Atlantic: Trump Can't Reverse the Decline of White Christian America

[The_Doctor]

Dude, do you even know how to debate, bro? Clearly not, because once again, you fling cliches at me like a monkey throwing feces and hoping that people think it’s some sort of witty repartee or some sort of sophisticated intelligent debate.

Since I enjoy mocking the arguments of Trumpites like you, a recreational activity if ever there was one, and I am in a good mood because yes, I just finished an epic 2 hour bike ride today, I will now demonstrate that why, verily yes, I am superior to you on this topic. (And probably on most other things too).

Also - because I like this topic. So let's get to it. Again. Maybe this time, you will take.

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I sense the butthurt from afar. Yes, you strung a bunch of dumb cliches together and then flung them in our general direction because you don’t really know what you’re actually talking about beyond the fact someone fed these regurgitated talking points to you and you think they’re the most amazing thing since God invented sliced bread.

Short answer - they’re still dumb talking points and your digging in deeper is not constructive to your general cause of trying to sound hipster or “with it.” You’re still part of the r/the_Donald flinging rocks.

Also, yes, why yes, I am more educated and have more backing for my point of view than you provided for yours (which last I checked was none). So yes, I get to say that to you.

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This was one of the dumber things you have said when you thought you were being really smart.

Also, just to get out of the way - hi, Santorum-Romney-Cruz-Bush 43 2016 write in voter here.

As a note - “Coastal elites” is not a new insult or even particularly intelligent as an insult. To start with, it dates to the 1960s and is a stupid insult at this point. But let me explain to you - again - why you sounded pretty dumb in this particular context.

Presidents need popular vote wins to demonstrate they have a mandate. When major urban centers vote against them overwhelmingly and they are growing as a share of the electorate, that ends up with the President not having a mandate, which in the American Republic, if you did any basic reading on political history, means that the President can’t tell Congress, “I have the people behind me.” This is basic 101, which they - I hope to God - taught in whichever educational facility you graduated from or are currently in.

Now, these coastal areas that you derided were enough to give Hillary Clinton 48% of the vote and hated Trump enough to deny him a popular vote majority. Now, the President stupidly alienated these areas (which have a number of Republican Congressmen within them, by the way, if you were so curious to consult a congressional listing). As a consequence the opposition hardened to him and this is when you said something really dumb again.

“The Trump agenda goes forward.”

My God, this is basically handing me fish in a barrel and asking me to shoot it. In six months, because the President has a negative approval rating, hardened opposition, the Republican Congress has found it very hard to send him the agenda he wants - particularly on ObamaCare and tax reforms. Perhaps, when you feel like you wish to educate yourself on American politics, you should look at all the “deadlines” they changed.

Let’s take a popular President like Ronald Reagan who won a broad national mandate for his agenda (said as much in 1979, in his announcement speech - I’ll quote from memory, “I shall regard my election as a mandate…”). He won the major urban dominated states, then won the White House with 489 electoral votes and 44 states. He won decisively in most of the Congressional districts and pulled 12 new net GOP Senators to Washington with him.

Because Reagan won that way, he had the political capital and ability to pass the agenda. Now do you grasp the point?

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Funny your whole contention is that when the GOP appeals to whites, they win, but when I spelled out the demographic facts of the matter and how they cost Trump the popular vote, you just resort to a one liner because you actually don’t know how to respond and debate on this topic.

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Once more, with feeling - this is when you thought you said something amazingly smart and yet you actually said something really dumb again.

Yes, you said that and you don’t actually know what you mean. Do you know how I know that?

OK, let’s review why African Americans and Latinos vote Democratic. They vote in response to the party they believe will aid them economically through specific policies. More interestingly, they also vote against the party that they believe is actively trying to hurt them.

Exhibit A: Latinos in 2004 versus 2016. President Bush ran on a immigration reform plank in both 2000 and 2004 and won 44% of Latinos in 2004. Trump talks up deportations and wins 27% of the Latino vote with 65% going to Clinton.

