http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include...&storyid=342418

 

Symposium

Q: Do Demographics Favor Democrats Over Republicans For the Next 20 Years?

Posted Jan. 2, 2003

By John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

 

Yes: The interests of women, minorities and professionals will give Democrats a big edge

 

Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and has contributed to numerous political journals. Teixeira is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation in Washington. They are the authors of The Emerging Democratic Majority, from which this article is adapted.

 

In the 1996, 1998 and 2000 elections, Democrats increased their margin in Congress, and in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, Democrats increased their presidential vote. Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000 but won the popular vote. It looked like a new Democratic majority would replace the conservative Republican majority that had taken hold in the 1980s and had reached its peak in November 1994. But this trend was clearly set back by the November 2002 elections, which handed control over both houses of Congress back to the Republicans. The question is whether, and under what circumstances, the trend toward a Democratic majority could resume.

 

There is one major factor that contributed toward a Democratic shift in the 1990s: During the last 50 years, the United States has been moving from an industrial society to a postindustrial society characterized by a new workforce devoted primarily to the production of ideas rather than things, a transformed geography centered in new postindustrial metropolises and a new understanding of the role of government, family, religion, sex, work, leisure, nature and the market.

 

The conservative Republicans of the 1980s were a backlash to the first stirrings of this social revolution. They stood for old-time, fundamentalist religion and laissez-faire economics in opposition to women's rights, civil rights, immigration and environmental and consumer protection.

 

The old Democratic Party also was tone-deaf to this historical transformation. Before the 1960s, the Democrats were based in the unionized blue-collar working class, in the ethnic urban North and in the white rural South. They were the party of redistributing income rather than creating wealth. But in the last three decades, the Democrats have become the party of postindustrial America, led by three groups that were not major factors in elections 50 years ago or who were inclined to vote Republican rather than Democratic.

 

The first group is women. Women used to vote disproportionately more Republican than men. But in 1964 a gender gap appeared; in 1980 it widened and, in subsequent elections, women not only began to vote disproportionately more Democratic than men, but they began to vote more Democratic in absolute terms. What made the difference was the Republican identification with the religious right's view of women and the family. The women who led the march into the Democratic Party were those most affected by postindustrial change: single women, college-educated women, working women and minority women. And these groups are growing as parts of the overall female electorate.

 

The second group is minorities. Blacks, for instance, did not always support Democrats. As late as 1960, a Republican presidential candidate could get one-third of the black vote. But after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964, blacks abandoned the Republicans and now support Democrats by a 9-to-1 margin. Hispanics (except Cubans), Japanese-Americans and Filipino-Americans had been Democrats since the New Deal and have remained so. But in the 1990s Chinese-Americans, turned off by Republican opposition to immigration, also began voting Democratic. In 1972, the combined minority vote made up less than 10 percent of the electorate; in 2000, minorities made up almost 20 percent of the vote. By 2010, they could make up as much as one-quarter of the electorate.

 

The third group is professionals: college-educated, white-collar workers who produce ideas and services. They once were the most Republican of occupational groups. They saw themselves as independent entrepreneurs whose success proved that laissez-faire capitalism worked. But many of them now are subject to the whims of large institutions and they worry that the quality of their work is being compromised. They also took part in the cultural revolution that began in the colleges and led to the growth of feminist, environmental and consumer movements.

 

The professional class includes doctors and nurses, computer programmers, actors, teachers, engineers and fashion designers. In the 1950s, professionals composed about 5 percent of the working population. As the U.S. economy has changed, and the production of ideas and services has displaced the production of things, professionals have grown to more than 15 percent of the workforce. And a majority of them have become Democrats. In the last four presidential elections, they backed Democrats by an average of 52 to 40 percent.

 

The support of professionals, women and minorities has transformed the Democratic electorate. The older, New Deal Democrats were the party of Southern whites, urban ethnics and Midwestern blue-collar workers. Today the Democrats are the party of teachers, nurses and janitors. But the change in the Democrats doesn't end with its constituents. The New Deal Democrats used to be based primarily in the Deep South and in the urban North; the new Democratic Party's greatest strength is in postindustrial metropolitan areas, or "ideopolises." These new communities were spawned by the transition to postindustrial capitalism. They specialize in the production of ideas and services. Their workforces are dominated by professionals and lower-level service workers, many of whom are minorities.

