Talk Elections

This book references the Atlas!

Authors: John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

THE PUBLISHER
At the end of the 1960s, Kevin Phillips, battling conventional wisdom, correctly foretold the dawn of a new conservative era. His book The Emerging Republican Majority became an indispensable guide for conservatives through the 1970s and 1980s -- and, indeed, for all those attempting to understand political change at the time. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the presidency and the House in Republican hands, political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era. Their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, is the indispensable guide to this era.

In five well-researched chapters, the authors show how the most dynamic areas of the country are trending Democratic. Once the party of the Rust Belt, Democrats are now the party of Silicon Valley and of North Carolina's Research Triangle. Once the party of Archie Bunker and Ralph Kramden, the Democrats are now also the party of professionals, working women, blacks, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics.

These new Democratic voters embrace what the authors call "progressive centrism." They take umbrage at Republican calls to privatize social security, ban abortion, and cut back environmental regulations. They are leery of subjecting science and the family to fundamentalist religious precepts. They welcome the free market as a spur to growth and initiative, but they don't want companies to be free to pollute the environment, mistreat their workers, or defraud their stockholders.

As the GOP continues to be captive to the religious right and K Street business lobbies, The Emerging Democratic Majority is an essential volume for all those discontented with their narrow agenda -- and a clarion call for a new political order.

I don't see myself having the chance to read it anytime soon. Could someone tell me where it references the Atlas?

What has happened over the past generation is that many liberal Democrats have abandoned the baggage of 'Welfare statism' and have concentrated on 'social liberalism.'

The problem is that most of the country is socially conservative.  Consequently when those issues move to the forefront, in most areas they lose.

And, yes, most blacks and hispanics are socially conservative.

I hear every American is a "populist" these days.

**Creates quotations with fingers like Dr. Evil when saying "Populist"**

I'm not sure how many people know this, but in 1969 a book was published entitled "The Emerging Republican Majority," and I assume that was the source of the more recent publication's title. Unlike its Democratic counterpart, the earlier work was a highly insightful analysis of the history of voting patterns and the (then) contemporary political realities pointing towards future Republican success. The key distinction is that "The Emerging Republican Majority" focused on the beliefs of the electorate, rather than extrapolating demographic trends and then making the ridiculous assumption that identity groups hold and maintain certain political values over long periods of time.

I read this book in the Summer of 2003 [on the beach :)]

At the time it gave me some hope that my party could recover. But even then I realized there were a few flaws in the book. One of which was that it mostly ignored social issues, and just look at what happened last year.

The book was published after 9/11 but before the '02 midterm elections. So it made a big deal about Warner and McGreevey winning the 2 off-year Governor's races, and assumed that the same rules would apply the following year.

I don't remember all the details of the book since its been 2 years but I do remember the authors talking about the "Research Triangle" in North Carolina, and how that could possibly swing the whole state if it voted strongly Dem! That is simplistic but we did win Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) in 2004 so maybe they meant that the urban South will become more Democrat, and the opposite occuring in the rural areas.

One interesting fact in this book was that most Asians used to vote Republican b/c the party was tough on communism (same with Cubans). As the threat of communism is now mostly gone, they are more open to Democrats.

Excellent book.  It's well worth a read.  Particularly interesting is the idea that suburbs and young professionals who are moving into them are trending Democratic.  Teixeira and Judis call this the "ideopolis" concept and point to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Raleigh-Durham as examples.

For a moment there I thought Dave had actually put something in his signature.

Major flaw in this book no.1...

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With Democrats recapturing Congress for the first time in twelve years, what does everyone think now? 

The way that the Democrats regained Congress should shred this joke of a book of any credibility it had left.

OK, I see Kerry winning the most populated counties.

He won some, lost some others. But that's not the point. Have a closer look at the voting patterns of the counties with a medium orange population shade (Union, Johnson, Randolph, etc).

Al, you really need to reform your statements along these lines to be understandable by those of us who are very ignorant about these things. :P

The US is becoming less white, less protestant and (slowly) less christian so as long as the GOP is the party of white christians...

Those counties were respectively 70%, 68%, 74% GOP, so I guess that Al's point was that medium-sized counties in N.C. are quite Republican.

Still, most of the Triangle trended towards the Dems in 2004.

Wow!
This thread has an embarassment of riches for the Comedy Goldmine.

Suddenly this book looks much more prescient than it did when Dave first started this thread.  Has anyone re-read it since the election? 

This thread makes Al look kind of silly.

I bought this book back in the day and still have it (although leaving it in my car's floorboard led to some moldy pages forming). Some bad predictions and analysis, but definitely more good than bad. Seven to eight years out, the book's premise I feel has been vindicated.

I agree with the premise of this book for the most part.

The 2006-08 results were a bit of a head fake at the Congressional level, where we still don't have a Democratic majority.

interesting to see the scepticism this got at the time compared to now. i definitely think recent events have vindicated it to at least some extent.

Wishful thinking on his part perhaps. He certainly doesn't like the current Democratic coalition.

Wow!  This is so true it's almost scary!