That just doesn’t happen for very long, the parties simply change to remain viable. The Republican party of 2024 will look nothing like todays, in fact it will likely repudiate almost everything it stands for today.
So… The GOP doesn’t have a lock since candidates and performance matter? I’ll tell you what - why don’t you just argue this one out on your own, and let us know when you get it resolved.
Well, sure, if the Republicans basically become Democrats on a half dozen or so issues then I suppose you’re right. I don’t see how you win elections that way. Abandoning your base is a pretty risky move and when you do, are you still what you were when you started out?
Wasn’t it a foregone conclusion that Dean was going to win, about 4 months before the Dean Scream incident?
Both parties will change due to the changing face of America. If demographic changes happen as predicted, the Democratic party will be majority Catholic and have a much higher percentage of regular churchgoers and married couples than it does today. Thinking that changing demographics only creates issues for the lilly white Republican Party is mistaken. It also creates issues for the lilly white well off liberals that purport to run the Democratic party but won’t in the future. They’ll have very little voice in a party that is Latino-dominated.
The changes are all likely to be on the social issues front. On economic issues, the Democrats are more likely to have to change than the Republicans, as a young to middle aged Latino majority within the party decides whether it really wants 3/4ths of the budget to finance the majority white elderly.
I’d like to agree with DigitalC. It would be nice to have two sane parties, one moderate to liberal, one moderate to conservative again. But I don’t know. Do not forget that resistance to change is a defining characteristic of conservatives.
When Democrats lose, they ask “What did we do wrong? What can we change in order to win?”
When Republicans lose, they call the voters names.
I don’t agree with that at all. I have yet to hear Democrats admit that their policies or performance in office are why they lost. It’s always about “structural issues” like the fact Dems don’t turn out in midterms, or the economy, or the “Bubba vote”, which was called the “angry white man” vote in 1994.
If Republicans win it all in 2016 I predict that Democrats will say it was “history”, that Clinton could never overcome Obama’s 41% approval ratings, which in turn weren’t his fault either.
Republicans on the other hand have been spending a lot of time figuring out how to win more minority voters. That debate within the party has been healthy, although it hasn’t resulted in a strategy for actually doing it yet. Meanwhile, Democrats act as if winning back the white vote doesn’t even matter. Which is why by 2030, white voters will have the same relationship with Democrats that black voters have with Republicans.
One thing I’m amazed Republicans don’t capitalize more on is Democrats’ tendency to say pretty much flat out that if you aren’t a Democrat, you aren’t really Latino or black.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/10/06/more_hispanic_than_thou_124189.html
Republicans might want to remind all the independent Latinos and African-Americans what Democrats think of their traitorous behavior. Don’t they know they aren’t allowed a choice?
This:
followed by this:
is very funny.
This is completely nuts. There’s a huge chunk of the white population – not a majority, but a very large chunk – that absolutely refuses to be part of any “whites only” groups, even if the group doesn’t explicitly discriminate. Tons and tons of white people will never be Republicans as long as Republicans have no significant number of minority supporters. Not appealing to minorities hurts Republicans among some white people as well, while of course appealing to racist white people on the other hand.
The philosophy you speak of is a philosophy of the majority. Minorities tend to vote as blocs and whites will be no exception.
What you and others don’t seem to realize is that the current situation, where both parties are well sorted ideologically is a historical anomaly. Throughout most of our history, the parties have been less ideological and more sectional. It is very possible that we will return to that dynamic.
You say that many whites don’t want to be part of a whites-only club, but why would whites be part of a party that is as disinterested in them as the Republicans supposedly are in minority voters? Whites like being part of a diverse party, as long as they hold the power within it and get to choose which minority candidates get to run. If you think all African-Americans and Latinos are as liberal as Maxine Waters and Raul Grijalva, you’ve been drinking some interstingly-flavored Kool-aid. Liberal minority candidates get recruited and funded by the DNC because they know that winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to election. Once the white wealthy liberals can’t control that process anymore the candidates will be much more representative of their constituents.
Whites will still be the largest plurality for quite a while even after there is no majority racial group. Your prediction is silly on its face.
You’re gonna have to provide a cite for this.
How are the Democrats “disinterested” in white people? Minimum wage, health care, social justice in general, gay rights, women’s rights, etc… these are all “white issues” as much as they are black or latino issues.
Right now a black person is, for all intents and purposes, the leader of the Democratic party. The Obamas will be as influential within the Democratic party as Bill Clinton for decades more, barring some tragedy or catastrophe (or major scandal). Some small percentage of white people left the Democratic party because a black man is in charge, but these are the racist rump – and frankly, good riddance to them. There is no evidence that white people are leaving the Democratic party at some accelerated rate.
Who said this is the case? What does this have to do with my argument? Don’t bring up dumb straw men.
I’m pretty confident that “white wealthy liberals”, for the most part, aren’t racists, and therefore won’t leave the Democratic party simply because there are more minority candidates.
I reject your predictions here.
These two paragraphs:
contradict each other.
Please do better, adaher.
Whites, like any other group, will vote for whichever party serves their interests. Since whites make up 70+% of voters, both parties try to do that. That may not be the case when whites make up 45% of voters.
There’s no way to cite the sweep of history. You either know it or you don’t. From the rise of political parties up until very recently, both parties had liberal and conservative wings and whether you were a Democrat or Republican or Whig or whatever had more to do with where you lived than what you believed. That’s only recently changed, and unless you’re like 30 or younger you’ve lived it.
