The Majority That Wasn't

15 Years ago we read an article by John Judas and Ruy Texiera, later turned into a book, titled The Emerging Democratic Majority.

The article was loaded with demographic analysis, voting trends and the like and posited that we were entering an era of Democrat Party dominance.

That fall in the midterm elections the GOP picked up seats in the house and in the senate. Bush was reelected in 2004. The Dems romped in 2006 and 2008. The GOP did the same in 2010 and 2014. Obama was reelected in 2012. Of course Trump...

This month John Judas writes that the Emerging Democratic Majority thesis was wrong.

Well duh.

The thesis was right about immigration, minority population growth and all that. But it had a flaw as fatal as the  Death Star exhaust port. Judas and Texiera assumed all those minorities would simply keep voting Democrat. They also assumed the white working class would stay Democrat.

The white working class votes Republican today and Trump was able to peel off enough minority voters to put him over the top. Trump got 29 percent of the Hispanic vote. That's two points better than Romney in 2012, by the way.

 Voter's choices shift depending on circumstance. For example, a successful Hispanic car dealer might not be enamored with Democrat plans to raise energy prices. Indian Americans might not like the Dems embrace of Michael Brown, who after all assaulted an Indian shop keeper. Trump swung white working class voters and cracked Hillary!'s blue wall in MI, PA, and WI. Coalitions never stay stable.

We got that in 2002.

By the way, the Trump coalition dies with Trump.