Now, if Trump deports people, stops DAPA, and generally craps on the Latino electorate, what do you think this growing bloc will do? Oh right, they will continue to vote Democratic at strong rates.

Now, African Americans voted 88-10% against Trump (and by the way, they’ve been voting strongly Democratic since the Southern Strategy). Let me explain something to you. The Republican Party has incorporated the Southern Strategy into its political strategy, which, understandably, a lot of minorities don’t like. It’s the whole “appeal to whites” you’re talking about in your first post.  

Voter ID, Kris Kobach, and restriction of the voter franchise, among other things tends to make minorities - especially poor minorities, which are a growing share of the electorate - resistant to the appeals of the Republican Party.

Now, in the Trump era, Trump has put these policies on steroids and how do you think minorities will now respond? Hmm?

OK, so as I said, you said something you thought sounded witty but actually not only demonstrated you didn’t know what you were talking about but reinforced my point about why Trump lost the popular vote, why this will invariably hurt the GOP down the line, and why it’s a major problem.  

So, yes, actually, you just proved my point. Thanks!

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For fun, I wondered why you were flinging the plastic bottle insult my way and looked it up but my God, leave it to a Trumpite to fling a unverified theory my way about estrogen and plastic bottles. And then to make some sort of sexist comment that underlines how insecure you are about your masculinity that you have to make a crack about other people’s masculinity. Yeah “hysterical.”

Regardless, I was responding to your dumb point about the GOP appealing to whites and explaining (quite cogently) to you why it was a dumb strategy because if blue state whites chose Clinton over Trump and think he’s a moron almost as much as minorities do you are crap out of luck.

Of course you didn’t respond and you haven’t responded all thread long because you a) don’t have a case b) you will fling rhetorical feces at us to try to distract from the fact you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.

PS. Note: it’s a whole another discussion why 35-40% of whites continue to vote Democratic, but one hint: they’re reliant on safety net Trump endorsed gutting. But that sailed over your head.

In closing:

[PoliticalShelter]

There are two ways that a "whites only" strategy can work

1.) have enough Hispanics assimilate enough to regard themselves as white

2.) have the democratic become so extreme on cultural issues that it drives away all of the moderate whites and a large chunk of the liberal whites out of the party.

The chances of either of these two things happening over the next decade (and probably the following one) in enough numbers to allow the current republican party to win on a consistent basis, is quite low to put it mildly.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     It is shocking to see an article in the Atlantic so completely miss the point of the Trump phenomenon. Conservative white Christians were never going to vote for Democrats; they're not the main reason Trump won.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Trump does not care for Christianity, and his heirs do not need it for their power. Trumpism, as a phenomena separate from earlier populist right movements, is a very post-Christian movement.

Also it is pretty blatantly obvious that "white" will be redefined to include white Hispanics in the next few decade. Anyone who thinks there will be some sort of magic ethnic solidarity that holds two decades down the line is seriously naive.

[RINO Tom]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

[Torie]

Well, the intermarriage rate between Hispanics and "whites" is pretty high, and one might posit, that the voting behavior of the two groups across the decades might move closer together. These long term projections of psephology as compared to demographics in my opinion is way overdone. And I don't see Asians (except perhaps the Muslim ones) as a reliable left of center voting block over the decades being a done deal either, particularly as that demographic group moves to above average income levels. I am also not persuaded that the cultural as opposed to economic divide will retain the importance that it has now over the decades.

But yeah, the Trump coalition is not a long term formula for political success I agree. The politics of resentment, where there really are not realistic policy prescriptions to address the sources of that resentment, with much efficacy (many of those cards in Trump's hand that he thinks are trump cards, are really just jokers, so it is not as if he's going to win a lot of tricks with it). The global economy and flow of peoples across borders is just not going to go away.

[TheSaint250]

The Republican Party is going to have to do much more minority outreach to survive. Everyone (especially here) predicts that the seventh party system will be Republicans growing in the north, where electoral votes are being lowered, and democrats growing in the south, where minority population growth will cause increases in electoral votes (hopefully we have popular vote then but EVs for now). There needs to be a new strategy that appeals to minorities through economics and (moderate) social issues (and environmental issues). It can't be a "the other side is gonna put you in chains!" strategy. Do I believe trump is hurting this? He certainly didn't help, but it's not his fault. The party needs to get it's s*** together now.

