Tipsheet

Lefty Commentator Just Threw Cold Water Over the Left’s Future Election Hopes

Let’s take a break from our chaotic exit from Afghanistan, the crappy jobs report that’s coming, the rising inflation, and Joe Biden’s dementia to circle back to the 2020 census data. It’s not something that gets you excited, but liberal America was popping champagne. These people are still hyper-focused on the wobbly demography is destiny mindset. A more diverse electorate means we win more elections; conservatism is dead. These sorts of data dumps are the black tar heroin for the Left and their moral superiority complex. The thing they were really harping on is the decline in the proportion of white Americans. The Trump voters. The GOP base—it’s all shrinking. It’s entertaining for sure, but also a tad pathetic. Public opinion can change—quickly. There are no permanent victories in a representative democracy. None. You’d think Democrats would have learned that after 2010. In a mere two years, the conversation went from ‘it’s the end of the GOP’ in 2008 with Obama’s election to the Tea Party wave in 2010. That only took two years. The GOP had their go with this permanent majority stuff in the Bush years. It will be a coalition that is focused on national security. That got washed away in the 2006 midterms. 

Better yet, it’s a progressive political scientist who torched this narrative about the 2020 census and a permanent Democratic majority. Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress is one of those people who talked about this theory of an emerging Democratic majority but has also said that his works has been glossed over and misrepresented by fellow liberals. 

In a post on Medium, Teixeira just wrecks the Left’s hopes and dreams for future political dominance here. Namely that the big dip in white voters could be due to the race question in the survey that was tweaked in 2010 and could’ve caused confusion. He notes that because of that, America is probably whiter than the Left thinks. Second, white voters who vote is higher than their percentage of the overall population. The same cannot be said for nonwhites. 

He then moves onto college-educated whites, the most insufferable people on the planet. It’s because of these people that Biden won. It wasn’t due to a spike in black voters or Hispanic voters, not even women can claim credit that they saved America from Trump. It was because of the most isolated, snobby, and privileged whites in America. The people who have narratives about race in this country that simply do not mirror reality in any way, shape, or form. It’s an academic exercise for them. It’s why nonwhites, blacks especially, are veering towards the GOP. The ‘defund the police’ antics are a white college-educated liberal invention. The term ‘Latinx’ for Hispanics is totally a white liberal invention—no one uses it. In short, these people are from Mars, which is why they alienate everyone, including traditional Democratic voter blocs that are simply not as ideological as these folks on everything, especially the issue of racial resentment. Also, even though they might vote Democratic a lot—blacks and Hispanics do not, and never have identified as ‘liberal’ in their political orientation. Speaking to people in the ‘college faculty lexicon’ will not work—and then they denigrate those who don’t agree with them.

Oh, and Teixeira notes these clowns are sticking around for a long time in Democratic circles. Going woke is not a recipe for success. 

When it comes to Hispanic voters, it’s still not good news for Democrats and their demography is supremacy narrative. It’s the fastest-growing voter bloc. It has been for years, but as Teixeira has noted, among others, turnout is an issue. Yet, those who did swung towards Trump in 2020—big league:

As the Census documents, the biggest single driver of the increased nonwhite population is the growth of the Hispanic population. They are by far the largest group within the Census-designated nonwhite population (19 percent vs. 12 percent for blacks). While their representation among voters considerably lags their representation in the overall population, it is fair to say that voting trends among this group will decisively shape voting trends among nonwhites in the future since their share of voters will continue to increase while black voter share is expected to remain roughly constant.

And these Hispanic voting trends have not been favorable for the Democrats. According to Catalist, in 2020 Latinos had an amazingly large 16 point margin shift toward Trump. Among Latinos, Cubans did have the largest shifts toward Trump (26 points), but those of Mexican origin also had a 12 point shift and even Puerto Ricans moved toward Trump by 18 points. Moreover, Latino shifts toward Trump were widely dispersed geographically. Hispanic shifts toward Trump were not confined to Florida (28 points) and Texas (18 points) but also included states like Nevada (16 points), Pennsylvania (12 points), Arizona (10 points) and Georgia (8 points).

