Demography, destiny, elections, education
by David Safier
George Will has a column today whose first paragraph ends,
And now the Republican Party, like today's transfer-payment state, is endangered by tardiness in recognizing that demography is destiny. [boldface added]
"Demography" is the pundit's vocabulary word of the day. Everyone's talking about the shrinking white vote, more specifically the shrinking white male vote, even more specifically the shrinking old white male vote. There are too many of those "others" — ethnic minorities, women and young people — for the Grand Old Party not to become the Grand Extinct Party if it doesn't change its ways.
For an education geek like me who has followed the tragicomic stylings of the Goldwater Institute for years, the combination of "demography" and "destiny" has a certain resonance. G.I.'s former education guy, Matthew Ladner, who is now helping Jeb Bush push his conservative education reform/educational choice agenda forward, wrote a book — really a longish pamphlet — in 2008 called "Demography is not Destiny" with a forward by his current boss, Jeb Bush. The book is a collection of charts and graphs combined with verbal smoke and mirrors trumpeting the "Florida Education Miracle." The idea is, poor and minority children can succeed if only the schools figure out how to do it right, and Florida has figured it out. The pamphlet/book was an early example of the conservative meme that schools are failing to do their job because they're not turning children who live in poverty with undereducated parents, many of whom also have the burden of being discriminated against because of their color, into high achieving readers, writers and mathematicians. Florida is doing it, the story goes, so your schools can too.
The problem is, Florida's educational miracle is not now, nor has it ever been that miraculous. At best, it's shown some promise, but even that doesn't stand up well under careful scrutiny.
This year, a paper was published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform titled, "Is Demography Still Destiny?" which looks at student achievement in New York City. The answer, unfortunately, is Yes, more often than not, demography is destiny.
Beautify Arizona: take down your campaign signs
Democrats make major gains in state houses on election day
Will Puerto Rico become the 51st state?
Latino vote critical to President Obama’s victory
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
No matter how you look at exit poll data for the 2012 election, there is no question that Latinos helped to decisively determine its outcome. Kathleen Geier writes at the Political Animal blog, The growing power of the Latino vote:
Where the Latino vote is concerned, Barack Obama crushed Mitt Romney. CNN’s exit poll shows Obama winning 71% of that vote, and the polling organization Latino Decisions measured even bigger gains for Obama, showing that Obama beat Romney by a whopping 75% to 23% among Latinos. In the electoral college, the Latino vote was crucial to Obama, particularly in the battleground states of Colorado and Nevada, which Obama won, and Florida (which, as of this writing, is undecided).
These results are part of a long, and from the Republican point of view, worrisome trend. According to official exit polls, Republican presidential candidates won 44% of the Latino vote in 2004, 31% in 2008, and 27% in 2012. Moreover, Latinos are continuing to grow as a share of the electorate: they were 8% of voters in 2004, 9% in 2008, and 10% in 2012.
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It’s not merely that the G.O.P. has become the anti-immigrant party; the G.O.P.’s economic message does not appeal to Latinos either. Polls of Latino voters show that the economy is their top concern, with immigration a distant second. Latinos tend to find Democratic policies far more appealing; by wide margins, they like Obamacare and disagree with a Republican-style, slash-spending-only approach to the deficit.
Beyond that, there is good reason to believe that Latino voters’ alienation from the G.O.P. goes deeper than their dislike of the G.O.P.’s positions on immigration and the economy. Republican policies such as Arizona’s infamous show-me-your-papers law and the ban, also courtesy of Arizona, on Mexican-American studies classes have a very obvious, and very nasty, racist intent and impact.
In addition, the racist treatment Republicans meted out to historic Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will not soon be forgotten by Latinos. Latinos have also seen the nonstop parade of racism Republicans have directed against Barack Obama over the past four years, and surely they know that the white Republicans who judge Obama by his skin color are likely to feel similarly about Latinos. Republican racism may be a key reason why Latinos report they were quite enthusiastic about voting this time around, even more so than in 2008.
Finally, on top of the nastily racist policies and actions of the Republicans, there’s also the fact that the G.O.P. doesn’t even bother trying to court the Latino vote any more.
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Latinos, like most humans, know when they’re not wanted. And since the Republicans don’t show any signs — yet — of wanting to invite anyone except white people, and preferably white people who older, male, married, and Christian at that, to their Grand Old Party, Latinos are likely to continue to flock to the Democrats en masse. For as long as that continues to happen, the Republicans will need all the luck they can get if they wish to become America’s majority party.
UPDATE: The New York Times reports, A Record Latino Turnout, Solidly Backing Obama:
Defying predictions that their participation would be lackluster, Latinos turned out in record numbers on Tuesday and voted for President Obama by broad margins, tipping the balance in at least three swing states and securing their position as an organized force in American politics with the power to move national elections.
A big win for gay marriage rights on election day
Democratic Senate wins are a ‘big effin’ deal’ for liberals
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
As Vice President Joe Biden said to President Obama on the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic Senate wins on Tuesday are a "big effin' deal" for liberals. Greg Sargent writes, A big night for Democrats and liberals:
Obama has been reelected with a resounding victory in the electoral college (the popular vote is outstanding). Democrats have routed Republicans in the Senate races. A progressive champion has been sent to the Upper Chamber in the person of Elizabeth Warren. The first openly gay Senator — Tammy Baldwin, another solid liberal — joins her. The Dem majority will be more progressive and energetic.
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Obamacare will survive. It will continue to be implemented, and provided that it works, it will grow in popularity as its benefits kick in. The health law will slowly get woven into the fabric of American life, just as the major progressive reforms of the 20th Century did over time.
The economy is likely to continue to recover. If Mitt Romney had won, he and his ideas (tax cuts, deregulation, unshackling the free market) might have been associated with the recovery, leaving Keynesianism and stimulus spending thoroughly discredited.
Instead, Obama and Democrats will hopefully gain more credit for the ongoing recovery, and perhaps the idea that government can act to fix the economy will get rehabilitated. Warren’s victory is important here, too: The most vocal advocate of progressive taxation in the country was sent to the Senate, at a time when the argument over whether to raise taxes on the rich to help fix our fiscal problems is about to climax.
