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Celerity

(42,666 posts)
Wed Jan 26, 2022, 12:30 AM Jan 2022

Confessions of a Liberal Heretic

Ruy Teixeira was co-author of one of the most influential political books of the 21st century. Now, he says, Democrats are getting its lessons all wrong.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/us/politics/ruy-teixeira-democrats.html

A funny thing happened on the way to the emerging Democratic majority. Twenty years on, the co-authors of a hugely influential work on the subject acknowledge that their party took a detour. In 2002, the political scientist [link:ruyteixeira11@gmail.com|Ruy Teixeira] and the journalist John B. Judis published a book that struck a chord among liberals despondent over the success of George W. Bush, a president who was then so popular that he gained seats in that year’s midterm election.

“The Emerging Democratic Majority” took note of the demographic change pulsing through the country, and boldly predicted that the Democratic Party was poised to dominate American politics for the foreseeable future. “Over the next decade, this bloc of voters is expected to continue to increase and, extrapolating from recent trends, could make up nearly a quarter of the electorate,” Teixeira and Judis wrote. “If these voters remain solidly Democratic, they will constitute a formidable advantage for any Democratic candidate. Democrats could suffer from an embarrassment of political riches.”

Six years later, the American public elected Barack Obama, an African American president whose rainbow coalition seemed to vindicate the thesis. A Time magazine cover from May 2009 pictured an elephant below the headline “Endangered Species,” capturing the feeling that Republicans’ demographic reckoning had finally arrived. But it unraveled quickly with the election of Donald Trump, who not only discovered pockets of white working-class voters that few knew existed, but also appealed to more voters of color than anyone had expected.

Now, as President Biden sinks in the polls, Teixeira finds himself fighting against what he says is a caricature of his famous book. His Substack newsletter, The Liberal Patriot, delivers “no-holds-barred, reality-based analysis,” unafraid to take on what he calls a “race-essentialist” dogma that is dominating the Democratic Party. Teixeira is unsparing about the party strategists who he believes are leading Democrats astray — and unapologetic about offending many on his own side. His newsletter has become a kind of samizdat for like-minded liberals who aren’t as willing to speak their minds.

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Confessions of a Liberal Heretic (Original Post) Celerity Jan 2022 OP
How Not to Build a Coalition - The Left's Theory of the Case Falls Apart Klaralven Jan 2022 #1
I am open-minded enough to take his (and others like David Shor, etc) ideas seriously Celerity Jan 2022 #3
right wing xtians of all ethnic groups vote nt msongs Jan 2022 #2
 

Klaralven

(7,510 posts)
1. How Not to Build a Coalition - The Left's Theory of the Case Falls Apart
Wed Jan 26, 2022, 12:37 AM
Jan 2022

...

Now that a year has passed since Biden took office, it’s a good time to ask: how’s all that working out? The left of the Democratic party has a theory of the case on how their actions will build a dominant progressive electoral coalition. In what follows, I will compare five key aspects of this case to actual results in the real world. It’s not a pretty picture.

1. Turnout, turnout, turnout! You don’t have to talk to anyone on the left of the Democrats for any length of time before they evince their touching faith in the wonder-working powers of high voter turnout. Interrogate them a little further and it turns out what they really mean is that the stark choices presented to the electorate by progressive policies will produce massive turnout by Democratic-leaning constituencies (nonwhites, young voters, etc)…..but (somehow) not on the other side. That’s not the way it works. The other side gets to vote too and the very stark choices favored by those on the left may mobilize the other side just as much—maybe more!—than the left’s side.

...

2. “People of Color’! Perhaps no factor is so central to the left’s theory of electoral case than the growth of the nonwhite population in the country and the presumed way being “people of color” welds them together into a voter group with unshakeable loyalty to the Democratic party and loathing for the Republican party. This assumption looks less tenable by the day.

...

3. Cultural Leftism Is a Winner! The left in the Democratic party insists that cultural leftism is central to consolidating the “rising American electorate” that will power the Democratic party to dominance in an increasingly multicultural, multiracial America. It is a feature they say, not a bug, of current Democratic practice.

...

4. The Crisis of Democracy!

...

5. It’s Transformation Time!

https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/how-not-to-build-a-coalition

Celerity

(42,666 posts)
3. I am open-minded enough to take his (and others like David Shor, etc) ideas seriously
Wed Jan 26, 2022, 12:53 AM
Jan 2022

We are cratering with Hispanic, Moderate, and Asian voters atm. Younger voters as well, but that may be for different reasons.

Something certainly has to change or (especially when combined with continued inflation, Covid, no voter bills, and no BBB, although hopefully we can pass a reduced BBB with very focused things) we are in for a monumental bloodbath in 2022, which sets us up very poorly for 2024.

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