I'll say right off the bat that this will be a controversial diary. It's very hard to evaluate long-term political trendlines and my theories could certainly be proved wrong, but the trajectory of American culture and politics show me an America that will be polarized along ethnic and generational lines in the not-too-distant future, much more so than is the case today. It's not certain exactly where the battle lines will be drawn in our two-party system when the realignment occurs, but if they fall as I expect they will, a reinvigorated Republican Party will represent a political majority at some point in the next decade and likely hang on to it for a couple of decades. Details below the fold...
At the core of my theory is that America is on the precipice of undergoing two dramatic demographic shifts. The Baby Boomers will be retiring in the tens of millions in the decades ahead....and the Latino population is poised to grow to approximatly a third of the nation's overall population. Even one of these two trendlines would be enough to radically transform a nation's character (and subsequently, its politics), but with both happening at the same time, it's hard to see how we avoid a culture clash worse than anything seen in most of our lifetimes.
The extent to which this culture clash and political realignment is based directly upon racial and ethnic issues is hard to gauge. My hunch is that if comprehensive immigration reform is signed into law this year, the wheels will be set in motion sooner rather than later. While the initial outrage will be primarily limited to talk radio audiences, converts will be won over if (or most likely when) access to living wage employment, particularly in blue-collar sectors, grows habitually scarcer for the 290+ million Americans who were not on the receiving end of CIF. And even outside of blue-collar employment competition, what will the response be when millions of formerly illegal immigrants granted a path to citizenship in 2009 are again given what will be perceived as preferential treatment in higher education and the workplace due to affirmative action policies? It strikes me a powder keg ready to blow and bitterly divide the country.
But even if we discount current immigration reform policies on the table and simply look at the demographic trendlines as they're currently configured, it still seems as though we're heading towards an inevitable cultural and political polarization via an epic battle for increasingly scarce public resources between two factions that will depend upon them. Mostly white Baby Boomers heading into retirement age are gonna fight like mad to hang onto their promised entitlement benefits. And the mostly Latino working class will not be able to survive in acceptable living conditions without expanding government assistance. It's very hard to see where the money will come from to do both (and I challenge anyone who thinks it can to show me a financial configuration where it would be practical) meaning politicians will have to pick and choose. Here's how it's likely to end up playing out....
Whites will be disproportionately old and disproportionately Republican in the America of a decade from now. "They are already!", you say. Well, true, but if retired union members who voted Democratic their whole lives suddenly discover Medicare is being cut because dwindling resources are needed to finance social services and education instead, that retired union member's lifelong Democratic allegiance is very likely to wither away, particularly if the Republicans are on the other side of the issue. Whites currently vote Republican in the 60-65% range nowadays. Expect that number to become 75-80% in the 2020s, including virtually all senior citizens.
Hispanics, even conservative Hispanics, can be expected to consolidate behind the Democratic Party much the way African-Americans do today. The Democratic Party's courtship of Hispanics will continue uninterrupted no matter what the consequences may be with other ethnic groups. Even Hispanics that may not agree with the majority of the Democratic platform will nonetheless perceive an "us versus them" environment fostered by the opposition, and the immigration policies advanced by Democrats will be seen in much the same light to many Hispanics as the civil rights legislation of the 1960s was to African-Americans. For those reasons, I expect Hispanics to vote more than 90% Democratic by the time the 2020s roll around.
The political trendlines for African-Americans and Asian-Americans are harder to predict. Considering that both races are the most likely to be in competition for working-class jobs with Hispanics, it's not likely to do the Democrats any favors if African-Americans begin viewing the Dems as "the party of Hispanics". While it's unlikely to happen during the Obama era, my guess is the Democrats' dominating performance with African-Americans will show significant contraction in the coming generation as the opposition will be able to successfully persuade millions of low-income African-Americans that Democratic policies favor immigrants over multigenerational residents such as themselves. As a result, the best prediction I can make is that the current Democratic voting habits of Hispanics and African-Americans will be transposed, with black support for Dems shrinking from 90+% to around 65%. Again, however, I'm less confident about this prediction than I am of the polarized numbers between whites and Hispanics.
If these numbers come to fruition, America in the 2020s will be a pretty evenly divided nation, much like it was most of this decade, with Republicans narrowly winning out until recently. Nate Silver mapped out a rough approximation of what we can probably expect in the Electoral College in upcoming Presidential elections with his "Operation Gringo" writeup. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/...
California will be the most Democratic state in the country. West Virginia will be the most Republican state in the country. Even Texas and Florida might be narrowly Democratic (but it will be close...and will require maximum turnout by Hispanics who have notoriously low voter turnout compared to other races). But can Democrats afford to lose majority white states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington (and I would argue Massachusetts and Rhode Island as well) and still expect to win elections?
The political parties of tomorrow will be unrecognizable ghosts of their current configurations. The Republican coalition will consist of almost all seniors and the interest groups that currently serve them, the vast majority of whites including factions of Old Labor such as the AFL-CIO serving retirees and older white industrial workers, a sizeable chunk of disillusioned African-Americans who feel their allegiance to the Democrats has been betrayed, and SOME factions of the business lobby opposed to "welfare" spending. Meanwhile the Democratic coalition will consist of almost all Hispanics, most of New Labor that represent an overwhelmingly Hispanic service sector, a smaller majority than exists today of African-Americans, a small slice of wealthy whites in traditionally liberal urban centers, and business interests seeking additional waves of cheap immigrant labor.
The math works out narrowly for Republicans, and having alienated all but a sliver of white voters (who will still constitute about 60% of the population a decade from now), Democrats with few political options will continue to seek their majority the only way arithmatically possible...continued liberalization of immigration laws that will produce more receptive Democratic voters. Long-term, perhaps by the 2040s when the white population dips below 50%, they'll get that majority, but it will come at a great cost to the character of America battered bloody by decades of bitter division.
I'm sure I'll get calls to "show me the facts to back this up" in the comments thread, but of course, those will be impossible to produce as this is entirely speculative, but at the very least, I think my hypothetical and the more generalized predictions of Nate Silver's "Operation Gringo" post last week should give pause to some of the "they are so screwed" cockiness I've seen here in recent months, which feels eerily similar to the cockiness the hard right was publicly displaying at this point in 2005. And we know how that turned out.