Immigration bill to give Dems White House grip
Party analysts revel in expected tidal wave of new Hispanic voters
Published: 10/10/2013 at 8:25 PM
NEW
YORK – Are centrist Republican senators supporting passage of
comprehensive immigration-reform legislation playing the role of
unwitting dupes in a Democratic Party plan to control the White House
with a tidal wave of Hispanic immigration?
The question is being asked increasingly by conservative Republicans as S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,
backed by Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio,
gets ready to follow the debt-ceiling debate to the floor of Congress.
Democratic
strategists believe the bill will add more than enough Hispanic
immigrants to U.S. voters rolls to give the Democratic Party the
electoral majority needed to win the White House the next two decades,
starting with 2016 and continuing for the next five scheduled
presidential elections.
The Washington-based Center for Immigration, CIS, released Thursday a study that should trouble knowledgeable Republican Party presidential hopefuls.
Based on projections published by the Congressional Budget Office, the CIS study estimates
that should S. 744 become law, more than 17 million new potential
voting-age citizens would be added to U.S. voting rolls by 2036, in
addition to the nearly 15 million that current levels of legal
immigration will add by 2036.
“Current
immigration policy is adding millions of new voters each decade,”
pointed out Steven Camarota, the CIS director of research. “The Gang of
Eight bill will add millions more. This is one of the most important
consequences of immigration. Will it result in voters who need or want
more government services? Or, will it reshape American foreign policy?
There has been almost no discussion of the impact on the electorate.”
But
the trend has not escaped John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, the authors
of the 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” They join a growing
group of demographers and political scientists who continue to advise
Democratic Party politicians that a growing Hispanic population marks
the dawning of a new progressive era, assuring the Democratic Party
control over presidential elections for the foreseeable future. It would
replicate if not surpass the hold the Democratic Party had on the White
House in the last century, beginning with FDR’s victory in the 1932
presidential election.
Obama’s hold on Hispanic voters
Hispanics voted for Obama over Romney by 71 percent to 27 percent, according to the Pew Research Hispanic Center.
It
represented a gain in Hispanic supporters for Obama since 2008, when
Hispanics voted 67 percent for him, compared to 31 percent for McCain.
George
W. Bush registered the strongest Republican share of the Hispanic vote
since 1980 when in 2004, he drew 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, versus
58 percent for John Kerry.
Clearly,
the support George W. Bush showed for U.S. relations with Mexico and
the support he and McCain gave to passing comprehensive immigration
reform legislation during Bush’s second term cut into the historic
affinity Hispanics have had for the Democratic Party.
The
Pew Research data also supported the contention that Obama’s national
vote share among Hispanic voters was the highest seen by a Democratic
candidate since 1996, when President Bill Clinton won 72 percent of the
Hispanic vote.
Moreover, the Hispanic vote represented 10 percent of the electorate in 2012, up from 9 percent in 2008 and 8 percent in 2004.
The data also showed Hispanic support for Obama was key to victory in several swing states:
- In Florida, Obama carried the Hispanic vote 60 percent to 39 percent, an improvement over 2008, when Obama won 57 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared to 42 percent for McCain;
- In Colorado, Obama carried the Hispanic vote by a wide margin, 75 percent to 23 percent, again bettering his performance in 2008, when Obama won the Hispanic vote in Colorado by 61 percent to 38 percent;
- In Nevada, Obama won the Hispanic vote 70 percent to 25 percent, doing less well than in 2008, when Obama won the Hispanic vote by a 76 percent share.
In
2012, Hispanics made up 17 percent of the vote in Florida, 14 percent
in Colorado and 18 percent in Nevada. Obama also won 68 percent of the
Hispanic vote in North Carolina, 65 percent in Wisconsin, 64 percent in
Virginia and 53 percent in Ohio.
Combining
African-Americans at approximately 13 percent of the electorate in 2012
and Hispanics at 10 percent of the electorate, Obama had a solid
advantage on 23 percent of the electorate, virtually 1 of every 4
voters.
So,
in the 2012 presidential election, with roughly 110 million votes
likely to be cast, Obama ended up gaining from African-American voters
95 percent of the 14.3 million votes they cast, for a total of
13,585,000 votes.
