What should the Democratic and Republican parties be like? (other than morphing into each other)

[asahi]

Republicans are mostly a culturally homogenous party that is campaigning on oligarchal, racist, exclusive, anti-democratic party, neo-feudal themes, which actually represents a relatively new trend. In one sense, the Democrats are the conservatives, who are trying to preserve the post-WWII ideas of a multi-cultural society built on values of tolerance, inclusiveness, equality, prosperity, and justice for anyone who deserves it, regardless of background.

[asahi]

@adaher

I’ve criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being a moron, but she had one insight I hadn’t considered: her generation is friendly so socialism because they’ve never actually seen a good economy and good job prospects. Now they are just starting to. I think they’ll be plenty conservative once they are making good money and have their own homes and families.

I seriously doubt it, and I feel more confident that by the time Trump is finished with the economy, capitalism as we know it will be in a state of crisis.

Don’t get me wrong: capitalism is actually a fantastic system for creating wealth. But the wealth cannot remain concentrated in the hands of proprietors only; it has to be redistributed somehow.

[Wesley_Clark]

@adaher

That’s because it’s heavily 1st generation. Latino immigration is in decline, which means the Latino population will become wealthier and whiter, due to intermarriage and most Latinos already identifying as white.

In fact, by 2050, the white population if you include white Hispanics is expected to be near 70%. If Latino immigration continues to decline, the vast majority will simply identify as white.

Given that most Latinos are white and just as likely to be hostile to brown skinned people as non-Hispanic whites, that doesn’t seem to pose many problems for the Trump coalition.

According to this, only 24% of latino voters are 1st generation in 2016.

1. Looking Forward to 2016: The Changing Latino Electorate

24% - 1st generation
32% - 2nd generation
43% - 3rd generation or later

So close to half of latinos are already 3rd or later generations. And they still vote heavily democratic like latinos did 40 years ago.

Also the share of voters who identify as latino keeps increasing. So far, they haven’t identified as white. Who knows what the future holds, but for the medium term future (the next 20 years) it seems like latinos will continue to grow and identify as democrats.

I don’t speak for latinos, but I assume the racial resentment coming from the GOP combined with bread and butter economic issues push latinos to vote democratic. Thats my guess. But it happens for all generations, not just the first generation.

[Wesley_Clark]

@adaher

Hard to predict but your ideas are pretty good. One of the instabilities in the current coalitions is how it disadvantages Democrats electorally. Without white working class voters, Democrats have to win 53% of the vote or so to be sure of House majorities, and probably win by at least 3-4 points in the popular vote to be sure of EC victories in Presidential elections(although normally 1-2 points should do the trick. Clinton played the map exceptionally poorly, something Obama’s team would have never done). Senate and governors’ races are even tougher, because states can’t be ungerrymandered and Trump won 30 of them. Those 30 states may sour on Trump, but the factors that elected him aren’t going away. If the Democrats continue on their current course of being primarily an urban party, then the margins they need to win majorities will only rise over time, even without gerrymandering. Since reform is nearly impossible(constitutional amendments), Democrats have no choice but to appeal to white working class voters.

Democrats also have a problem with high income voters. It’s not a problem if they limit their ambitions, but with progressives wanting big new government programs, raising taxes on their wealthy culturally liberal supporters is necessary. Which means they’ll lose a lot of those wealthy liberal supporters. The upside is that big new programs cost them those wealthy urban voters but probably win them a lot of union voters and poorer white voters, so it balances the coalitions out a little bit as far as the system not excessively hurting Democrats. At this point the Democrats could stand to trade some of their urban supporters for rural supporters…

The democrats may need to win the white working class, but I’m not sure by how much. I think in 2016 the democratic candidate lost the WWC by 39 points, in 2012 they only lost them by about 30 points (maybe 65-35, something like that) but only losing the white working class by 30 points seems to be enough to win the presidency.

However I have no idea how it works with other federal elections, or state elections. I agree the GOP is at a strategic advantage because their rural voting base is more spread out and has more power when it comes to electing politicians.

I really don’t know what the answer is.

@adaher

I’ve criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being a moron, but she had one insight I hadn’t considered: her generation is friendly so socialism because they’ve never actually seen a good economy and good job prospects. Now they are just starting to. I think they’ll be plenty conservative once they are making good money and have their own homes and families.

I heard this all through college. When I got out and found a job that allowed me to save a share of my income (and pay taxes) I didn’t become a republican.

the reality is republicans only care about the economic concerns of the wealthy. And 99% of us will never be wealthy.

I noticed the same thing from other people I met. Getting decent jobs didn’t make people republicans. It isn’t like making 80k a year is going to make you forget that the GOP doesn’t really care about the economic welfare of anyone making less than 500k a year. Having a good job won’t make you stop believing in science or equality either. Plus, again, the GOP really has little to offer the non-rich economically.

Plus households that make over 250k a year are pretty evenly split between the 2 parties. Plus barely 6% of voters come from households making 250k+ a year. So that is a tiny fraction of voters.