[TheSaint250]

Under the current electoral map, if Democrats take the Sun Belt + NV + SC + NC + VA + MD + DE + the entire West Coast + Hawaii and GOP wins everything else, the GOP wins with exactly 270. That same map under a projected 2024 map has Democrats winning with 274, the exact same map with a six-EV increase. That's why focus needs to be made to minority communities now (obviously if this arrangement were to happen it would take at least 30 years for the realignment to fully take place)

[Mr. Reactionary]

Demographics is destiny. Permanent Democratic majority: 2008  2010  2012  2014  2016 2018

[Nyvin]

Demographics is destiny. Permanent Democratic majority: 2008  2010  2012  2014  2016 2018

The GOP has lost 6 of the last 7 popular votes....

[pbrower2a]

There are two ways that a "whites only" strategy can work

1.) have enough Hispanics assimilate enough to regard themselves as white

2.) have the democratic become so extreme on cultural issues that it drives away all of the moderate whites and a large chunk of the liberal whites out of the party.

The chances of either of these two things happening over the next decade (and probably the following one) in enough numbers to allow the current republican party to win on a consistent basis, is quite low to put it mildly.

1. If anything, it will be Hispanics who assimilate white people (their spouses) into the Hispanic  communities. Even if the kids look nearly white they may still identify with a Hispanic, and not an Anglo culture. Such is so with Asians... and is generally so to the extreme with blacks.

White identity is a hollow appeal, and when something else (like apocalyptic war or a looming reprise of the Great Depression) becomes more pressing, then white identity becomes empty in the extreme and ineffective as a political appeal.

2. Democrats have decisively won on homosexual rights. That used to be a radical stance, but even I was largely making conservative arguments for gay and lesbian rights, the basis Law and Order. Having been threatened with gay-bashing I came to the conclusion that homophobia is inconsistent with my safety.  Gay-bashing is a violent crime; had it killed or crippled me it would have been a pointless tragedy to my mostly-conservative relatives, and as such it is contrary to any Christian conception of family values. Mainstream gays and lesbians ostracized the creeps who see homosexuality as an excuse for pedophilia while showing that they wanted marriage so that they could adopt and raise children.

If liberals want to start any cultural war, then they had better choose one that they can win.

To win after 2018 Republicans will need to either change successfully or cheat and get away with it.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Demographics is destiny. Permanent Democratic majority: 2008  2010  2012  2014  2016 2018

The GOP has lost 6 of the last 7 popular votes....

Meanwhile, they hold more elected offices than anytime in almost 100 years.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

That is not true. Italians and Irish were always considered white, even if discriminated against. During segregation they could use white facilities. They weren't banned from marrying WASPs under anti-miscenigation laws. The Census didn't have any separate categories for them. The idea that just because some ethnicities faced discrimination at some point automatically means they weren't considered white is absurd.

[Coraxion]

Demographics is destiny. Permanent Democratic majority: 2008  2010  2012  2014  2016 2018

The GOP has lost 6 of the last 7 popular votes....

Meanwhile, they hold more elected offices than anytime in almost 100 years.

That has more to do with inefficient voter distribution for the Democrats, gerrymandering to exacerbate that, and the usual midterm losses for the party in the White House. If anything, you're only proving their point. It's hard for the GOP to win the support of most Americans, so they rely on antiquated systems of unfair representation to stay in power.

Hats off to you for being brave enough to stay on this forum. If I were you, I would have left by now due to others putting my lying Republican hack ass in its place.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Hats off to you for being brave enough to stay on this forum. If I were you, I would have left by now due to others putting my lying Republican hack ass in its place.

U mad bro?

[Virginiá]

Meanwhile, they hold more elected offices than anytime in almost 100 years.

