bobbyw24
10-12-2009, 05:23 AM
Political junkies of my generation should recall The Emerging Republican Majority, that provocative investigation of electoral patterns that journalist Kevin Phillips brought out in the wake of the Goldwater debacle of 1964. According to Phillips, the GOP could still re-emerge as a majority party, if it put together a coalition of disaffected blue collar ethnic Democrats, Sun Belt retirees, and Southern whites who were unhappy with the course of the civil rights movement. Although this strategy worked for a time, albeit mostly as electoral propaganda, it failed to take into account what were still imponderables in the mid-sixties: the effects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a massive influx of Central Americans into the West and Southwest, the unbreakable Democratic loyalties of the Jewish and other elderly, and the leftward turn of white female voters under the impact of feminist ideology. Now Judis and Teixeira are offering their electoral prediction and arguing that the Democrats, really the left-wing of the Democratic Party, will achieve national dominance in the decades ahead. Although written with a transparent ideological goal, this work is as worthy of consideration as that of Phillips, to whom the authors make numerous respectful references.
Judis and Teixeira point to electoral trends that at least for the present are continuing. Unless dramatic reversals occur for unforeseen reasons, the overwhelming majority of blacks, non-Cuban Hispanics, and Jews will go on voting Democratic. Moreover, because of the leftward movement of educated women on social issues, even within Republican ranks, the soccer mom and the female professional concerned about her reproductive rights and a persistent “glass ceiling” will remain targets of electoral persuasion—identified with the Left. The authors present a stark contrast between the shrinking rural base of the Republicans and the urban-suburban bastions of the rising Democrats, full of minorities, liberated professional women, and “ideopolis” regions, bubbling with liberal intellectuality.
Much of this analysis makes sense . . .
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2002/dec/02/00027/
Judis and Teixeira point to electoral trends that at least for the present are continuing. Unless dramatic reversals occur for unforeseen reasons, the overwhelming majority of blacks, non-Cuban Hispanics, and Jews will go on voting Democratic. Moreover, because of the leftward movement of educated women on social issues, even within Republican ranks, the soccer mom and the female professional concerned about her reproductive rights and a persistent “glass ceiling” will remain targets of electoral persuasion—identified with the Left. The authors present a stark contrast between the shrinking rural base of the Republicans and the urban-suburban bastions of the rising Democrats, full of minorities, liberated professional women, and “ideopolis” regions, bubbling with liberal intellectuality.
Much of this analysis makes sense . . .
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2002/dec/02/00027/