Liberal Author Behind ‘Demographics Is Destiny’ Narrative Has Bad News For Democrats: You Blew It
Ruy Teixeira: “these Hispanic voting trends have not been favorable for the Democrats”
Ruy Teixeira, the political scientist behind the much-lauded (and much-maligned) leftist mantra that “demographics is destiny,” has some bad news for today’s Democrats: not only do they still need white, particularly working class, voters, but their radical leftist socio-cultural and economic agenda is turning off too many Latino and Hispanic voters for their ‘demographic destiny’ to manifest.
Back in 2002, Teixeira co-penned a love letter to Democrats—The Emerging Democratic Majority—in which he argued that America’s shifting demographics would result in a perpetual Democrat majority for decades to come, maybe forever. If only those dastardly whites could be replaced with and outnumbered by Latinos and Hispanics, the totalitarian progressive utopia would be a lock.
Democrats and their media lapdogs latched onto this narrative as if it were the Holy Grail. “Demographics is destiny,” they mindlessly chanted. All we need are millions of illegal aliens flooding the country from Central and South America, amnesty for them all, and we have the demographic key to an anti- and unAmerican commie utopia. It’s going to happen, they breathlessly declared. The arc of history, they solemnly intoned at the altar of “demographics is destiny,” tells us so! And stuff.
That was always a load of fantastical drivel, but it empowered leftists and communists like Bernie Sanders and other once-fringe elements of the Democrat party to push ever leftward. Socially, culturally, economically, and politically, they were going to rule over and ‘fundamentally transform’ the country. It was destined by demography. Suddenly, there were no boundaries, every half-baked radical leftist lunacy was suddenly on the table.
Open borders! Amnesty for all! Defund the police! Abolish prisons! Abortion on demand up to actual birth! America sucks! Capitalism is racist! Destroy American energy independence! Undermine the family unit! Tax relentlessly and spend frivolously! Down with opportunity and the rule of law! Up with lawlessness and race-based segregation! History didn’t happen! There are fifty-eleven genders! Property ownership is fascist! Mothers are “birthing people” and men need free tampons! Facts must be subjugated to feelz! Shut up!
America was their oyster, and they were going to tax it, control it, debase and humiliate it. They were going to cut that hated, despised, racist America down to size!
Teixeira has watched it all, and he’s been watching voting trends among the demographics the Democrats believe they own (after all, if you don’t vote for Biden, you ain’t black, right?). This casual racism is one of the problems that Teixeira is now pointing out as problematic for the Democrat party and its (dashed) dream of an emerging demographic-based Democratic majority.
In fact, Teixeira is now saying to Democrats, remember that whole demographics is destiny thing I said back in ’02? Um, yeah, forget it. You have destroyed any hope of achieving what was right in your grasp with your absolute crazy.
Okay, he doesn’t say it that way, but the message is clear.
Teixeira writes at his substack:
The latest data release from the 2020 Census, which will be used to guide decennial redistricting, has been greeted rather breathlessly by the nation’s media and has been absolute catnip for commentators and observers who lean toward the Democrats. Consider some of these headlines:
“America’s White Population Shrank for the First Time”;
“Vast Stretches of America Are Shrinking. Almost All of Them Voted for Trump”.
“Census release shows America is more diverse and more multiracial than ever”
None of this is necessarily wrong, though it’s worth noting that these findings are consistent with trends of long-standing rather than something qualitatively new. What is questionable however is the political gloss that tends to put on these results. Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore called the announcement “the best day ever in US history”, which, while over the top, fairly represents the delight among most progressives that a presumably conservative white population is in precipitous decline while a presumably liberal nonwhite population keeps growing, the harbinger of a diverse, progressive future America.
White people and their silly ideas about equal opportunity, personal liberty, and American exceptionalism are about to be drowned out by a flood of Latinos who . . . wait, want equal opportunity, personal liberty, and to contribute to American exceptionalism, to bask in it?
Teixeira shares five key points (Whiter Than You Think, The White College Factor, The Hispanic Problem, The Class Problem, and Inefficient Distribution of Voters) that are each riveting analyses in their own right (read the whole thing), but I want to focus on the Democrats’ disastrous misread of Hispanic and Latino voters as told by Teixeira.
Generally speaking, these are not voters who will ever refer to their mothers as “birthing people,” they do not support abortion on demand or as birth control, and they do not care what pronouns you prefer while insulting them, their culture, and their language by referring to them as “Latinx.”
First the data (from Teixeira’s piece):
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. The same pattern can be seen in key swing states.
