A Daily Kos diarist did a pretty cool demographic analysis of Texas this week and discovered that the Lone Star State is going to be a purple swing state by 2024 and will have a Democratic lean by 2028 at the latest. You can play with the Electoral College calculator to see what this means. But, trust me, is spells certain doom for the current incarnation of the Republican Party. My interpretation of this information is that we can put an expiration date on the current madness we are witnessing. Like milk gone bad, the electorate will no longer consider drinking what the GOP is offering by sometime in the next decade.
I’ve been looking at the current Electoral College map and reading Nate Silver’s analysis, and I see New Mexico and Nevada already moving away from swing-state status, with Colorado nearing that condition. As far as I can tell, Mitt Romney has a chance to outperform John McCain by taking back North Carolina and Indiana, with an outside chance of winning Virginia, Ohio, and Florida, too. That still leaves him 14 electoral votes short of a tie, but it appears to be his upside potential at the moment. Short of an ill-timed catastrophe, it appears that the modern GOP is already incapable of winning a national election. But eight or twelve years from now, they’ll be incapable of making a plausible argument to a potential financial contributor that they have any chance of winning a presidential election.
I don’t think the Republican Party will stay the same. But we shouldn’t forget that the GOP failed to control the House from 1955-1995 and failed to control the Senate from 1955-1981. They are capable of existing in a minority status without adapting for astonishingly long periods of time.
The difference here is that we are not talking about Congress; we are talking about the White House. Once Texas becomes a Dem-leaning state sometime between 2024 and 2028, the current incarnation of the GOP will have no shot at sitting in the Oval Office.
If the GOP wains, and we stick with a 2-party system as we are wont to do in this country, who might take their place as an oppositional party? The Libertarians? I can’t see the religious fundamentalists getting behind them at this point, but then again it seems as if conservative christians are willing to swallow whatever justifications their leaders come up with; the prosperity gospel being one example.
Keep in mind that “waining” on the part of the GOP could take a very long time. Drunk on their own incendiary rhetoric, like alcoholics, they may have to hit the bottom of the electoral barrel before they truly reform. And given that all the incentives – of conservative media figures, conservative activists, Red-state politicians afraid of primaries – will continue to push the party to the right, hitting bottom could take 20 years. Nothing except massive, continual electoral drubbings will convince them to change.
I don’t see a big third party push happening on the right anytime soon. Maybe when a sizeable enough moderate wing is resurrected to have real influence in the party again. But if that happens I expect the conservative Christians to just give up and stay home as they become a smaller and less influential part of the GOP base. I believe that for many years the evangelicals simply didn’t take part in electoral politics (as they believed it was too sinful or wordly or something), and they may return to that posture over time.
Maybe someday there will be halfway houses and 12 step programs for recovering wingnuts. Although I wouldn’t mind seeing Grover being forced to set up housekeeping under an interstate bridge somewhere, along with various assorted banksters and hedge fund managers.
Just like Republicans made their (relative) peace with the New Deal in the early 1950s, enabling them to elect a president, Republicans in the 2020s will be able to change the current demographic math by making a (relative) peace with some of the changes in American society that they now oppose.
For example, imagine that same-sex marriage becomes legal in most (if not all) states over the next 10-15 years. Next, imagine that Democrats (with or without some Republican votes) are able to pass some sort of comprehensive immigration reform.
Once those issues are “off the table”, then Republicans will be able to compete for votes in those constituencies based on other issues.
It’ll be a more generic “white” party, though probably not explicitly defined that way. The flyover states vs. the coasts and the big cities, same as it is now. Blue Dogs plus the pre-Norquist/pre-Evangelical Republicans plus conservative or opportunistic Latinos. Strong Labor is the only thing that could disrupt it, but recent history says the probability of that is low.
The system always tends towards opposing and mitigating nonwhite leadership. In theory, it shouldn’t take substantial moderation to restore a 2000-04 coin flip situation. The current GOP radicals will do their darndest to avoid doing any such thing, but I just can’t see the party annihilating completely over the next twenty years.
The most-likely scenario is that the Republican Party itself adapts to make sure it can be a 50% party. This happens all the time in a two-party system, to one degree or another. Look at how the Democrats adapted after Mondale and Dukakis.
If the party does collapse, though, history suggests that it won’t be some existing third party that goes from 0.5% in the polls to being one of the two parties in a two-party system. Rather, as with the formation of the Republicans themselves, a new party would be created for that purpose.
