Why Demographics DO NOT Favor the Democrats

[SirLinksALot]

SOURCE: NATIONAL REVIEW

URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438741/demography-donald-trump-democrats-search-new-core-constituency

by: Josh Gelernter   


Democrats, and journalists, talk a great deal about how demographic changes are inexorably shifting the American electorate to the left. But they’re wrong.

The Democrats have founded their political fortunes on special-interest groups for more than 150 years — since at least the late 1850s, when Tammany Hall (the Democrats’ New York City political machine) was taken over by Boss Tweed, who began to use its political influence to support (and pander to) Irish immigrants (in particular), in exchange for votes. The Irish were the largest immigrant group in the country, and an increasingly powerful voting block. Thanks to Tweed and company, they became a voting block that invariably voted Democratic. The Irish continued to constitute the largest or second-largest immigrant group each year until the end of the 19th century, and you would have been forgiven for predicting that they would help deliver a permanent electoral advantage for the Democrats.

Starting with the 20th century, Irish immigration was eclipsed by Italian. Italian immigrants quickly began receiving Democratic patronage, and became a new core of the Democratic electorate. Italians continued to be the largest or second-largest immigrant group each year until the Second World War. Throughout that period, you could rely on Italians to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

But then, in the 1960s, Italian-Americans started splitting their votes evenly between Republicans and Democrats. These days, the Irish-American vote is a reliable 50-50 split too. Why? Because the Irish and the Italians stopped being special-interest groups. After their initial isolation, the Italians and the Irish stopped being easily divisible from the average American. They didn’t want custom-tailored treatment, they just wanted the same shot at the American dream that everyone else had. They’d been assimilated. They stopped being primarily Irish or Italian and became, first and foremost, American. And that meant that Democratic pandering didn’t work anymore. There was no more distinct group to pander to.

When was the last time someone talked seriously about courting the Italian vote, or the Irish, in a national election? Kennedy–Nixon in 1960? “Italian” and “Irish” are no longer considered in pollsters’ demography. They melted into a pre-existing electoral block, ineptly called “white voters.” Pollsters talk a lot about the “white vote” — but what they really mean is the Italian-Irish-Polish-Hungarian-Romanian-Jewish-Russian-Swedish-Norwegian-French-Dutch-Scottish-Welsh-English vote. That’s the nature of the American melting pot.

And before too long, that ethnically indistinct pot will include Latin-Americans too — Latin-Americans being the immigrant group that, after WW2, supplanted Italians as the largest. I don’t buy the idea that Latin-Americans are going to be separated by skin color. The fact is, the skin color of the average Hispanic is no more different from that of the average “white” American than the average Italian’s was in 1900. Remember that, just a few hundred years ago, the only thing a Swede or an Englishman named John Doe needed to be called “John the Black” was tan or tawny skin. Sometimes black hair was enough. The average “white” American’s skin tone has been moving from a British complexion toward the Mediterranean for 200 years.

Obviously, African-Americans have had an entirely separate experience, qua immigration. But I don’t see that Hispanics have. Sure, there has been, and is, plenty of anti-Hispanic bigotry. There was also anti-Italian bigotry, anti-Irish bigotry, anti-Polish bigotry, anti-Jewish bigotry, anti-German bigotry, and so on. Hispanic immigration is the latest chapter, but it’s part of the same story. Before long, Hispanic-Americans will overwhelmingly speak English as their mother tongue, prefer fast food to their ancestral cuisine, and talk about the Minutemen at Lexington using the pronoun “we.” Many do already. The melting pot works fast.

And that means, before long, the Democrats will — once again — have to find a new core constituency.

— Josh Gelernter writes weekly for NRO and is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard. He is a founder of the tech startup Dittach.

[geronl]

Demographics do not favor Trump, that is for sure

[Fishrrman]

Mr. Gelertner opines:
"I don’t buy the idea that Latin-Americans are going to be separated by skin color."

