Ruy Teixeira, Co-Author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority"
buzzflash.com
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
In the midst of despair, as the forces of darkness have descended over the Potomac, there is cause for hope. According to Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, authors of "The Emerging Democratic Majority," the Democrats are poised, in terms of demographic trends, to take over the White House and Congress. That may explain why the Republicans have resorted to deceit, misinformation, propaganda, subterfuge, impeachment, and stolen elections to maintain power. Remember, Bush ran campaign ads that made him look like a soft and fuzzy Democrat. Only after being appointed did he pull the bait and switch and turn into the Darth Vader of right wing politics.,
If there's any confirmation of the trend proposed by Teixeira and Judis, one need only remember that the Democrats won the last three presidential elections in terms of popular vote -- and if you give Florida to Gore, the Democrats have built a blue state electoral majority for years to come. Of course, that's if there's another election, but let's not go there right now.
"The Emerging Democratic Majority" is not a rhetorical salvo against the Republican party. (The commentary in this preface is purely BuzzFlash's.) To the contrary, it's an easy-to-read, thoughtful demographic study of why the Democrats should be winning the presidency and control the Congress.
Of course, the big unanswered question here is can the Democrats get the Democratic message out and not be co-opted or outsmarted by the Republicans?
Yes, there are more voting Americans now who are, in theory, sympathetic to the Democratic platform. However, whether or not the Democrats can be shrewd enough to get their points across -- and strong enough to define the issues rather than being defined by them -- is the subject of another book altogether.
In short, what "The Emerging Democratic Majority" proves is that the political leadership of America belongs to the Democrats for the asking. Of course, much of the American public is still waiting for them to stand up to the Republican thugs and define the questions, rather than being defined by them.
BuzzFlash strongly recommends "The Emerging Democratic Majority" for its solid research and reasoned tone. We were pleased to interview one of its co-authors Ruy Teixeira.
In this time when we stand on the precipice of a state envisioned by Orwell, it's reassuring to know that Americans prefer truth, justice and the American way. They are just waiting for someone to lead them out of this nightmare of government by deception, secrecy and sale to the highest bidder.
* * *
BUZZFLASH: You wrote "The Emerging Democratic Majority" with John Judis. In a nutshell, what is your basis for saying there is an emerging Democratic majority that is proceeding in a similar way to the then-emerging Republican majority during the Nixon and Reagan eras?
RUY TEIXEIRA: I think the short course, as it were, is that if you look at the way the country has changed in the last couple of decades, you can see that in terms of changes in attitudes, in terms of how the economy is developing, in terms of the emergence of different demographic groups -- it all fundamentally disadvantages the Republicans and advantages the Democrats.
Just as Kevin Phillips, in 1970, correctly pointed to some of the ways in which the country was changing that were going to basically advantage Republicans and give them a sort of natural majority -- which didn't mean they were going to win every election, but they would have a natural majority -- we believe the same thing is happening today, and it's been happening throughout the '90s.
And the basic reasons for this are, one, the margins of these electoral groups that I've just mentioned -- particularly professionals, women and minorities. If you look at professionals, in the last four elections they have averaged 52-40 percent for the Democrats. And that's different than managers, who have similar incomes sometimes and who have averaged 49-41 percent for the Republicans. You look at women, especially working, single and highly educated women, they've all gone strongly Democratic. Single working women, for example, have gone from about 19 to 29 percent of women, and they now vote something like 69-29 for the Democrats -- huge, huge support.
And everybody knows minorities support the Democrats. Maybe it's less well known how rapidly they've grown. They're about ten percent of voters in the early '70s. They're close to a fifth today. Probably be close to a quarter by 2010. And this is the group that overall has been voting about 75 percent Democratic. Look at Hispanics, Asians and blacks all together -- you have the emergence of these electoral groups, which are fundamentally changing the demographics of a lot of states in the United States. Probably California is the most vivid example.
I'm talking to you from Illinois, I gather. Illinois has been a state affected by changing demographics. It's also been affected by another very important point that we deal with in the book: the emergence of what we call "ideopolises". If you look at the areas of the country that are changing the most rapidly economically, they're becoming part of this post-industrial economy, where the production of ideas and services is replacing the production of things. These ideopolises are postindustrial metropolitan areas that include both the suburbs and the city.
If you look at these areas that have sort of moved the farthest down this path, these are all areas that are going Democratic. And not just in California, and not just on the East Coast, but also in places like where you are, in Chicago. Even in places in the South, like the high-tech areas and the tourist areas of Florida. Look at the Research Triangle area in North Carolina. Look at the Austin area in Texas. It's all over the place. So, in a way, if you look at the picture of America in terms of how it's developing as an economy and as a society, it's really these areas where the Democrats have the advantage.
In fact, if you compare the beginning of the Reagan era to the last presidential election, in 1980, Reagan handily carried votes in the ideopolis and non-ideopolis areas of the country. But if you look now at the 263 counties that we believe to be counted as among part of this ideopolis sector of the United States, that ideopolis sector cast about 44 percent of the overall vote and supported Gore by 54-41, which is a complete turnaround from their political behavior twenty years previous.
So in a nutshell, we're saying that if you look at the way the country's changing, if you look at how it's evolving, if you look at how it's moving into the future, those are the areas where the Democrats are doing well. And if you look at the places that are sort of developing slowly or stuck in the past, that's where you find the Republican space.
BUZZFLASH: Well, you have three criteria that you set up in your introduction to kind of use as benchmarks for this change into an emerging Democratic majority. And those are work, values and geography. Do you want to explain why those are the three criteria you chose?
TEIXEIRA: Well, in terms of the work thing, we're really talking about the changes toward the postindustrial economy, which is producing, for example, a class like professionals, who are now moving in a strongly Democratic direction. We're talking about geography. We're looking at the way in which you see the emergence of these postindustrial areas we call ideopolises. And if you look at their values -- which is something I haven't touched on yet; maybe I'll just expand it in for a second: If you look at the values of postindustrial America, arguably the sort of common sense of America today is the moderate part of the movement of the '60s.
In other words, the movement for women's rights, the movement for civil rights, for diversity, for tolerance, to protect the environment, to protect the rights of consumers -- all of these things which might have had their somewhat extreme elements at the time, and, in fact, contributed to the emergence of a conservative Republican majority of the '70s and '80s because there was a backlash against the extremism of some of these movements. But in each and every one of these cases, a moderate version of those movements and of the values those movements represented have, in a sense, become internalized as the common sense of large sectors of the country, particularly in the ideopolises we've talked about.
In fact, public opinion analysts generally agree: If you look at the greatest changes in public opinion over the last forty years, they have been in the area of social and cultural values. And they've all been changes in a liberal direction, without exception.
BUZZFLASH: Well, a basic tenet in the book seems to be that we're also moving toward a multi-cultural society, which I would assume you would pose or put up California as the kind of model of that. Last year, for the first time, there was a threshold crossed that there were more minorities than so-called whites or Caucasians in California.
TEIXEIRA: That's correct. |
