White progressives' race problem

[Del Tachi]

Yeah, the collapse of the current winning coalition that the Democrats are building now comes in the 2040s or 2050s when racial minorities realize that a massive economic gulf separates them from from the White progressive liberals who now run the Democratic Party.  

White, Southern working class voters and racial minorities will make a cute couple for the GOP of the 2060s and 2070s.

[Del Tachi]

Yeah, the collapse of the current winning coalition that the Democrats are building now comes in the 2040s or 2050s when racial minorities realize that a massive economic gulf separates them from from the White progressive liberals who now run the Democratic Party. 

White, Southern working class voters and racial minorities will make a cute couple for the GOP of the 2060s and 2070s.

Meh, I say keep dreaming.

Black voters ditched the GOP after ONE economic downturn (it really doesn't matter how bad it was) and failed to ever return despite Republicans being able to campaign on having a better civil rights record and being able to (truthfully) warn that electing Democratic majorities in Congress gave Southern Democrats more powerful committee positions.

The only way the GOP was ever going to win back the Black vote was once Black Americans were on equal economic footing with White Americans.  That still hasn't happened, but by the time the gap had closed, the GOP had already attained some new image problems that kept Blacks from voting Republican that had nothing to do with fiscal issues.

Honestly, Blacks and the GOP always was an awkward marriage, and it was bound to end in divorce as soon as enough Democrats were pro-civil rights.

Black voters ditched the GOP after the Democratic Party became the party of civil rights in the '60s and the GOP nominated a guy named Barry who openly voted against civil rights, and then nominated a guys in 1968 and 1980 who campaigned using thinly veiled racist rhetoric.

Blacks were voting Dem long before the CRA; Goldwater  just intensified the trend.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/04/blacks-and-the-democratic-party/

By mid-century a shift in Hispanic voting would be enough to tip the balance in the favor of the GOP, Blacks will struggle to compromise 10% of the electorate by the 2050s.

And dreaming is the person who thinks that African-Americans and Hispanics would have a problem voting for the GOP in the 2060s and 2070s because of its racial shenanigans today; haha, the antics of Civil War Democrats gave Blacks no serious reservations about the party when they defected en masse during the 1930s.  Time truly does heal all wounds.

A GOP in the 2050s that favors trade protectionism, faith-based initiatives and the rolling-back of the security state does have a lot more to offer to marginalized, working class minorities in the 2050s than a Democratic Party whose top brass is comprised entirely of Millennial, tech-savvy, upper-middle class latte liberals.

The marriage between the American white liberal and the working class minority has always been an awkward one, and by mid-century the divorce will make perfect sense.

[Del Tachi]

So long as blacks remain economically worse-off than whites by a significant margin, I just don't see them voting for the GOP.

"Millennial, tech-savvy, upper-middle class latte liberals" are nowhere near big enough to form a party and still won't be in 2050; also, what the heck will these liberals campaign on?  I'm going to fight for the lower-class, all of whom are voting against me but are too stupid because they don't?  A Democratic Party would have to lurch way to the right on economics in Del Tachi's world, because it basically requires the poor to vote solidly GOP

Except the Democrats have already lurched right, the Democratic Establishment has already given-up on opposing free trade or even standing up for unionized labor.  President Obama passed a Republican healthcare plan when his party enjoyed super-majorities in the House and Senate and refused to allow for an expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts when it had the votes to do so.

What makes the Democratic Party acceptable to White, urban, educated, liberal voters is that they have all the "cool" positions on race, reproductive rights, religion, and gay marriage.  Its thanks to issues like these that the Democrats now play so well in places like Northern Virginia, Southern California and the Research Triangle - despite these places being more educated and wealthier than the country as a whole. 

Like it or not, the Democratic Party is the party of Millennial-inspired faux-liberalism.  Its never been a centre-left party and it relies on Culture War-based issues to win national elections. 

[Del Tachi]

Also, Del Tachi, in your scenario you say the GOP favors pulling back the security state.  Are you saying the Dems will become in favor of it?  Of everything you listed, this seems the most far-fetched.  I could see both in favor of pulling it back, but not the switcharoo you suggest.

I could easily see the GOP trending protectionist, which would really put the Rust Belt in play but hurt the GOP among the business community, so I agree there.

I think so.  Already the noise on the right criticizing NSA overreach has resonated much better than left-wing noise about NSA overreach, and I don't see any prominent Democratic politicians making as big of a deal about it as, say, Rand Paul.  