I think there’s a chance to even accelerate that transition by focusing some resources in Texas to build the party. Good voter registration efforts and strong GOTV efforts.
As much as I like the projection, it’s bogus.
The external events that are likely to shape the next decade are so huge that political trend extrapolations that far out are basically meaningless.
We’re looking at a decade when we could very well see the first worldwide climate-change induced food wars due to extreme droughts / floods, a decade in which Mexico has the chance of being reduced to a failed state from (soon to be) net zero oil revenue and extreme weather and internal conflict, to the implosion of the European and Japanese economic systems, etc. And those are just considering the things that might happen based upon current information. The effects these and more will have on global politics will likely transform the political axes themselves.
If all those things happen, what do you think the American public is more likely to demand? A sizeable increase in government intervention in order to address the problems? Or more modern GOP-style deregulation/”let the free market solve it” BS?
Combating climate change alone will take a huge amount of government effort. If/when big disasters start happening, the public will demand massive government action fast, and they will choose the Democrats as their vessel. There’s no way the GOP will plausibly be able to take up that mantle anytime soon. As of now, they don’t even officially believe climate change is real!
I don’t disagree, but all I’m saying is that I don’t think either party will survive intact in its present form. And as a result it’s possible there won’t be the money / political will / social stability to take on such an effort against climate change when there are other pressing matters that will seem to take precedence.
Imagine what might happen if Mexico becomes a failed state and hundreds of thousands decide to emigrate North. Or if there’s a more serious financial panic than 2008 (something that’s quite possible given that the underlying problems weren’t fixed). Or we get into a serious proxy war with China over oil and we cut off food exports to them.
I should say I’m not predicting any specific one of these things will happen, but things of that magnitude are likely.
This sounds a little too Hobbesian to me. Or maybe I need to stock up on weaponry. Shit, I’ve never handled a gun in my life. I’m so screwed!
Not really. This is a general problem with talking about such large-scale challenges is that people take them to mean an extreme like mad max. (I.e. if we can’t have business-as-usual it must mean the end of the world.)
Where have you been? That’s already happened. And at least 10 million have emigrated North.
yes, the point I was going to make. As for other pressing matters, have you noticed what’s happening this summer in the midwest? Not many consider the drought un-related to climate change.
That emigration was over a long period of time and last I checked Mexico’s government was still functioning just fine. Sure, it hasn’t been doing great, but it’s still a ways from failed state status. We haven’t seen the sort of large-scale high-speed emigration that the transition to a failed state would cause.
And as for climate change, of course I’ve seen what’s going on now – exactly my point. The climate instability we’re seeing now is going to keep getting worse by all climate forecasts. Think about the fact that the erratic climate effects we’re seeing today are a result of, in large measure, the emissions of the 1970s and 1980s (due to the climate system’s lag). Wait till we see the effects of the go-go 1990s…
China only a year or two ago became a food importer, and they’re having major environmental problems that are only going to be exacerbated by climate change. That, along with where global oil production is headed and other resource limits paint an ugly picture.
Mexico’s gov is not functioning fine, it’s on the verge of being a failed state, perhaps already is.
On the verge, maybe, but not a failed state by a trustworthy assessment:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failed_states_index_2012_interactive
India and China are considered to be higher risks for being failed states than Mexico.
china is investing in solar, large scale and small scale as i understand it
Investment in solar won’t do the trick, not in the way folks think it can. Physics professor Tom Murphy has all the details:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspective/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/my-great-hope-for-the-future/
Yes, but they are also investing very heavily in new coal plants.
As opposed to the US, where we’ve stopped building them entirely.
Oh, yeah. I’ve noticed. My lawn looks like Death Valley, cracked bricklike earth and all. My water bill came yesterday. $159, mostly from trying to save the trees. Had two peaches from three trees (actually only one had the peaches). Four apple trees had no apples. One apple tree had eight apples. Had one pear from three trees. Vegetable garden is best not mentioned.
Battery died on my six-month-old car after a week in the mid 100’s. It really shouldn’t have done that. The six YEAR old battery in my old car took two weeks in the high 100’s in Oklahoma last year. I wonder if the new car battery came from China.
At least I didn’t lose power during the heat wave as some 65,000 in the Chicago area did, some living very close to me. You haven’t lived until you’ve driven through the intersection of two major four lane highways at rush hour with no power to the traffic signals and no cops directing traffic. Hint, regardless of what the Rules Of The Road says, yield to determined 18 wheelers making left hand turns.
sorry to hear.