Well no one said it isn't working right now, although their performance in presidential elections has been notably weak since the days of Reagan.

I'm not sure if I said it in this thread or another, but one reason not to put too much emphasis on downballot power as a marker for future success is the elections of 1994 and 2010, but especially '94. If you told Democrats they would lose the House for the next 12 years in 1994, along with a slew of states, they'd probably have called you deluded. Rapid shifts of power can and do happen. In fact, if I recall correctly, there was even a book released in early 1994 about Republicans in the House of Reps, called "Congress' Permanent Majority."

[Mr. Reactionary]

Meanwhile, they hold more elected offices than anytime in almost 100 years.

Well no one said it isn't working right now, although their performance in presidential elections has been notably weak since the days of Reagan.

I'm not sure if I said it in this thread or another, but one reason not to put too much emphasis on downballot power as a marker for future success is the elections of 1994 and 2010, but especially '94. If you told Democrats they would lose the House for the next 12 years in 1994, along with a slew of states, they'd probably have called you deluded. Rapid shifts of power can and do happen. In fact, if I recall correctly, there was even a book released in early 1994 about Republicans in the House of Reps, called "Congress' Permanent Majority."

All I am saying, is that every election cycle over the past decade Ive seen the party hacks proclaim again and again their permanent ascendance to power based on of too many bad assumptions. The "races" will not always vote as they do now, new issues and coalitions will always arise, and local conditions will still matter. if you continue pushing this quasi religious prophecy about how one day the heroic colourfuls will outnumber the evil pales and we will have a wonderful tolerant socialist utopia of love and sharing because of 2012 voting patterns, eventually the continued failure to achieve this outcome will leave many on your side disillusioned. The "demographics as destiny" trope may make democrats feel good, but its been 15 years since texiera and judis.  Should dems really continue to neglect alternative strategies on the continued faith that one day soon everyone who looks like they may disagree will die and no one else will ever change their voting habits?

You're welcome to believe whatever hoodoo you want, but after the repeateded failure of the Dems to win based upon this "demographics as destiny" theory, I shall remain skeptical. There is way too much slack in our political system for either party to have near permanent dominance over political power.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Is Trump even trying to reverse the decline? His candidacy successfully triangulated to win northern whites who are socially conservative but secular.

[The_Doctor]

Well, the intermarriage rate between Hispanics and "whites" is pretty high, and one might posit, that the voting behavior of the two groups across the decades might move closer together. These long term projections of psephology as compared to demographics in my opinion is way overdone. And I don't see Asians (except perhaps the Muslim ones) as a reliable left of center voting block over the decades being a done deal either, particularly as that demographic group moves to above average income levels. I am also not persuaded that the cultural as opposed to economic divide will retain the importance that it has now over the decades.

But yeah, the Trump coalition is not a long term formula for political success I agree. The politics of resentment, where there really are not realistic policy prescriptions to address the sources of that resentment, with much efficacy (many of those cards in Trump's hand that he thinks are trump cards, are really just jokers, so it is not as if he's going to win a lot of tricks with it). The global economy and flow of peoples across borders is just not going to go away.

I agree with this. But a couple of important qualifications. I just want to piggy back on your post.

1. Demography isn't destiny, I agree, but the GOP is being hurt by it right now. The whole "we hold 100+ more offices" masks that most of these offices are in white red areas and the GOP holds a slender 52-48 majority in the Senate. Demography is a big reason the GOP majority is not comparable to the New Deal and Lincoln-McKinley majorities.

Reagan, Bush, Trump all had similar electoral racial coalitions. Let's do it by margins. Reagan won by 10 million (14.5 million, if you add the Anderson + Reagan vote, which margin wins equals roughly Reagan '84). That slipped to -500,000 by Bush 2000 (2.5 million if you want to do 2004), and -3 million roughly in 2016. There is a clear downwards progression.  

