emerging democratic majority book

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The biggest thing that Kevin Phillips had going for him in the Emerging Republican Majority was a basic understanding of what areas would be lost as well as gained. I have not read Emerging Democratic Majority so I cannot judge it directly on what it included. However I recall it mentioning Missouri and similar places as being good for Democrats.

I think in general it was too early and it failed to account for more radical shifts in the electorate and the loss of certain places that seemed unthinkable back then, as well as gains in places that seemed unlikely such as Georgia and Texas, which back then were reaching their peak period of Republicanism.

It should be noted also that Phillips himself ran into problems and he never envisioned the loss of the secular suburbs, because he never envisioned the rise of the religious right and the cultural realignment that came along in its wake. Phillips also didn't like the Bush clan at all and didn't foresee Reagan becoming President. Phillips saw the loss of "silk stocking suburbs" and declines in places like the Philly Main Line" but not the wholesale decline of the GOP in places like the suburbs of LA, Chicago and NYC. Finally, Phillips generally doesn't seem to place much value or importance on generational change and that was critical to understanding why changes in the South took so long and thus while even in the 1990's and 2000's, West Virginia and Arkansas were still voting Democratic, which is quite a while later than he had envisioned. He also credited Democratic success in VA solely to the black vote as opposed to generational change among whites and in migration to NOVA.

So in terms of being predictive of the future, "Emerging Republican Majority" likewise had great problems once the changes played out and voters started reacting in kind to those changes and because conservatism evolved in a way that Phillips didn't foresee, a number of his predictions ended up being off like Southern Illinois combining with the Chicago burbs to solidify Illinois for the GOP.