 

Many of these ideopolises used to be solidly Republican, but now have become Democratic. Silicon Valley in Northern California, Bergen County, N.J. (just outside New York City) and Montgomery County, Pa. (just outside Philadelphia) backed Democratic candidates in the last two presidential elections. In 2000, the ideopolis counties, distinguished by the presence of high-tech workers, accounted for 44 percent of the electorate, and they are growing much faster than the non-ideopolis counties. Between 1990 and 2000, ideopolis counties grew by more than 22 percent, compared to 10 percent for the average county. And they start from a larger population base -- an average of 475,000 compared to 54,000 for the average non-ideopolis counties. By the end of this decade, they should account for more than one-half of the electorate. The Republicans may capture West Virginia, but the Democrats should have a firm hold not only on California, New York state and Illinois, but also on Florida, Colorado and even, perhaps, Texas.

 

As the demography of the Democratic Party has changed, so too has its political outlook. It no longer is the party of big budget deficits and of massive urban-aid programs. Its outlook reflects the growing importance of progressives within the party. It favors government intervention to protect the environment and consumers. It wants to provide access to health insurance to all Americans and cheaper prescription drugs, but it is leery of enormous new government programs. It values tolerance in race relations and freedom of choice in the relations between men and women. This outlook -- which was very much influenced in the early 1990s by the Democratic Leadership Council -- could be called "progressive-centrist."

 

In the 2000 and 2002 elections, this outlook dominated the politics of the Democrats and Republicans in much of the country. Instead of proclaiming, as the Reagan Republicans once did, that "government is the problem, not the solution," Republicans claimed their government prescription-drug program was better than the Democrats'; they claimed that they could protect Social Security -- once a target of conservative Republicans -- better than the Democrats; they claimed that they could crack down on corporate fraud more effectively. These are all symptoms of a shift in the American zeitgeist from conservative Republicanism to progressive centrism -- a shift that eventually should result in a Democratic majority.

 

But nothing is inevitable in American politics. If the 2002 elections had taken place on Sept. 10, 2001, the Democrats probably would have increased their majority in the U.S. Senate and won back the House of Representatives, but the events of Sept. 11, 2001, transformed the country's political landscape. It brought a concern with national security to the fore -- and that benefited President George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

 

When the Cold War ended in 1989, the Republicans ceased to be united by the specter of the Soviet Union; they split over trade, budget deficits and social issues, while the Democrats under Bill Clinton reclaimed their reputation as the party best able to look out for the average American. In 1992, as concern about the outside world waned, Democrats were able to win the presidency and both houses of Congress running on the campaign slogan, "It's the economy, stupid." But Sept. 11 changed that. Americans reverted to concerns about national security that they had in the 1980s, and they looked to the Republicans again as the party best able to meet those concerns.

 

Democrats had hoped to contest this year's elections over domestic rather than foreign policy. And to the extent they were able to do so -- in the governors' races, where foreign policy is not a factor -- they enjoyed some success. But Democrats were not able to turn the Senate or House races into referenda on the Republicans' economic or social policies. Instead, Bush and the Republicans succeeded in making them referenda on their conduct of the war against terror. On the eve of the election, a revealing Gallup poll found that voters gave greater weight to the complex of "terrorism, war and international issues" than to the set of economic issues around Social Security and prescription-drug prices.

 

As long as national-security concerns remain paramount, and as long as Bush and the Republicans are seen as more effective in meeting them than the Democrats, Republicans could enjoy an advantage in congressional and presidential elections, just as they did during the 1980s. But if American fears of terror from abroad abate, or if Democrats become more effective on national-security issues, then it is likely the factors favoring Democrats will reassert themselves. Elections will look less like 2002 and more like 2000, and the ongoing changes in the society -- the growth of ideopolises -- should favor Democrats over Republicans.

 

Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and has contributed to numerous political journals. Teixeira is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation in Washington. They are the authors of The Emerging Democratic Majority, from which this article is adapted.

 

 

Republicans are going to have to adapt soon or continue to hope that fears abroad are major concern. That begs the question, if you are a defense industry rep, and we win the war on terror and there is a lot of peace in the world, what do you do?