From
Hispanics, Obama ended up gaining 71 percent of the 11 million votes
cast, for a total of 7,810,000. In 2012, Obama gained approximately 62
million votes, meaning that approximately 40 percent of the votes he
needed for victory came from a combination of African-American and
Hispanic voters alone.
Put
another way, Mitt Romney could well have begun the presidential
election campaign against Obama calculating he would get very little
support from one quarter of the electorate, almost regardless of his
campaign message.
The emerging Democratic majority
In
their 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” journalist Judis
and sociologist Teixeira predicted a fundamental realignment of the
voters to produce a new emerging Democratic majority that they say based
on progressive values and a post-industrial view of America.
The
Democratic majority would bring together the following demographic
groups: white working class and middle class Democrats; minorities,
including blacks, Hispanics and Asian-American voters; women voters,
especially single, working and highly educated women; and professionals,
including highly educated tech specialists.
“These
are products of a new postindustrial capitalism, rooted in diversity
and social equality, and emphasizing the production of ideas and
services rather than goods,” Judis and Teixeira wrote. “And while some
of these voters are drawn to the Democratic Party by its New Deal past,
many others resonate strongly to the new causes the Democrats adopted
during the sixties.”
The
new causes included lifestyle issues such as support for abortion,
acceptance of same sex marriage and “a new postindustrial metropolitan
order in which men and women play equal roles and in which white America
is supplanted by multiracial, multiethnic America.”
On
page 70 of their book, the authors produced an electoral map of the
United States in which the configuration of the states looks remarkably
like the battleground between Obama and McCain in 2008 and between Obama
and Romney in 2012.
Supporting
the contention that a new Democratic majority is emerging, Obama won
both elections by margins sufficiently large that the GOP did not
contest the elections on issues of voter fraud.
The disappearing white voter
The demographic reality is that the white population of America will be a minority population within the next 30 years.
- The white portion of the population is expected to peak in 2024, at 199.6 million, with the non-Hispanic white population projected to fall by nearly 20.6 million from 2024 to 2060.
- Meanwhile, the Hispanic population is expected to more than double, from 53.3 million in 2012 to 128.8 million in 2060.
- The black population is expected to increase from 41.2 million in 2012 to 61.8 million by 2060, growing from 13.1 percent of the population in 2012, to 14.7 percent in 2060.
- The Asian population is expected to double from 15.9 million in 2012 to 34.4 million in 2060, moving from 5.1 percent of the population to 8.2 percent of the population in that period.
- The total minority population, comprising approximately 37 percent today, is projected to increase to 57 percent in 2060.
White
Americans are expected to be a minority for the first time in 2042.
While the non-Hispanic white population will remain the nation’s largest
group, no group will make up a majority.
In
the immediate future, increased Hispanic immigration into the Southwest
is likely to make the Western states of Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona
and New Mexico increasingly Democrat-voting blue states.
Demographers with progressive political opinions have viewed the demographic changes enthusiastically,
believing “the potential for true progressive government is greater
than at any point in decades,” with the electorate making a commitment
to a progressive vision of government, international values, and
economic and political policies “that could transform the country in a
way that has not been seen since FDR and the New Deal.”
Writing
of Obama’s reelection in 2012, Teixeira, one of the first to identify a
new emerging Democratic majority, and his colleague John Halpin, both
currently senior fellows at the Center for American Progress, wroteimmediately after the election, on Nov. 8, 2012:
“Obama’s strong progressive majority – built on a multi-racial,
multi-ethnic, cross-class coalition in support of an activist government
that promotes freedom, opportunity, and security for all – is real and
growing and it reflects the face and beliefs of the United States in the
early part of the 21st Century.”
In
glowing terms, Teixeira and Halpin credited Obama’s win to a message
that “everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and
everyone plays by the same rules.” Teixeira and Halpin praised Obama for
the stimulus bill, for the bailout of the auto and financial sectors,
for passing Obamacare and for expanded rights for women, Latinos, and
gay and lesbian families.
Making
their message clear, Teixeira and Halpin added a warning for the
Republican Party: “The GOP must face the stark reality that its voter
base is declining and its ideology is too rigid to represent the
changing face of today’s country.”
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