Demographic Doom

AllahPundit writes of Rand Paul's statement that, as regards immigration policy, we have to "get beyond deportation," which is kind of controversial but not completely.

I don't really care about that.

Here's what I care about, which is probably something you've been thinking about.

1. We cannot win elections on the presidential level for many more years without significantly attracting more Hispanic voters. Demographics is destiny, and the Hispanic population is growing. Meanwhile, the white population is declining (relatively).

Mitt Romney attracted 59% of the white vote, but he lost the election due to losing so many minority votes.

2. Hispanics lean strongly progressive in all areas. We keep hearing about them being more "socially conservative," supposedly, but a, that's not really true (they support, for example, abortion and gay marriage more than the baseline average of the country), and b, for someone who cares less about social issues than the increasing socialization of the nation, the fact that Hispanics are socially conservative (allegedly, but falsely) is a pretty minor comfort.

Allah rebuts the claim that Hispanics are really just conservative voters who don't know it yet with this depressing graphic:

So as you can see, by the third generation of American citizenship, Hispanics have moved from being outright socialist (it's not surprising that immigrants from socialist countries favor socialism) to being merely strongly, strongly Democratic/progressive.

Those of us who oppose socialism will just have to take our Big Victory in the finding that while first generation Hispanic immigrants support socialism by 82-12, by the third generation of American citizenship, we can reduce that lopsided margin all the way down to 58-36.

By the third generation, then, out of every 1,000,000 Hispanic voters, we'll merely be losing net 220,000 votes.

Of course, that's just the third generation. When all Hispanic voters (of all generations) are asked the question, they support a bigger government by 75-25. So out of every 1,000,000 new Hispanic voters, we'll be losing a net half million votes to the socialists.

I will be honest about this: I don't see what the hell there is to do about it. Voters will have their way, and the voters of the future will be voting socialist.

I guess all we can do is play for the near term and Hope a Miracle happens at some point -- that socialism will be more thoroughly discredited, that capitalism and freedom get some positive press, such that long-established political preferences can be changed.

But Hoping for a Miracle doesn't sound like political strategy. It sounds like folly. It sounds like desperation.

posted by Ace at 03:36 PM

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