Donald Trump’s “war” on people of Hispanic ancestry is guaranteeing that the vast majority of Latinos in the future will be supporters of the Democratic Party long term, as they are in California.
When California Governor Pete Wilson promoted Proposition 187 to deny undocumented immigrants basic public services in the state, it backfired on him and the Republican Party, which had been dominant in the state for a few decades, including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as Californians who became President.
Proposition 187 was overturned in the courts, but it made the Republican Party the loser, as they rapidly lost any influence over the state, and the number of California Republicans in Congress dwindled down to seven in 2018, after years of great decline.
The same is about to happen in other states with large Latino population, including Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and ultimately, Texas.
And as this begins to happen, some of it in 2020, and more by 2024 and after, it will insure Democratic Congresses in the future, as congressional seats in those states start to fall into the hands of the Democrats.
And the Electoral College will bring a bright future as these four states turn blue, and particularly when Texas does so in the next decade.
So the day of GOP dominance with gerrymandering and voter suppression will come to an end, but the Democrats will have a massive job undoing the damage left by Donald Trump and his party.
So, if “the Electoral College will bring a bright future as these four states turn blue, and particularly when Texas does so in the next decade,” then maybe all those folks demanding the elimination of the Electoral College might want to back off a bit, eh?
i can’t help but wonder who would be for and against the Electoral College right now if the results of 2016 had been exactly reversed: If Trump had won the popular vote and Clinton had won the College.
I have a two-part response to different points made by Ronald. (The second part will come up later today, Tuesday, September 24, 2019.)
I offered at least one comment in response to Ronald’s “California Has Larger Economy Now Than the United Kingdom (Great Britain), Fifth Largest in World†(June 1, 2018, https://www.theprogressiveprofessor.com/?p=33901).
I wrote, “Wikipedia.org notes that Los Angeles County, California, with its county seat Los Angeles, has ‘more than 10 million inhabitants as of 2017,’ and has a ‘population [that] is larger than that of 41 individual U.S. states.’ From 1920 to 1984, a period of 64 years and 17 election cycles, Los Angeles County was carried by all presidential winners. … Los Angeles County pulled away from its bellwether status beginning in 1988. George Bush, the last Republican to carry California, won the state by +3.57 percentage points. Los Angeles County flipped for losing Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis and gave him a margin of +5.01. In successive elections, Los Angeles County pulled further away from that bellwether pattern and hardened its Democratic margins to a point in which it is now rock solid. In 2016, California carried for Hillary Clinton with a margin of +30 percentage points. Los Angeles County delivered a margin of +49.35.â€
Referring to the following, https://suburbanstats.org/population/california/how-many-people-live-in-los-angeles-county, for demographics and population, Hispanics are 47 percent of Los Angeles County, California.
A state that was not mentioned by Ronald but has considerable connection in pattern to California is New Mexico. In 2016, the size of the state’s presidential vote by Hispanics was 40 percent.
When it comes to whites, from that linked report, Los Angeles County has 50 percent. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election from New Mexico, whites were 49 percent the size of the state’s vote. (Here is an exit polls report by CNN: https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/new-mexico/president.) Nationally, for U.S. Popular Vote, whites were 70 percent the size of the votes cast for U.S. President.
Why connect these two states—much with Los Angeles County?
In response to Ronald’s “Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, and New Mexico: The Five Most Predictable States in Presidential Elections in American History†(September 15, 2018, https://www.theprogressiveprofessor.com/?p=34829), I listed all states for their historical performance in having carried for presidential winners. (Their reliability.)
New Mexico entered the union in 1912. No state ranks higher, for carrying for presidential winners, than New Mexico. It has carried for all presidential winners except in 1976, 2000, and 2016. (The latter two were elections in which the Electoral College and U.S. Popular Vote did not align to the same person. In the first, New Mexico and California carried the same—and for a nominee, an incumbent, Gerald Ford, who did not win and was unseated.) No state, throughout its history so far, has been carried 90 percent or more other than New Mexico.
From New Mexico’s 27 participating elections (1912 to 2016), it and California have carried the same in all with exceptions of 1912 and 1960 (when New Mexico carried for Democratic pickup winners Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy) and 2004 (when re-elected Republican incumbent George W. Bush won a pickup of both the U.S. Popular Vote and the state of New Mexico). In other words: When one of these two states voted with a winner, it was New Mexico.
So, in 24 of the last 27 United States presidential elections, these two states carried the same. That’s almost 90 percent. And, just as it is with California, no one who loosely or professionally follows electoral politics continues to categorize New Mexico as a “bellwether stateâ€.
When discussing the trends and impacts from Hispanics, while identifying specific states of influence, one state that has to be included is New Mexico.
This is the second part of my two-part response.
Ronald writes, “And as this begins to happen, some of it in 2020, and more by 2024 and after, it will insure Democratic Congresses in the future, as congressional seats in those states start to fall into the hands of the Democrats.â€
It is possible. But, it is not likely.
Since the 17th Amendment of the 1910s, the 27 midterm election cycles of 1914 to 2018 were outcomes in which the White House opposition party won the overall congressional seat gains in 24. The White House party won the overall gains in just 3—in 1934, 1998, and 2002.
It is in midterm elections, much more so than in presidential elections, that one or both of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate switch parties for majority control. And they commonly switch the White House opposition party.
Just one U.S. president, elected to more than one term, never lost same-party control of either house of Congress at any point during his presidency: Democrat Franklin Roosevelt.
Just one U.S. president, elected to more than one term, never had same-party control of either house of Congress at any point during his presidency: Republican Richard Nixon.
For Franklin Roosevelt, who won four terms, even his Democratic Party suffered major midterm losses of seats in 1938 and 1942. (He won his fourth and last term in 1944. He died in 1945. On successor Harry Truman’s watch was the 1946 results of both houses of Congress having flipped Republican.)
If one thinks the Democratic Party is going to win the presidency and Congress—and hold them for a substantial amount of time (meaning, with the presidency, beyond two terms and with, say, four or five)—the electoral patterns, since television, suggests otherwise. (And I would mention this, too, if it was the Republican, rather than the Democratic, Party.)
Since U.S. television’s first full decade, in the 1950s, there has been been only one occurrence in which a party won the presidency three consecutive terms—the Republicans, who won three, in the 1980s. From 1955 to 1994, a period of 40 consecutive years, the U.S. House was in the column of the Democratic Party even under Republican Party U.S. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower (after 1954), Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush.
Since 1992, every time the White House switched parties—the 1992 Democratic pickup for Bill Clinton; the 2000 Republican pickup for George W. Bush; the 2008 Democratic pickup for Barack Obama; the 2016 Republican pickup for Donald Trump—came same-party majorities of both houses of Congress. They all lost at least one of those two houses of Congress by the end of Year #02. Vermont’s Jim Jeffords switched affiliation from Republican to independent, in 2001, and that switched the U.S. Senate to the Democrats. The U.S. House flipped to the White House opposition party with Year #02 midterms of the other three presidents.
Although gradual changes in the map can be exciting, it cannot insure either of the two major political parties will become dominant over an incredibly long run.