In 2050, it could very well be that white liberals, disrespected and unwanted by the Democratic Party, basically reconstitute the liberal wing of the Republican Party in the Northeast. It’s not a crazy idea because that’s the way it used to be. The Democrats were obviously the more liberal party, but so hostile to northeastern liberals that the more conservative but less redneck-y Republican Party was the most hospitable place for many of them.
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?
Barack Obama got as far as he did because he was liberal. If he’d had an ideology more like Harold Ford’s, he’d be, well, where Harold Ford is now. Barack Obama didn’t exactly sail into the White House on the endorsements and money of African-Americans.
As for whether whites are leaving the Democratic party, we’ll know more in the next Presidential election. Obama got historically low white support. Bush beat Kerry among whites 58-41. Obama improved on that performance, losing 55-43 in 2008, but his support among whites plummeted in 2012, losing them by 20 points. But in any case, my argument wasn’t that whites voted as a bloc now, but that they are likely to do so in the future if they perceive themselves as a minority.
My argument was that the Democratic Party plays a large role in picking out candidates, and in heavily Democratic districts they back the most liberal candidates possible, even if the electorate in particular is not all that liberal. As minorities become more powerful within the party, they’ll be less inclined to let the white power brokers do the candidate picking. The resulting party will not be liberal across the board. It will more accurately reflect the views of the communities they represent.
No, they will leave the party because their voice is no longer heard and their priorities no longer the priorities of the party.
It’s less a prediction than a look into a cloudy future that may not be as pleasant for today’s liberals as they like to think. Right now, all you folks see is, “Oooh, more minorities, more Democrats, we win!” without considering that changing demographics changes the Democrats just as much, if not more than, the Republicans. The Republicans can go on being the far right party and enjoy control over Congress and most of the states more often than not and do just fine, should they obstinately refuse to change. The Democrats, however, will be a completely different party than they are today, and it’s impossible to predict in what ways they will change. Saying that you’ll support the Democratic Party of 2050 is as ridiculous as a 1980s Democrat saying they’ll support the party in 2014.
Some food for thought from Pew Research:
Let me just reiterate that I’m not making predictions, only presenting scenarios of how things could be different in ways today’s liberals don’t expect. To assume that nothing else will change but that we’ll have more Democrats is the most ridiculous prediction of all. Things are always changing and very few of us even come close to predicting how things will change. I’m sure my cloudy predictions will be 90% wrong. I’m sure that predictions that NOTHING will change except for increased Democratic support are 100% wrong. Plenty has changed about the two parties in the last 30 years and a heck of a lot more will change over the next 30. You can’t even be sure that any particular minority group will still vote Democrat. Heck, you can’t even be sure that today’s minorities will even BE minorities. Southern Europeans and Irish were once minorities. Today’s O’Connor is tomorrow’s Gonzalez. Latino voting behavior may become indistinguishable from white voting behavior in 30 years.
Nope, I’m afraid that the only thing that is certain is that if you want a progressive country you’ll have to convince the public to support a progressive country. Progressives aren’t born, they are made.
This is incoherent when combined with the other stuff you’ve said on this.
White liberals aren’t “disrespected and unwanted by the Democratic Party”, and there’s no reason to believe they will be. This sort of “what if” is about as useful as “what if the Whigs come back”.
For many whites, opposition to immigration seems to be among the top concerns.
There’s no evidence the Democratic party is becoming more religious. There’s plenty of evidence that just about every demographic in America, including Latinos, are becoming less religious.
LOL. Obama’s a moderate. On the issues he’s virtually no different than Clinton.
I think this is extremely unlikely.
Whether this is true or not, it does nothing to support any of your other points, nor counter any of mine.
I see no evidence or compelling argument that this is likely at all.
If you don’t want to make a prediction, don’t state things as predictions, like “Which is why by 2030, white voters will have the same relationship with Democrats that black voters have with Republicans.”. That’s a prediction.
No idea what the point is. No political ideologies in people are inborn – they’re all made. And considering that the country has, in fits and starts, been slowly but steadily growing more and more progressive over time, I’m pretty optimistic.
A non-response to the question. If future elections are fought out between the Wall Street Democrats and the Progressive Democrats, that won’t really help the Republicans as they scramble to get enough votes to remain on the ballot next time.
That’s one way things could shake out. There are other ways things could happen as well. As immigration recedes as an issue after the inevitable reforms, Latinos could go back to Bush era levels of GOP support. Asians have always been in flux as a voting group and they are now the fastest growing ethnic group in the country. Even winning just 10 percentage points more of the white vote would place Republicans in a dominant position for years to come. If 2012 is a trend and not just a one election deal, Republicans already got a good part of the way towards that goal. If minority voters vote in the future the way they voted in 2004, that also puts Republicans in a dominant position assuming whites continue to vote the way they did in 2012.
IT’s silly to assume that the coalition Barack Obama built to get into office will survive after he leaves it. That coalition has not been present in any one of the special elections or midterms where he hasn’t been on the ballot. It’s unlikely to be there for an old white Democratic candidate either.
Can you please keep your erotic dreams to yourself?
This is a far less “silly” prediction than your fantasy-Republican-scenario in your first paragraph.
At least he now admits there *was *a 2012. Baby steps.
There *is *a fair amount of evidence that the white population is increasingly going Republican, perhaps as a result of the nativist fears they’ve worked so hard to build.