A lot of this was built on the idea of maximizing white votes and sprinkling some minority voters on top of the Republican coalition. The southern strategy and a "gentler, kinder" Southern Strategy.  That is increasingly no longer viable. It's a big reason the GOP is sitting at the weakest congressional majorities for a majority coalition in any of the party systems. Major states with minority populations and strong urban centers are sending Democratic senators and Congressmen and they are strong enough to keep the GOP numbers down comparatively. For comparison's sake, the New Deal Democrats never went below 238 seats from 1932 to 1980 except 1946 and for a bit in the 1950s.
 
2. For your "realignment" among minorities to work, the Southern Strategy would need to be dropped. Since it is the center piece of this party system's governing majority, centered around social issues, white suburbanites, and concepts of limited government etc rather than activist government, it would basically presage a wholesale rethinking of the Republican ideology. I would point out African Americans and Latinos are heavily opposed to the concept of limited government and so on because of their economic position and history.

3. A lot of people are talking about Latinos becoming more Republican over time through interrmarriage and whatnot. Here's the problem. Latinos vote Democratic for two reasons - economics and because they think the GOP dislikes them. If the GOP makes a concerted effort, they rise to 35-40% but even then so, a vast majority of Latinos and African Americans vote Democratic one reason. Median household incomes among these groups are vastly lower than whites, which was not true of Irish Catholics and Italian Catholics when they realigned towards the Republican Party in the 1960s and 1970s. What's often overlooked is that their median income was strong enough for them to shift to the Reagan GOP from the Roosevelt Democrats (and the racial barriers, sure, was lower, by then). But their shift was primarily economic as they moved from the cities to the suburbs and became economically on par with the white Protestants.

The growing minority bloc is still Democratic for economic reasons. The neoliberal Republican Party has little appeal and even Bannon's Republican Party is still highly neoliberal in the application of their theories. (For instance, Bannon wants to focus on tax cuts instead of funding programs that would return a stronger value to lift a lot of these groups out of poverty).

Which leads me to the third point:

3. The policies of the GOP is not changing without a major string of losses. The GOP since Reagan has stayed the same way. It is essential that conservative minorities feel comfortable enough to vote Republican. But they aren't yet there.

a. The Republican agenda is going to find itself in rough seas continually until the GOP establishes a foothold among minorites because the GOP cannot continue to lose CA, NY, and other urban states that have strong minorities by wide margins and continue to see their Presidents win by narrow margins and with narrow congressional popular votes and small Senate majorities (that are vulnerable to even slight shifts). These factors go hand in hand.

In that sense, demography is destiny and it is already happening. It doesn't leave the Democrats off the hook for promoting policies that would appeal to a growing bloc of whites and minorities who feel left behind by the neoliberal market revolution of 1980, but it does give them a foothold. (And the current Democratic mentality/failure to tap into this group because they were/are stuck in the Clintonian paradigm of the 1990s is a big reason Hillary lost in 2016, despite eventually adopting a lot of Sanders' positions).

[Virginiá]

You're welcome to believe whatever hoodoo you want, but after the repeateded failure of the Dems to win based upon this "demographics as destiny" theory, I shall remain skeptical. There is way too much slack in our political system for either party to have near permanent dominance over political power.

Well any idea of permanent majorities sounds kind of silly. It's not really possible, at least without substantial violence.

I think people have just been too quick to try and make each election sound like a game changer, but I still believe there is a day of reckoning coming. It's not going to be permanent, but things will change. They always do.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

That is not true. Italians and Irish were always considered white, even if discriminated against. During segregation they could use white facilities. They weren't banned from marrying WASPs under anti-miscenigation laws. The Census didn't have any separate categories for them. The idea that just because some ethnicities faced discrimination at some point automatically means they weren't considered white is absurd.

But there isn't a separate category for Hispanics on the census (or so I've heard) and yet popular consensus places them in a sort of halfway house between white and not white. With the fact that Hispanics will presumably assimilate and lose their Spanish language roots, while intermarrying significantly I somehow doubt that whiter Hispanics will be excluded with white category given time.

[The_Doctor]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

That is not true. Italians and Irish were always considered white, even if discriminated against. During segregation they could use white facilities. They weren't banned from marrying WASPs under anti-miscenigation laws. The Census didn't have any separate categories for them. The idea that just because some ethnicities faced discrimination at some point automatically means they weren't considered white is absurd.

