Demographics and Destiny
How two progressive writers’ electoral hopes for the future changed America in ways they could not have imagined.
There are many factors that have made American politics so toxic. The 2000 Presidential election. The rise of the Tea Party and later Donald Trump. The Iraq war. The legacy of the Confederacy.
But there is one factor that has changed how our political parties operate, how they look at the world, and how they will govern America. We need to understand how two progressive writers’ electoral hopes for the future changed America in ways they could not have imagined and in many ways, it wasn’t for the better.
In 2002, political writer John B. Judis and political scientist Ruy Texeria published a book called The Emerging Democratic Majority. This was a take on another book written by then-Republican operative Kevin Phillips called the Emerging Republican Majority in 1969.
Judis and Texeria’s book believed that by the end of the decade, the Democrats would take control of government thanks to the growing number of non-white Americans. Minorities and professional white progressives would combine to create an enduring Democratic majority. Why? Because non-white Americans were joining the Democrats and not the GOP. Because the non-white population…
