In the post election stupor that the Democrats find themselves in, The New Republic brought a little good news to the progressive plate; Five Charts That Show Why a Post-White America Is Already here. You don’t actually need all five graphics to see that. This one explains it clearly enough:
The gist of it is that for children under five, whites are 51 percent of the US population. Of course I didn’t need a New Republic graph for that. I’ve known that for years, just based on my children’s classmates at school. And 2011 became the first year that minority births outnumbered white births. So the browning of America is baked in the cake, as it were. Since I frequent political forums, I’m constantly reminded of that on a near daily basis. Some lefty wag will start off a thread with something like, “since demographics are dooming the Republicans, what will you hate filled white men do now?” Or some similar statement along those lines. Like the New Republic, that inevitable day when non white “minorities” outnumber non-Hispanic whites is like a Left Wing Rapture, the start of a new rainbow era of totally left wing political control as far as the eye can see.
But not quite…
The GOP doesn’t need a total demographic flip to be on life support. Remember, it spent most of the 20th Century as a semi permanent second party. The Democrats were the political party for decades. Of course, they were a much broader coalition then; they had everything from segregationists to fiscal conservatives, trade unionists, to communists. That’s why I don’t necessarily buy the forum leftist’s prescription that the Republicans are necessarily doomed because of demographics. The stupid party doesn’t need a massive demographic change to doom it. It’s been doomed before. However there are a lot of trends going on at the same time that make the future of either political party hard to predict.
Will they Democrats broaden their coalition? In the Obama era, they’ve purged most of their moderates and it’s a much more leftward party than it was just 6 years ago. Will that pay off when Obama is out of office? Would a Jim Webb centrist or a Howard Dean leftist have a better chance in a general election?
As the demographics of the country change, are people going to continue to vote in the same percentages of their racial groups as they do now?
Will Whites continue to leave the Democrats for the Republicans? I had previously posted that there has been a pretty steady trend of whites abandoning the Democratic Party for the Republicans. If something were to happen to increase that trend, a Republican Party that dominates the white vote could dominate politically for years.
Will successful Hispanics and Asians want to be locked in with the party of grievance? The identity politics left assumes all people of color (including oddly white Hispanics) will all naturally side with each other against whitey. That of course is the reason that changing the national demographics is so important to the left. But Asians and Hispanics are groups with different factions and are not all locked in to the Democrats the way Blacks are. Japanese Americans are basically indistinguishable from white people in most key indicators. Most Asian groups are on the opposite side of the affirmative action debate since they are punished, not helped by it. They’re also on the opposite side of the shopkeeper/business owner vs rioter situation. For Democrats, being the “Black” party can backfire when some of your other constituents are the people having their stores burned to the ground. I’m wondering how much that impacted the decline in Asian support for Democrats on this last election.
Indians are growing in size and influence among Asians. Who is going to wind up with their loyalties? Right now there are two, count them two, southern Republican Indian-American governors. And this is in what the political forum left regards as the unreconstructed racist south. Since Democrats are un-churched, they don’t understand how religion plays a role…well in anything. The future political Indian-American divide may be among those who are Christians flocking to the Republicans and those who have other or no religions flocking to the Democrats. We see something similar among Korean-Americans. Christian Koreans are far more likely to be Republican that Buddhists or atheists. That’s a dividing line that may be more important to future America than race, however Democrats so discount religion it might be years before they can even consider the possibility.
And like Asians, the Democratic calculus on Hispanics assumes they will want to remain poor in the party of angry grievance. Don’t they think a fair number of people want to “make it?” They want to move to the suburbs, have a white collar job, and just don’t buy that they can never do those things because evil white Republicans are keeping them down.
Contrary to liberal science, Hispanics are an ethnic group and not a racial group. So for those who assimilate, increase their incomes, and intermarry, are they expected to remain loyal to Democrats because of last names?
As you can see, I have more questions than answers on this topic, but I admit it’s more complicated than it’s usually presented. I agree with the internet leftists that demographics are a major factor, but they are not a determinative one. The year 2043 doesn’t necessarily mean that the United States automatically becomes the Socialist Rainbow Coalition of America. There are still a lot of things that can happen between now and then, and we don’t even know what most of them are.
Mike Street Station 
I’ve always thought white is a state of mind, if you can quote Monty Python sketches verbatim, enjoy farmers markets, have a gluten allergy, go to girls flat track roller derby matches, collect Hummel figurines, and you care about how much your employers 401k match is, you can be white too
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By those standards, I’m probably not white, although I get your point. Race may or may not be a social construct, but being white certainly is. I’ve used this example before, but a college professor flies from Madrid to NYC. The moment the plane touches down, he becomes a non white Hispanic, instead of the white European he was hours before. It’s ridiculous! Hispanic was created by the census in the 1970’s for no real reason other than to great a new grievance group. Previously, they were just considered white.
