California shows what is wrong with the GOP to a greater degree than the rest of America. The Hispanic population is becoming more middle class, and by political logic that used to be solid, the Hispanic population should be turning increasingly Republican as it assimilates economically.
But despite assimilating into the middle class, the Hispanic population is not becoming increasingly Republican. As people get richer they generally develop more concern with taxes... but they are also concerned with the quality of life (pollution, traffic jams, public health) and with economic opportunity (closely linked to formal education).
One connection is to the aging of the suburbs. When the suburbs were fist built they were bastions of conservatism. Close enough to well-paying urban jobs but separated from urban problems (blight, crime), and still having a rural feel they first looked like small-town America with single-family houses as the norm. Even today, small-town America is heavily Republican. The suburbs had new infrastructure that cost little to maintain. But as Suburbia has aged, the infrastructure has become more costly to repair. Many tracts of single-family houses have been demolished for apartment complexes that generate traffic jams... and have demographics more typical of slums than of single-family houses. School quality deteriorates (California is way below average in educational attainment) while educational costs skyrocket.
In general, the older the suburbs, the more D-leaning they are. Kids who have never lived in places other than the suburbs are often workers at jobs paying near-minimum wages who have no stake in the low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation world of the GOP dream. When the suburbs are about 50 years old they generally tip from R to D. (About the only exception to that pattern is Milwaukee -- go figure).
Suburbs of Dallas, Fort Worth, Phoenix, and Atlanta voted heavily R... and they are comparatively new. Houston and Indianapolis have practically devoured their suburbs before they could form, so it is hard to make a political description of their suburbs (the suburban areas of those cities are fairly new). But the suburbs of Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis, Kansas City, Seattle, and San Francisco are now old.
Genuine question. What are the statistics showing that Latinos are gradually becoming part of the middle class?