Here is another article that deals with the same issue but in a different light:

 

http://members.aol.com/digasa/stats76.htm

GOP Pins Its Future On Wooing Minorities

By Thomas B. Edsall

Washington Post Staff Writer

The stinging rebuke that conservative pundits and Republican leaders rained down on Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) this month contrasted sharply with the more muted GOP responses to earlier racially tinged episodes, such as the 1988 presidential ad featuring Willie Horton and Sen. Jesse Helms's 1990 "white hands" commercial.

 

Republican leaders, including President Bush, say their party has become more inclusive in recent years, making sincere efforts to attract minority voters and candidates. Several political analysts, however, suggest an additional reason.

? Starting with Sen. Barry Goldwater's anti-civil rights presidential campaign of 1964 and continuing with Richard M. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" of 1968 and the 1980s' appeal to white working-class "Reagan Democrats," they say, Republican strategies have proven extremely effective in attracting millions of white voters into the party fold. So efficient, in fact, that the party has extracted every possible benefit and now must steer a more racially sensitive course to avoid alienating the growing numbers of minority voters and moderate white women who will be crucial in future elections.?

 

 

"We have just about maxed out with white men," a key Republican strategist said. "When you look into the future, all you see is smaller numbers and more and more Hispanics. Look at Texas. Unless we do something, in a decade or so it's going to go the way of California," a former Republican stronghold that now tilts decisively Democratic. "We have to adapt to survive."

? The denunciation of Lott by conservative intellectuals, commentators and elected officials struck a harsh tone that rarely, if ever, was heard from comparable sources in previous decades. Ronald Reagan was not condemned in that manner for his 1980 endorsement of "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Miss., best known for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers by local members of the Ku Klux Klan. Nor was George H.W. Bush as sharply criticized for his 1988 ad featuring Horton, a black rapist and murderer who assaulted a white woman while on temporary release from a prison in Massachusetts, home to Bush's Democratic opponent, then-Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Partly because of those campaigns, the white South is now a Republican bastion, and the party's candidates thrive in white working-class suburbs ringing heavily black cities such as Detroit and Chicago. This realignment has helped produce six Republican victories in the past nine presidential contests and Republican control of the Senate and House.

 

 

 

Now, the Republican Party is seeking ways to keep these gains while also winning new support among constituencies with different agendas, especially Hispanics and working women. The strategic shift was forced by George W. Bush's 500,000-vote loss to Al Gore in the 2000 nationwide tally (although Bush won in the all-important electoral college), revealing the frailty of the Republican coalition. GOP operatives know that marginal voting shifts by any key group -- blacks, working women, Hispanics, suburbanites -- can spell victory or defeat in 2004 and beyond.

? They also know that the overwhelmingly white and heavily male coalition that produced victories for Nixon in 1968 and 1972, Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and the elder Bush in 1988 is a declining constituency. Having cracked open the once solidly Democratic South, Republicans now must chip away at newer Democratic constituencies, including Hispanics, working women and immigrants. To do this, and to make even modest inroads among African American voters, they must reduce black hostility to Republicans while keeping conservative whites motivated, top analysts said.

"To be a majority party over the next generation, you have to be very responsive to what is happening demographically," Republican pollster Bill McInturff said. "To build a broad coalition that captures a majority of the sentiments of the voters of this country means a focus on the problems of the new immigrants and the Latinos."

 

 

 

In 1990, media consultant Alex Castellanos produced the Helms reelection commercial showing a white man's hands ripping up a job rejection slip as the narrator said, "You needed that job . . . but they had to give it to a minority." Castellanos now says a different approach is needed.

 

"The Californias of the future are majority-minority states," he said, meaning whites will constitute less than half the population. "The feminist revolution of the 1960s has succeeded, and economic power is now in working women's hands as never before. . . . It's a much more diverse country that is no longer run by a bunch of stiff old white guys in suits."

? The political world was different in 1980, when former California governor Reagan opened his general election campaign on Aug. 3 in Philadelphia, Miss. "I believe in states' rights," he said, borrowing a favorite phrase from Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign and subsequent efforts to stop or slow integration.

 

 

Eight years later, Lee Atwater, manager of George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign, vowed to "strip the bark off" Dukakis by turning Horton into "his running mate."

 

A key proponent of new Republican strategies is Matthew Dowd, pollster for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. He said Republicans "can't be a majority party without expanding our coalition. . . . If you stand still with what you had in 2000, you are going to end up further behind."