Next, the Democrat miscalculation of Hispanic and Latino voters and their likelihood of voting as a single bloc who will vote for, as Pelosi snarked about AOC, a glass of water with a (D) after his or her name. While studies suggest that the vast majority of black voters tend to vote (D) no matter what, Hispanics and Latinos will not fall in line with the current Democrat party’s crazy.
Teixeira continues:
What lies behind these unfavorable trends which surprised most Democrats? One possibility is that Democrats fundamentally misunderstood the nature of this voter group and what they really care about. Hispanics were lumped in with “people of color” and were assumed to embrace the activism around racial issues that dominated so much of the political scene in 2020, particularly in the summer. This was a flawed assumption. The reality of the Hispanic population is that they are, broadly speaking, an overwhelmingly working class, economically progressive, socially moderate constituency that cares above all, about jobs, the economy and health care.
For example, in the post-election wave of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group (VSG) panel survey, well over 70 percent of Hispanic voters rated jobs, the economy, health care and the coronavirus as issues that were “very important” to them. No other issues even came close to this level. Crime as an issue rated higher with these voters than immigration or racial equality, two issues that Democrats assumed would clear the path to big gains among Hispanic voters.
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.
And the news gets worse for Democrats as Teixeira lays out exactly what the Democrats get wrong about the Latino and Hispanic voters. They actually LIKE America, they want to work hard and have the opportunity to excel, they are patriotic, and they reject Democrat ideas about America being irredeemable, steeped in “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.”
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. Three-fifths of Latinos in the national exit poll said they believed life would be better for the next generation of Americans. In the VSG data, these voters agreed, by 9 points, that racial minorities have mostly fair opportunities to advance in America, by 11 points agreed that America is a fair society where everyone has a chance to get ahead and by 20 points agreed that “Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.”
They are also patriotic. By well over 3:1, Hispanics in the VSG survey said 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. Clearly, this constituency does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and its supposed intrinsic racism and white supremacy.
Equally clearly, assumptions that the continued growth of the Hispanic population, as revealed by the Census, is an automatic dividend for the Democrats are highly questionable.
Trump was so successful in making great strides in winning Latino and Hispanic votes because he got them, and they got him. America First and Make America Great Again resonated with these voters in ways “birthing people,” rampant crime, and open borders never will.
The GOP has an “in” here, a way to build on Trump’s successes with Hispanic and Latino voters.
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Comments
I predict that the Democrat party will respond to this news in two ways.
1. They will increase cancellation attacks against anyone “of color” who does not say exactly what the party wants them to say.
2. They will spend much more money and effort on their vote fraud operations.
3) They will search Google Earth frantically for a common border with Africa that they can leave open to walk-ins.
Already happening. People are flocking to Mexico from all over the world b/c they want to get in on the Open Border deal. They go to Mexico by boat and by plane from everywhere – Middle East/ Africa/ Asia/ South-America and many try to walk up from South America – a very very dangerous thing to do.
Every week you see increasing numbers of people at the border who are NOT central American. Lots of Cubans, Haitans, Jamaicans and other Caribe people.
Biden’s crazy Open-Border Policy has opened a literal Pandora’s Box.
The last thing the Dems need is an influx of dark-skinned people who aren’t inculcated in the “America is racist” lie, who will come here expecting success after hard work.
The left knows you can never could out the O’Sullivan rule when it comes to them in power.
What?
I find it more than disconcerting that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness rely upon some statistician’s getting all his arithmetic correct.
And the throw of the dice that Hispanics happen to be patriotic by a 3:1 margin.
Heh!
Like many immigrant communities before them, Hispanic Americans are being turned into just regular Americans.
The melting pot is in working order.
Good point. I have seen it in my own neighborhood. All home teardowns and rebuilds from the ground up are done by Hispanics. I watched closely 3 different teams on 3 different houses on my street in the last several years – all hard working guys doing good work.
In fact, with roughly 50% more women graduating from college than men and Hispanics taking over many of the jobs not requiring a college degree, I believe the much-castigated (by liberals) while male is a category to worry about.
Do you think they’ll finally close the borders now?
The did turn back the Cuban immigrants. They hate communism the most.
Fascinating analysis. Most puzzling (to me) has been the assumption that new arrivals will vote for Democrats while never questioning the choices and priorities of the elites now in charge of the Democratic Party. History suggests things might play out quite differently.
Well, they would indeed have voted for “old” Democrats. Not the new batshit ones.
We need a Latino Trump and a Latino Rush!
An impressive array of fallacies when it comes to the lefts actual policies. As for the analysis that was interesting, politico had a similar article sometime ago.
