Saturday, October 29, 2016

Hey -- we've known this in Cali since 1994

Paul Waldman reports the obvious about this election year.

The “Emerging Democratic Majority” is coming to pass. Back in 2002, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote a book of that name, arguing that a new progressive coalition was poised to become the American majority. “Today’s Democrats,” they wrote, “are the party of the transition from urban industrialism to a new postindustrial metropolitan order in which men and women play equal roles and in which white America is supplanted by multiracial, multiethnic America.” The book was embraced by liberals and mocked by conservatives, particularly after George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. But it has become clear that the Democratic coalition is not only the majority right now, it will become an even larger majority in the future.

Nobody embodies that emerging Democratic majority more than Barack Obama, the multiracial cosmopolitan urbanite who assembled the “Obama coalition” Clinton so desperately wants to keep intact. So she’ll take any opportunity she can to associate herself with him, especially since instead of nominating someone who might pull some of those voters over to their side, Republicans chose a candidate who would only exacerbate their disadvantage and narrow their appeal.

It continues to frustrate me that pundits and the rest of the country don't realize that this story played out in my state, coming to fruition -- without an Obama -- during the '00s. For more, see this, or this, or this.

Yeah, we're a little off kilter sometimes, but we're also showing there is a future for a new (North) American dream. Get used to it.

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