I think its an issue that the GOP could co-opt quite nicely into its overreaching "government is bad for you" theme, which is where it seems to be going.  

[Del Tachi]

So long as blacks remain economically worse-off than whites by a significant margin, I just don't see them voting for the GOP.

"Millennial, tech-savvy, upper-middle class latte liberals" are nowhere near big enough to form a party and still won't be in 2050; also, what the heck will these liberals campaign on?  I'm going to fight for the lower-class, all of whom are voting against me but are too stupid because they don't?  A Democratic Party would have to lurch way to the right on economics in Del Tachi's world, because it basically requires the poor to vote solidly GOP

Except the Democrats have already lurched right, the Democratic Establishment has already given-up on opposing free trade or even standing up for unionized labor.  President Obama passed a Republican healthcare plan when his party enjoyed super-majorities in the House and Senate and refused to allow for an expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts when it had the votes to do so.

What makes the Democratic Party acceptable to White, urban, educated, liberal voters is that they have all the "cool" positions on race, reproductive rights, religion, and gay marriage.  Its thanks to issues like these that the Democrats now play so well in places like Northern Virginia, Southern California and the Research Triangle - despite these places being more educated and wealthier than the country as a whole. 

Like it or not, the Democratic Party is the party of Millennial-inspired faux-liberalism.  Its never been a centre-left party and it relies on Culture War-based issues to win national elections. 

That's just not entirely true.  As has been discussed a ton, these semi-mythical liberal elites you despise certainly weren't voting for George W. Bush in 2004, yet he was winning NOVA, San Diego County, etc.  These areas are getting more diverse, and whites make up a smaller percentage of the electorate each year.  And it's not like places like Orange County, the wealthy Houston suburbs, affluent suburban Cincinnati, the upper-middle class suburbs of Milwaukee and Minneapolis, etc. aren't still voting GOP; they are.

And I personally think the narrative that Democrats have lurched right to be ridiculously exaggerated, but even if it's true, so have Republicans, and they show no sign of even kind of tolerating fiscal liberalism.

Your average Democrat simply isn't this affluent person you speak of, let alone more affluent than your average Republican ... And that'd hold true for your average White Democrat, too.  It's a party that's won a nice streak of popular votes with over 50% - if you think a huge chunk of that 50% is entirely minorities or these affluent, urban liberals, well sorry those groups are simply not that big.

A couple things:

1) Minority voting alone cannot explain the 2008/12 Democratic victories.  Democrats were able to win by solid margins on both occasions because they successfully cut-into the GOP's traditional base in affluent suburbia in places like NOVA and Jeff County, CO.  Republican economic policy actually makes sense in these areas, but the Democrats have moderated their economic positions over the past 20 years to make them palatable to the upper-middle class and Republicans' insistence on hanging-on to the 1990s-era Culture War issues have made them toxic among educated voters. 

2) There is certainly a strong Democratic trend in places like Orange County, Cincinnati suburbs, and even DFW/Houston.  The GOP might still be stronger there, but the Democrats are gaining ground as these places continue to change and become more urban in character.     

3) With the rise of the Tea Party and the continued Southernization of the GOP, the average Republican voter is trending poorer, less educated and less urban.  The problem for the GOP is that the country is trending in the opposite direction as their base is.  If we assume that American politics is perfectly competitive, then it makes sense that as the GOP gains ground among rural, Southern Whites than it stands to lose support on the opposite end of that spectrum.     

4) Its not about the money, money, money.  There is a more nuanced divide occurring in American politics than rich/poor.  Increasingly over the past few decades, Democrats have increasing appeal to more "cosmopolitan" voters.   This makes them increasingly competitive in places it was previously shut-out (like urban North Carolina) because of the GOP's identity problem as a "rural, Southern-only party".  The GOP doesn't have an image problem in Forsyth County, GA because rich people there still identify more with rural Southerners than Northeastern suburbanites, but I don't see that lasting for much longer as the Tea Party (now driving the GOP) lurches further and further to the right.         

5) The changes are at the margin.  Sure, urban white hipsters weren't voting for GWB in 2004.  But the run-of-the-mill government employee in McLean, Virginia or the typical lawyer on Long Island might have been.  I don' think the same can be said post-2008.  The changes come from the middle, not the extreme and the American, white, connected, upper-middle class has certainly trended Democrat stronger than the nation as a whole in recent election cycles.