Sorry, I don't buy that argument.

Mr. Gelertner is ignoring something very important:
The cultures from which Hispanics are coming have no heritage of democracy. Quite the contrary, these nations have a heritage of either socialism or dictatorship.

Even in Texas, perhaps the most conservative environment for Hispanics in the USA, I believe they still vote 60-65% democrat. If bein' in Texas can't convert 'em, what will?

Mr. Gelertner observes:
"Obviously, African-Americans have had an entirely separate experience, qua immigration."

Blacks cannot be compared to any other group.
No matter where they are found, they are always found at the bottom in a multiracial environment. (Aside: an exception might be made in South Africa, where BY LAW whites are prohibited from holding some higher economic positions that are reserved to blacks -- reverse discrimination in the extremis.)

The "traditional America" which is fast-disappearing today was conceived by, populated by and built by one quite monolithic group of men.
Y'all know who they were.

That's where "the conservative vote" came from.
That's why it will slowly represent an ever-smaller percentage of the total vote.
That's why the chances of Republicans holding the presidency again are fading as fast as "the old white guys" that so many seem eager to attack...

[TomSea]

Per the "white demographic", independence, self-sufficiency, these are kinds of values of the America they know and some of these others sadly, don't tune into that.  Of course, there are some who want to make that all about race.

That said, about 29% of black voters are registered independent, yes, they may have voted for Obama and voted for Kerry and will vote Clinton; but as blacks tell us, we really should go after that vote. It's that in some cities, Philadelphia, Cleveland etc. there is a big get out the vote action in the black community. That skews those figures as well.

[The_Reader_David]

Mr. Gelertner opines:

The cultures from which Hispanics are coming have no heritage of democracy.

The culture immigrants from almost every European country you care to name in the 19th and early 20th century came from had no heritage of democracy, either.  My forebearers who came to these shores first came from the Palantinate of the Rhine (okay, the had a notion of elections there -- their prince was an absolute ruler who was called the "Elector" because he got to vote for who was to be Holy Roman Emperor, hardly a "heritage of democracy", though). My great grandfather emigrated from Norway, in the early 20th century when he left a monarchy where elections were unknown, because he lost his inheritance (due to a real-life evil stepmother story) but picked America as his destination because of the attraction of democracy.  The Syrian Christians who fled the anti-Christian pogroms of the 1860s' and settled in Wichita grew up under the rule of the Ottoman Turks, hardly a bastion of democratic heritage, and like Hispanics today were -- until generations of intermarriage after the era of "No Syrians Need Apply" ended changed that -- slightly darker of complexion than I and my fellow pasty-faced descendants of north-west Europeans.

The melting pot worked fine for all of them.  Gelertner's point stands.

[Fishrrman]

David wrote:
"The Syrian Christians who fled the anti-Christian pogroms of the 1860s' and settled in Wichita grew up under the rule of the Ottoman Turks, hardly a bastion of democratic heritage"

They may have been from Syria, but there's something more important about them that stands out. One word.

"Gelertner's point stands."

Hispanics have been in America for quite some time. They may not have been -called- "Hispanics" years ago, but they came from a Spanish/Mexican/Central American heritage.

They've had more than enough time to "assimilate" into the American culture.
Yet their political leanings have not followed the same trajectory of other Western Europeans who came here.

This is not a matter of conjecture.
It is fact as evidenced by Hispanic voting as carefully measured in recent elections.

If that political behavior has not changed by now, when can we expect the change to occur...?

[sinkspur]

They've had more than enough time to "assimilate" into the American culture.
Yet their political leanings have not followed the same trajectory of other Western Europeans who came here.

This is not a matter of conjecture.
It is fact as evidenced by Hispanic voting as carefully measured in recent elections.

If that political behavior has not changed by now, when can we expect the change to occur...?

It will never occur as long as we have "Republican" candidates for president inferring Hispanics are rapists and criminals.