980 and the Democratic Party of 2040 won’t be the Democratic Party of 2016. The rise of some factions will alienate other factions(and some independent voters). US politics always maintains a rough balance such that one party never controls things for too long. What’s the record, 20 years?
Latinos tend toward Marian Catholicism: charity, love, feeding & clothing the poor, social justice and that sort of thing. Once you get past issues dealing primarily with sex, the rest of the social platform of the Democrats is a pretty perfect fit with what most Latino Catholics see as part of the faith. You really think Latino Catholics are going to vote against social welfare programs because of their “conservative” faith?
Definitely not. I just think they’ll be more like the Democrats of the 1950s in terms of priorities and views on the issues. The Democratic Party today is more about environmentalism, gay rights, reproductive rights, and civil rights than economic issues these days. They are fairly friendly to Wall Street. A Democratic Party that is controlled more by working class minorities than rich white liberals is not going to have terribly different views, but will have very different priorities. MAny of today’s liberals will have no problem with that(Brain Glutton has expressed delight at my scenario even though I’m sure he doesn’t necessarily believe that I’m right), but the Wall Street liberals, the environmentalists, and even groups like single women, gays, and African-Americans could find their issues deprioritized even as the party still supports their positions on said issues. Which was the case before the 1980s. The big movement of working class whites and married couples to the GOP had big consequences for both parties. Demographic changes always change both parties, they don’t just change who wins elections. My predictions on HOW the parties will change are very likely wrong. It’s just speculation. What is not speculation is that both parties WILL change, and not every current Democrat and Republican will appreciate the changes.
I think this is a pretty inaccurate description of the Democratic party.
Which part? Isn’t one of the most common complaints about the party from the left is they they’ve become the party of free trade, deregulation, the investor class, etc.?
I think that’s pretty accurate, with the caveat that the Republicans are still “worse” in that regard. I’d say that makes them better, of course.
Married women have gone for the Republican in every presidential election for the last few decades. You really think Republican women are going to vote for Hillary solely because “hey, she has ovaries, too!” :dubious:
Oh, the Democratic party really sucks (not nearly as much as the GOP, of course). I’m not arguing that they don’t suck. They do. It’s just false to say they’re more about social than economic issues. The minimum wage is just as important a Democratic issue as health care, for example, and both of those are economic issues.
Furt, there is a difference between Republican women and women who typically vote Republican. No, she won’t get the former but I think it is safe to assume that Hillary (assuming that she runs and gets nominated) will outpace prior male Democrats among female voters and those votes will have to come from somewhere.