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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jonah Goldberg
It's a festive time: singing on the sidewalks, good cheer erupting at home and the office. I'm of course referring to the revelry that descends on the library carrels and fluorescently iridescent cubicles around Washington when the census data comes out.
Particularly giddy these days are the Republicans who've picked up a few more seats in
Add in the fact that the
I hate to be the wet blanket, like the guy at the office party who insists we all get back to work, or the boss who says
your Christmas bonus will come in the form of a
For starters, the political effects of the census are disproportionate to the actual demographic trends the
More broadly, the core Democratic coalition of minorities, secular suburbanites, single mothers and people dependent on the government for their jobs is growing. The core Republican coalition of culturally or religiously conservative whites is comparatively shrinking.
So is
Contrary to a slew of misconceptions, the
Now, of course, some of these trends tacked back the other way in 2010 (although midterm elections skew older and whiter than presidential elections). For instance, Republicans closed the gender gap -- the Democrats' historic advantage with women -- for the first time since such exit polling began in 1982. Independents, who were key to Obama's victory, gave the
But that's the point. In politics, demography needn't be destiny. It's more like a wind you can sail into or with, making your job easier or harder, but it need not determine your destination. By the way, isn't there something vaguely racist about the idea that, say, blacks will always vote liberal because, you know, that's what black people do?
The fraying of the Obama coalition wasn't a function of demography but a result of events (including, crucially, Obama's own decisions) and the debate those events produced. Now, Obama's poll numbers are ticking up after a good December, and that, too, isn't a matter of demography.
The only way for the
If you do a straight-line projection from today and assume that everyone's politics hold constant, the
Available at Amazon.com:
Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America
Jimmy Carter: The American Presidents Series: The 39th President, 1977-81
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House
Renegade: The Making of a President
Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War
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