The numbers have been creeping that way for a long time. No two ways about it, the Hispanic vote is a sleeping giant… and yet, the giant still shows no signs of stirring.
If Hispanic Texans voted their numbers, if they voted HALF their numbers, they’d be a force to reckon with. But they don’t. At this point, I honestly don’t know what it will take to get huge numbers of Hispanic voters out to the polls. And neither do the Democrats.
To use a cliche, “Hispanics are the future of Texas… and they always will be.”
On the other hand, by the time they find their strength they could just as easily form their own bloc/party and ditch the tired old Democrats and Republicans completely.
Doubt it. We are a two party system. You’d need nearly 50% of the population to have a new party that can do anything. What tends to happen is that one of the two parties dies out, and then the remaining party splits.
The bigger issue for the Democrats is that Hispanics tend to lean socially conservative, relative to other minorities. So there’s actual room for Repubicans to get them, if they’d actually step out and appeal to them.
And I agree that “white” doesn’t mean the same thing among Hispanic people. They can see themselves as both. It’s only if they become “white” without any ethnicity that they melt into the White voting group completely.
Imagine if you used white as your determiner, but ignored that someone was Jewish. That wouldn’t be very predictive, either.
I agree. Demographics as destiny is not a good way to make political predictions. This is further complicated by such ironies/paradoxes as wealthy states voting Blue, poorer states Red. Many middle class and upwardly mobile people of color,–to state this as broadly as possible–are aiming to join the “elite”, do not want to be identify with the “great unwashed”. I think it’s fair that when given a choice most people aim to move up the economic ladder, not down.
This is fairly typical of human nature,–I’m not endorsing this, just commenting–and this makes predicting that Group X or Group Y is reliably anything, whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. Even when these generalizations have some truth, and I agree that they do, I think that it’s always important to keep in mind that as early Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “things change”, so too do people. Nothing stays the same.
John B.
Sure, I remember just before the election some article in Slate or Atlantic, those sort of rags, detailed the massive support for Trump amongst Jewish people — older I think in Florida
— strongly anti-Sanders and anti-progressive because of their sufferings in the Soviet bloc, which they identified with idealists generally; and so responded to Trump’s message of Hope. And of course, there are some Jewish supporters in the Clinton wing of the Democrats, equally anti-Sanders and anti-progressive.
However it would be silly to suppose from that that Jewish people are uniformly on the Right of the American spectrum.
Nonetheless, whether it became strongly RC — only to the Right of the present hierarchy; developed a new Constitution; or preferred latin american client politics in place of whatever it is you have now, an Hispanic bloc may be able to substitute for one of the duopoly. Or it may offer it’s support to whichever panders more ( say by banning abortion ). Or it may ally with other religious or, say, libertarian business, groups to achieve goals of mutual interest.
But in the end parties die like all else — a dozen years on and a change of party might create a President Cruz yet !
Like a bunch of other people in this thread, I disagree with the demographic argument for future Dem dominance. No, the Dems will have to get out there and do the hard work of running candidates in local and state legislature elections, and making the argument (it’s not like it’s a hard argument, but they still have to make it, dammit) over and over again of why they’re better than the Republicans.
I think the demographic argument is valid assuming policy and attitudes of the parties remain the same. If the GOP actually does embrace minorities in a meaningful way, then that is a victory in itself. If not, then it will lose percentage points: it won’t be able to gain a foothold just by regression to the mean.
Texas is an odd case. It’s certainly conservative, but relations with Mexico have always been . . . nuanced, let’s say. There are a fair number of GOP officeholders of Latino ancestry, and Rick Perry was publicly defending in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants back in 2012. These days you wouldn’t be hearing that as much though - there’s a new breed of young Tea Party conservatives taking a much harder line on immigration than the state has typically seen, and this session they’ve passed a pretty draconian anti-sanctuary cities bill that some are billing as a “show your papers” type law for anyone who gets detained. We’ll have to see how all that shakes out after the lawsuits get resolved.
Texas Democrats for years have been waiting for the Hispanic vote to turn out, but what’s been happening instead is that it just hasn’t. Instead, a higher and higher proportion of white voters have been voting GOP, offsetting the increased minority votes. And for the reasons mentioned above, the Latino vote in Texas hasn’t been as monolithic for the Democratic party as you see in some other states.
If the dam does break in Texas, it’ll probably happen all at once with a huge surge of Latino turnout. I don’t know how much it’s plausible to expect it to occur soon, though. There’s been no Democrat in statewide office since 1994.
So even with a candidate whose platform was making being Latino a deportable offense, the GOP still won a third of the Latino Vote? If I was a Democrat, I would be terrified.
I believe there is a sentiment among some immigrants that “I got here – you’re on your own.” This is not unique to Hispanic immigrants – whites do it, too. Trump has lead a whole political movement based largely on that idea.
My concern with basing our hopes on the Hispanic vote is that the Republicans have a lot to offer them, if they could just stop being so damned evil all the time. Hispanics are very much anti-abortion. They tend to be in favor of strong border enforcement (once their family is across, anyway). They’re not big fans of same-sex marriage, gay rights, etc.
Republicans in Texas may figure this out (some have) and give our many Hispanics something to vote for. Texas Democrats, like myself, had best figure out how to head 'em off at the pass.