Eliminate the term “Hispanic” and the 2043 target date of a non white majority vanishes. But right now, people are trying to bail out of the white label. Middle-easterners no longer want to be considered white under the census, The date that the US is no longer majority white will probably depend on how cool or not cool being white is at the time.
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I look forward to the realization of Martin Luther King’s dream of all people being judged by their character and not their skin color.
As Americans who are not primarily of northern and western European descent gain affluence, I believe that they will back the party that best serves their personal interests, not those of their supposed race. The Democrat Party has appeal to those with socialist leanings and, of course, to the poor who look to it for monetary assistance (deserved or not). As he distinction between the middle class and the poor becomes less defined by race, the Democrat Party will see their support also become less defined by race.
As you mentioned, the Democrat Party was a coalition party. They initially gained support of white southerners by appealing to their racism after Reconstruction. With the diminishing of said racism, white southerners see nothing in the party that supports their economic and religious issues and have migrated to the Republican Party. More affluent minorities are also seeing that the Democrats have little to offer them and are also beginning to look elsewhere. The membership of the parties is slowly moving away from a racial divide and is more defined by one of affluence.
This is why the Democrats are fanning the fires of these bogus racial issues in a effort to stop the flight from their party by making political affiliation a matter of race and not ideology.
I only wish that the Republican Party would stress its ideology more and stop being perceived as a Christian party. This just creates a new divide that has nothing to do with politics and the governance of the nation.
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I think we’re getting further and further away from MLK’s dream of being judged “by the content of their character.” In fact, I would argue that isn’t even a societal goal anymore. After the 2012 election I wrote that election would be the new normal for American elections; identity politics. That election had a lot of firsts. Romney won the Independents, and the economy was terrible, and it made no difference. Everyone voted their tribe. Compare that to the 2014 election. A big victory for Republicans and a kick in the teeth to Democrats, but the economy was arguably much better than in 2012 and gas prices had been steadily declining for months. Traditionally that should have helped the governing party. But the old rules are out the window now. Instead, 2014 saw the demise of the last white southern Democrat in the House.
I’m not sure I would consider the Republican Party a “Christian” party. The Moral Majority is long since defunct, and I would argue that evangelicals have less pull in the party now than in any time since the Reagan era. The grass roots are with the Tea Party, which is interested in fiscal issues, not social ones. If anything, it’s the Democratic Party which is the social issues party now. Their gay marriage jihad has gone from zero to all encompassing, and no candidate now has a future unless the bow before gay marriage (and abortion of course). There is actually more diversity in the Republican Party on that issue than with the Democrats.
But stressing ideology I don’t believe will make much difference. It seems that people pick parties based on their relationships, to fit in, rather than logically going down a list of issues and see which party most closely mirrors their issues. I’m starting to think that people pick their party based on their group, and then alter their positions to fit.
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Some good points, Mike. All these predictions about a permanent Dem majority are based on static analysis, which seems to be a favorite predictive methodology for our media and political classes (are they actually separate classes anymore?). Of course, I think the left is hopeful that they can turn Hispanics into a permanent underclass, like they have with blacks. But that’s an iffy proposition at best. There are two many differences between the two groups. The more variables you throw in, the harder things are to control.
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Well one of the reasons I regard the term “Hispanic” as one that doesn’t really tell you much about the differences between the different latin groups that play out differently in the US. If you are talking about Venezuelans, Colombians, and Cubans, those are pretty successful groups when they come to the US. Mexicans…not so much. Pew Research shows that Mexicans through the 3rd generation fare much poorly economically than the average. That is the Democratic hope for a new, permanent underclass. It’s why amnesty of millions of uneducated, low skilled, mostly Mexicans is more important than any other change in the immigration laws that might bring in people with needed skills. Republicans have a chance to make their case to an Indian software developer or Chinese engineer; they don’t stand much of a chance with a day laborer who is illiterate and speaks little English.
Basically, the greater the number of low skilled poor people that are amnestied, the worse future Republican chances are.
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Hispanics aren’t a reliable voting bloc for the dems (nor republicans), at least not in the way blacks reliably vote in one direction, and for whatever reason hispanics tend to be politically apathetic in the scheme of things, and difficult to rally. You’ll also find different levels of conservatism depending on the country of origin of the particular hispanic in question. Puerto Ricans trend liberal while Cubans trend conservative (for example).
But agreed, dems will be in for a rude surprise once their non-white majority fantasy is actualized.
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