Old people are dying and most of them are conservative! Good news for liberals except that young people are getting older and transitioning to conservative as they do so.
If you’re 20 and not a liberal you have no heart, and if you’re 50 and not a conservative you have no brains.
I’d make an exception from the trend for women.
Do you have any proof at all that as todays younger people are getting older they are getting less liberal?
Gen Z is slightly less leftist than millenials who seem to just get more and more left wing as they get older.
COVID response has red-pilled a surprising number of young people. They understand it’s not about a virus and hasn’t been for some time, if it ever was. And many 30 to 60 year olds had their eyes opened by the lying media during the Trump administration. (That’s why Trump won in a landslide in 2020.)
So, basically he’s saying that now that Mexico is tapped out (Everybody who wants in the USA is here), the Democrats should invest in African immigration because the Mexicans might assimilate.
Thank you Fuzzy for getting Trump back into the dialogue here at LI. Everything you say here points to why Trump is essential to prevailing over these communists. The alternative is to return to holding our noses to choose between the increasing worse LOTEs being offered by the Uniparty.
Thanks also for pointing that we can win if we follow the trends. Maybe trying is not just the first step to failure but also to success.
This comes as no surprise to anyone living in a majority-Latino community. Like most progressives, their Latino contingent lives mainly in the usual urban leftist warrens like LA, CHI, NYC, but in the heartland Latinos are Catholic conservatives by and large, especially those recently arrived.
Better news than this revelation of the mundane is the fact that more black people no longer automatically vote Democratic, and Elder’s win in CA will electrify those conservative black voters who are already considering “leaving the Democratic plantation,” as they say.
There is another factor in the changing voting demographics that I don’t see mentioned all that much, that a certain amount of the decline in white votes is more than compensated by the rise in mixed-race voters. The linked analysis mentions it:
Thus, the racial question trending is somewhat skewed by the change in how it is measured. But it also shows that whites are not at all anti-diversity. Whites are more-than-willing to socially mix it up with other races.
The whole idea of “white culture” as attacked through its desire for accomplishment, reliability, timeliness, dedication, and so forth carries an underlying assumption that only whites care about these things; that only whites can care about these things. That truly has to be one of the stupidest, yet most insidious, assumptions by the faculty-loungers driving the educational discourse of the nation: that only one class of people can care about such things. What this really reveals is that those faculty-loungers are nearly universal in their rejection of such attributes – they are too lazy to earn merit, therefore merit must be destroyed. Too bad if it takes the nation along with it in their wrath.
The “faculty-loungers” not only think “that only one class of people can care about such things”, they are strongly suggesting the converse, that industry and reliability can’t be found in any people other than white people. They are suggesting that traditional (meaning “actual”) racist attitudes towards blacks and “Mexicans” as unreliable, shifty layabouts were accurate.
GOP: “So you mean, we need to push for amnesty…?”
Democrats can’t be that STUPID !
Everyone knows Latinos are religious and conservative people. There are a wide range of issues that Latinos disagree with Progressives.
Just because Democrat // Progressives are dumb enough to open the border does not mean Latinos are dumb enough to vote for them.
_____
1. CRIME. They have seen wild crime in their old country and they do not like it. They WANT police (so the progressive “Defund Police” will not work.
2. ABORTION. They are catholic and pro-family and pro-Life.
3. SOCIALISM. They did not go through the pain of emigrating to a capitalist country because they want to socialism or collectivism.
4. LGBTQ+. They are not tolerant of LGBTQ+. At all.
5. BLM. They don’t care much for BLM. Progressive “virtue signaling” is the reason 2 million Black people cannot find jobs. Were did those jobs go? They are taken by Latino emigrants who wil work harder, longer hours for less. Democrats have F*cked the Black people in their blind quest for Latinos. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Black people finally realize that and the majority stop voting for Democrats.
6. FAMILY. Latinos and Republicans are pro-family. BLM and other progressives want to destroy the nuclear family.
___
Dem/ Progressive dreams of perpetual power are fading fast.
“Democrats can’t be that STUPID!”
Let’s hope they are.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Napoleon
As long as affluent Whites are moving Dem faster than Latinos are moving GOP, the Democrats will stay in power. Abortion is the primary issue that moves suburbanites to the Democrats.
Hispanics may be drifting away from the Democrats, but that is more than compensated by affluent White suburbanites moving toward the Democrats faster and faster. The affluent Whites are why Trump lost in 2020, and that group is the only true swing voters that exist. They are heavily influenced by the mainstream media, and are very pro-abortion – especially if they have daughters. Hispanics moving toward the GOP helps a bit, but White suburbanites are our problem with the next few election cycles.