A few observations to make :
The assumption is completely transparent that the only thinkable future
is one is which official policy will not change and, therefore, there will
be
more and more Mexican and other Latino immigrants to swell the ranks
of those already here.
Asians do not count in Schrag's analysis despite the fact that there are
more Asians per capita in California than in any other state except Hawaii.
No measures enacted by Republicans or those Democrats who are
at least somewhat conservative will have any effect.
In other words, these are major failings by someone who I once
had great respect for. Remember the slogan, "my country, right or wrong" ?
The motif in the article is "my state, right or wrong." Very disappointing.
Billy
=============================================
The New Republic
California Here We Come
Why the Golden State is still the future of American politics.
* Peter Schrag
* December 6, 2010
This year's Republican sweep, says the conventional wisdom, stopped at the
Sierras in large part because California—the “left-out coast”—is a
liberal outlier from the rest of the country. In this telling, the Golden
State
is a broken relic, a basket-case which has lost its status as the vanguard
of American politics. While America embraced the angry politics of the Tea
Party, the story goes, California reelected Jerry Brown, a nostalgic
throwback to the 1970s.
In fact, the exact opposite may be occurring: California, and indeed much
of the West, is far ahead of the country, as it often has been—
demographically, economically, politically, socially—and it points to a future
in which
the whole nation will look much like California does now: multi-ethnic,
increasingly tolerant of gays and other minorities, more global in outlook,
and more environmentally conscious.
California has always been on the leading edge of changes in the American
electorate. It was the first to experience the tax revolt which
subsequently swept the country in the form of the Reagan Revolution. It was
ahead of
the nation in its opposition to the Iraq war; it’s been a leader in energy
efficiency and progressive environmental regulation.
In the early 1990s, the state was consumed by an anti-immigrant backlash
that resulted in Proposition 187, years before the paroxysms that scuttled
George W. Bush's push for comprehensive immigration reform and produced
Arizona's notorious SB1070.
But this year’s election showed that California has already moved past
that point. In her gubernatorial campaign against Jerry Brown, Republican Meg
Whitman tried and failed to use anti-immigration politics to her advantage—
even recruiting former Gov. Pete Wilson, the poster boy of 187, as her
campaign manager—but ran afoul of Latinos, who are far more numerous than they
were during the 1990s. Had only whites voted, Whitman would have been
California’s governor-elect and Carly Fiorina, not Barbara Boxer, would now be
the U.S. senator-elect.
In a generation or so, California will have a majority Latino population,
and while many parts of the Midwest and the Southeast are just now reacting
to the first waves of Latinos and other immigrants, they, too, are likely
to some day accommodate, and maybe even welcome, them as the Boomers
retire.
Similar dynamics occurred in Nevada and Colorado, where Latino voters
propelled both Harry Reid and Michael Bennet to reelection. In these
states—and
in the country as a whole—Latinos are poised to become an increasingly
powerful political force. No, they won't all become Democrats. Many Latinos
are
socially conservative; in California this year they voted overwhelmingly
against the legalization of recreational marijuana. Conservative Latino
candidates like Marco Rubio, elected in Florida with its Republican-leaning
voters, could exert some pull to the right. But in the main, unless the GOP
becomes more accessible to Latinos than it has in been in the past decade—
and that means at least a major shift on immigration—its chances of capturing
a substantial share of the Latino vote are slim.
Now the GOP is headed in the other direction. Beginning the new session of
Congress with an effort to eliminate birthright citizenship for the
children of illegal aliens is hardly welcoming. Neither is adamant resistance
to
the DREAM Act. The great New Deal victories of the 1930s rested in
considerable part on the votes of the immigrants and children of immigrants
who’d
been welcomed by the urban Democratic machines in the prior decades, and if
California's experience is any guide, politics in the twenty-first century
will witness a similar dynamic.
The other major factor in this election was demographic. The national
turnout of young voters this year was lower than in average off-year
elections,
and much lower than in 2008, while the percentage of older voters, many of
them angered and confused by the unfamiliar world that’s grown around them—
was much higher.
Those numbers will obviously change in 2012. The actuarial tables
themselves tell some of that story. So does the composition of the Tea Party,
which
is older and whiter than the national average, and which had virtually no
impact in the Golden State. Its most prominent candidate, Chuck DeVore, got
less than 20 percent in his primary race for the Senate. The great sweep
of 2010, in short, more likely marked the end of something, not the
beginning. The nation’s young voters, like California’s, are far more
comfortable
in that new globalized world, accustomed to the ethnic diversity that they
grew up with and are going to school with, more environmentally conscious,
and untroubled by gay marriage. And of course, a sizeable portion of those
young voters are immigrants or the children of immigrants—Latinos and Asian
particularly. They are the nation’s future. And so, as ever, is California.
Peter Schrag is the former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee, a
longtime writer on California affairs and, most recently, of Not Fit for
Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America. (University of California
Press).
--
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