But there isn't a separate category for Hispanics on the census (or so I've heard) and yet popular consensus places them in a sort of halfway house between white and not white. With the fact that Hispanics will presumably assimilate and lose their Spanish language roots, while intermarrying significantly I somehow doubt that whiter Hispanics will be excluded with white category given time.

That is accurate but that would include an economic integration that would put whiter Hispanics on the same economic par with whites. This is an overlooked aspect of earlier redefinitions of white. The Irish and Italians and Eastern Europeans became richer, and thus, they intermarried more easily with the older Protestant groups and became interchangeable with them.

The problem is the economic transition right now. Latinos are not anywhere near whites in terms of assets and wealth, thus why they continue to be seen as "apart" and more Democratic. A very crude example that speaks to this economic view - we don't think of Latino bankers, we think of the guys who line up doing construction work. We don't have that vision of the average white, who we imagine to be a professional.

That will change, of course, but ...

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

That is not true. Italians and Irish were always considered white, even if discriminated against. During segregation they could use white facilities. They weren't banned from marrying WASPs under anti-miscenigation laws. The Census didn't have any separate categories for them. The idea that just because some ethnicities faced discrimination at some point automatically means they weren't considered white is absurd.

But there isn't a separate category for Hispanics on the census (or so I've heard) and yet popular consensus places them in a sort of halfway house between white and not white. With the fact that Hispanics will presumably assimilate and lose their Spanish language roots, while intermarrying significantly I somehow doubt that whiter Hispanics will be excluded with white category given time.

That is accurate but that would include an economic integration that would put whiter Hispanics on the same economic par with whites. This is an overlooked aspect of earlier redefinitions of white. The Irish and Italians and Eastern Europeans became richer, and thus, they intermarried more easily with the older Protestant groups and became interchangeable with them.

The problem is the economic transition right now. Latinos are not anywhere near whites in terms of assets and wealth, thus why they continue to be seen as "apart" and more Democratic. A very crude example that speaks to this economic view - we don't think of Latino bankers, we think of the guys who line up doing construction work. We don't have that vision of the average white, who we imagine to be a professional.

That will change, of course, but ...

I'm talking out of my ass here, but might we attribute this to the fact that the Hispanic population continues to grow, whereas certain European groups filtered in either at lower rates, or during more specifically defined periods?

[Mr. Morden]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

That is not true. Italians and Irish were always considered white, even if discriminated against. During segregation they could use white facilities. They weren't banned from marrying WASPs under anti-miscenigation laws. The Census didn't have any separate categories for them. The idea that just because some ethnicities faced discrimination at some point automatically means they weren't considered white is absurd.

But there isn't a separate category for Hispanics on the census (or so I've heard) and yet popular consensus places them in a sort of halfway house between white and not white. With the fact that Hispanics will presumably assimilate and lose their Spanish language roots, while intermarrying significantly I somehow doubt that whiter Hispanics will be excluded with white category given time.

I'd add that it's not clear that all of them will end up in the same category.  My nephew's father is Cuban, so for Census purposes, my nephew is "Hispanic".  Yet he looks as white I do, and it seems ridiculous to imagine that anyone would regard him as non-white....despite the fact that his father does not look at all white, and presumably does not regard himself as such.

So, point is, blindly looking at these population growth projections for "Hispanics", as if all of them are going to be regarded as being in the same racial category, seems rather suspect to me.

[The_Doctor]

Actually, Asian Americans are more likely to become Republicans first, under any realignment. They voted 48-50% (50-50?) for the GOP in 2014 and their economic situation is strong enough that if social issues were taken off the table, they would be part of any GOP coalition in the future. I think Asians are just ticked off at the GOP's social issues (since a ton of Asians are highly educated and there's an education divide).

It's not remembered but Bush won 44% among Asians too. Coincidentally, the 44% in both Latinos and Asians matched his CA performance in 2004.