Thanks.
A good way to water treed: pound a thick nail through the bottom of a five-gallon bucket, fill the bucket with water, put it beneath the tree, and pull out the nail.
In half an hour, you’ll have a wet spot about the size of a pie plate, and five gallons of water soaked deep down into the root ball of your tree, even in the hardest-packed earth in a city sidewalk.
Thanks for the tip. Sounds better than just letting the hose run out on the ground.
http://www.beautifulsamoa.com/
And what does the House and Senate look like? Four more years of the same gridlock?
Probably, it’s Bill Clinton’s 2nd term without Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott’s genius for bipartisanship.
Even before Texas reaches its “tipping point”, the same demographic forces are likely to “tip” other states as well.
Off the top of my head, I’d guess that includes:
*Florida, Virginia and North Carolina becoming reliably Democratic;
*Georgia becoming a swing state;
*Arizona flipping from “red” to “blue”.
And all of those could happen by 2020. At that point we’re looking at a map in which a generic Democratic candidate starts out with over 300 electoral votes.
Unfortunately, Booman, without boots on the ground you ain’t gonna get SHIT to change.
The Democratic party in Texas and the rest of the deep south is kaput, dead, moribund, and being kept there by the dregs of the current Democratic leadership. There is a mentality of “don’t waste $$$ on races you can’t possibly win”.
Without Dean’s 50 state operation, we’ll NEVER retake some of the territory. If there was a decent ground operation in Texas outside Houston, we would stand an outside chance at beating Cruz. He’s not considered Jesus in Urban Texas, and the Latinos don’t like him (hint: He’s CUBAN, not Tejano).
There it is, DerFarm. That state isn’t going purple. Texas is going to go back to the wild wild west to revert to the natural state as our infrastructure & education system starts to decay all over the united states.
Not to mention the democrats inactivity on everything regarding corruption. Barofsky’s Bailout book will tell you that. Booman, here is what is going to happen. This Look forward not backward nonsense is going to RUIN this country for decades. Quote me on that, there is no strategy to combat that.
Not to mention the fact that voting theft is likely to be a rampant reality w/ the touch screen machines & the optical scanners. You can keep telling yourself it isn’t happening but the studies keep rolling in. Look at Florida and how the “CENTRAL HUB” was open to all hackers w/ the same damn password key on all of the polling stations for voting tabulation for every single poll station. Did any progressive blogs really cover that? Nope, crickets. If you listen closely you can hear a crunching sound, the sound of votes being eaten right in front of you w/out even knowing that your democracy is being digested by “theft”
I think Booman is right with regard to Presidential elections – Presidential campaigns can provide their own infrastructure, boots and funding. It helps to have an existing strong party, but they can operate without.
You are completely correct, though, that outside of Houston, Dallas and Austin the Texas Democratic Party is in no shape to take advantage of improved demographics at the local level. I’m not sure about San Antonio.
I was part of a wave of several dozen new volunteers and officers in a county democratic party in Texas during and after the 2008 election. I’ve quit. The existing party structure is disorganized, wary and resentful of large numbers of newcomers, ineffective in its fundraising, ossified in its structure and traditions, and deeply resistant to any change.
It will take at least a decade just to reshape local parties to take advantage of a swing in numbers and possibly longer. In addition, there are many rural areas where conservative ideology will still have firm hold.
So I predict that the GOP will survive as a force on the local level for a long, long time.
Really? And then what?
The Dems boldly swing left and the GOP, despite its whiteness, starts to win again because the Dems scared too many non-white as well as white voters?
The Dems, facing no effective competition, move right because that’s what the money boys want and they can do it at no cost?
Anyway, wouldn’t a one-party democracy be even worse than what we have now?
As far as I can tell, Mitt Romney has a chance to outperform John McCain by taking back North Carolina and Indiana, with an outside chance of winning Virginia, Ohio, and Florida, too. That still leaves him 14 electoral votes short of a tie, but it appears to be his upside potential at the moment.
When I add up the votes, I get Romney at 3 electoral votes short of a tie, meaning that any other state gives him the election. New Hampshire, Iowa, and Wisconsin are all possibilities. Maybe even Pennsylvania with voter ID. There’s going to be an awful lot of ad money floating around those four states. I think a Romney victory is a real possibility.
You must be giving him Colorado, too.
It is always close for the Right Wing, when they think cheat w/out the consequences. Kent Blackwell, anyone?