These reduced margins are why, despite Hispanics’ increased vote share in 2020, their contribution to Democrats’ improved national margin in this election was actually negative—that is, they made a negative one point contribution to Biden's vote margin relative to Clinton’s in 2016.

[…]

In this context, it is interesting to note that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement did not rate very highly among Hispanics. In the national exit poll, Hispanic voters were split close to evenly about BLM, 47 percent unfavorable to 49 percent favorable. This significantly trails not just black voters, but also white college graduates, who rated BLM 61 percent favorable to 35 percent unfavorable.

Consistent with this, Latino voters evinced little sympathy with the more radical demands that came to be associated with BLM. In VSG data, despite showing support for some specific policing reforms, Hispanics opposed defunding the police, decreasing the size of police forces and the scope of their work and reparations for the descendants of slaves by 2:1 or more.

An important thing to remember about the Hispanic population is that they are heavily oriented toward upward mobility and see themselves as being able to benefit from available opportunities to attain that.

“They are also patriotic,” added Teixeira noting “they would rather be a citizen of the United States than any other country in the world and by 35 points said they were proud of the way American democracy works.”

This does not bode well for Democrats who are all-in on hating America, white people, and denigrating this nation as irredeemably racist. Again, going woke isn’t a recipe for national success.

And then there’s the class issue which is appearing to be more of the determining factor concerning why Democrats will most likely fail at dominating national elections in the future. The working-class vote, both white and nonwhite, seems primed to frustrate Democrats:

But the focus on Democrats’ white working class problem, which is now widely understood, has obscured the problems Democrats have been developing with the nonwhite working class. While nonwhite voters as a whole moved toward the GOP in the 2020 election, working class nonwhites moved more sharply toward Trump than college nonwhites (12 margin points vs. 7 points, based on Catalist’s two party vote data). Surprisingly, working class nonwhite women actually moved more toward Trump (14 points) than working class nonwhite men (9 points).

It is particularly striking to note that since 2012, running against Trump twice, Democrats have lost 18 points off of their margin among nonwhite working class voters. That obviously undercuts the Democrat-friendly effects of rising racial diversity. This is underscored by the under-appreciated fact that working class voters still vastly outnumber college-educated voters. Among whites, working class voters were a bit over three-fifths of the vote. But among nonwhites, the working class contingent was a full two thirds of voters in 2020.

Hispanic working class voters were particularly likely to shift to the Republicans in 2020. Pew validated voter data show a 30 point shift toward the GOP relative to 2018 (2016 not available), more than twice the 14 point shift among college Hispanics. And in terms of support levels, the Pew data indicate that working class Hispanics gave Trump a remarkable 41 percent of their vote in 2020. This is especially noteworthy since the Hispanic vote is the most heavily working class nonwhite vote, pushing 80 percent working class according to Pew.

All this suggests trends among working class nonwhites will likely determine the future of the nonwhite vote—and therefore what benefit, if any, Democrats will derive from the race-ethnic trends identified by the Census.

He closed with a brief mentioning that the Democrats’ dispersion of its base is not efficient at all. They simply dominate areas that have already been in Democratic hands for years. What good is a massive spike in new Democratic voters if they already live in the San Francisco Bay area? We all know California is going blue, whereas the Trump coalition is probably one of the most efficiently dispersed in recent memory. Trump voters live, by and large, in areas where elections are determined which makes it lethal. And if nonwhite working-class voters, coupled with the white working-class that’s already abandoned the Democratic Party, swing towards the GOP—a lot of losing and woke tears are going to flow. Of course, things can change. The Democrats might get off the ‘woke’ wagon and focus on an agenda that—shocker—is popular with voters. Defunding the police and bailing out the most privileged with their college debt isn’t any of those things. It also highlights how shallow liberal thinking is when it comes to race since it’s apparent that many, if not all, think that a nonwhite American is a slam-dunk voter for the Democratic Party and liberal agenda items. It’s not. 

Teixeira shot a warning flare with this post, adding that it’s “clear that the Democrats’ efforts to build and sustain a majority electoral coalition are not guaranteed in any way by the race-ethnic trends detailed in the Census data.” 

Sit down, liberals. You’ve won nothing.