Just because someone is Latino doesn’t mean they’ll be soft on illegal immigration; in fact quite a few Hispanic legal immigrants favor a hardline stance on the issue.
The thing that bothers me about this long-standing and largely false prediction is that some Democrats sound like they want everything to turn to shit for the majority of the population so that they can grab power. That is neither moral nor an effective strategy. Texas is booming BTW. Rather than hope for its implosion, it would be a lot better if other states emulated it.
First we create a lot of suffering poor people then the Democrats can lord over them for all time. Power and Profit!
I agree with many others that two-party politics simply doesn’t work that way. If either side starts losing most elections, they will just shift their platform and strategy until balance is restored again. It has happened plenty of times in the past. “Democrat” and “Republican” are exactly the same as sports team mascots. They don’t mean anything. You can change the entire team and coaching strategy and just keep the same label.
Have most of you actually been to Texas? There are some liberal enclaves in the major cities but even the minorities tend to be conservative relative to the rest of the country.
Every major city in Texas is a liberal enclave. That’s a pattern across the country. It’s hard to get a majority to vote Republican when they are not surrounded by a sea of similar white faces. That’s my point, in fact. Thank you for acknowledging it.
As for Texas’ economy, it is heavily dependent on the state of the oil industry, which means that it’s been undergoing a slight recovery but still has been badly damaged from low oil prices the past couple of years. IOW, Texas is not an economic paradise because of Republicans deregulating safety standards. And Texas partisans now have to shut up about California, which is - despite all conservative predictions - doing far better under Democratic leadership than Texas is.
Of course, some people have what are proclaimed to be a weird set of beliefs that human rights and sheer human dignity are critical factors in a civilized country. That should be independent of any ideological stance on economic issues but - again weirdly - doesn’t work out that way.
That is where you are going wrong. Texas is plenty diverse and not especially white at all. In fact, Houston is the most diverse major city in the U.S. (that includes New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles) and it is still somewhat conservative in its own way. I never understood all the Texas hate. My Texas relatives wonder why I pay a huge amount for an older 900 square foot home in the Boston area when I make a whole lot more than they do and they can afford new McMansions and everything else. Good question.
All I know is that the Dallas area is booming and it isn’t mostly due to oil and gas. There are giant companies moving in like Toyota USA (relocating from California) near my parent’s house and they can’t build elementary schools let alone housing fast enough. California would be a success case as well because it has everything going for it but it has been chronically mismanaged so it is always dealing with disaster control and is probably financially unsustainable in the long term.
Let me put it this way, modern day Democrats make much better therapists than managers. If you want a war, pick a Republican. I say this as an Independent. My personal preference is moderate Republicans like Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and former Governor Mitt Romney that actually realize that their real job is being a fiscally responsible leader and not a social activist. There is actual work that needs to get done and budgets that need to be reconciled. Let the Martin Luther Kings of the world handle the speeches.
I agree with this. Voting patterns do not remain constant, neither do changes all swing one way. There will be a wide variety of voting swings and counter swings over the coming years. I have long been of the opinion that as the baby boomers retire, and Government finances become squeezed, a political re-alignment will take place. I can’t exactly predict how this re-alignment will emerge but it will be enough to become a game-changer in US politics.
The CBO predicts a huge upturn in the Federal deficit in the next 5 to 10 years. There is no way a hugely increased deficit doesn’t have a substantial effect on taxes, spending and voting patterns.
Yeah, that’s going to be huge. Some people are going to lose a lot of money. Probably most of us will lose a lot of money. Decreased benefits, higher taxes, fewer government contracts leading to job losses. The deficit crunch is no joke.
Amazingly, it is the fact that Texas as a whole is not especially white that leads us to the projection that it will stop being especially red. Most of the reddest Southern states have large minority populations, in fact. What’s important is the dispersion of those populations and their likeliness of voting.
In Texas Hispanics are heavily concentrated along the Mexican border, with the more northern counties being overwhelmingly white. I don’t believe it’s mere stereotyping to say that Hispanics have historically been ruthlessly kept out of power even along the border. It’s only been in recent years that Hispanics have been allowed any proportionate share of power and they still lag greatly. That gap is guaranteed to close in the future. Nor does it matter in the least that Texas liberals may be more conservative than New York or California liberals. All that matters is whether Democrats or Republicans get elected to office.
This is scarily insane as social policy. But please keep preaching it. I can think of few arguments that would get minorities politically active and marching to the polls as hearing this.
This. The argument was stupid in 2002, and that people still endorse it, after seeing the Democrats reduced to their lowest position in a century, speaks to the power of wishful thinking.
Even limiting the discussion to race, the nonsense is obvious: As the white population moves closer and closer to minority status, they will think more and more like a minority. You can make all the arguments about history you want, but the hard political reality is that people simply aren’t going to accept the idea that it’s okay for others to vote based on racial self-interest, but they can’t do the same.
When you encourage identity politics in one race, you implicitly endorse identity politics in all races, and there is a reason Democrats’ share of the white vote keeps dropping. This is a problem for them, since whites do not actually become a minority until 2040 or so, and later if immigration is reduced. (And that leaves aside the idea that “non-white” is less cohesive an identity bloc than “white.”)