It’s being called the Great Realignment. Allahpundit mentioned it yesterday at the end of this post. In short, the most recent NY Times polls shows that Democrats have more support among college-educated whites than they do among minorities. In a piece about this phenomenon for Axios, Josh Kraushaar writes:
Shifts in the demographics of the two parties’ supporters — taking place before our eyes — are arguably the biggest political story of our time…
Democrats are statistically tied with Republicans among Hispanics on the generic congressional ballot, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll out this week. Dems held a 47-point edge with Hispanics during the 2018 midterms…
Democratic strategists say the party’s biggest vulnerability is assuming that the priorities of progressive activists are the same as those of working-class voters.
So what’s going on here? Over at his Substack site, Ruy Teixeira takes a look at some recent data from Echelon Insights which strongly suggests a small but noisy group of “strong progressives” who tend to be white and college educated are setting the tone for the Democratic Party, but that tone is turning off a lot of blue collar people including many Hispanic voters. Look at this data and see if you don’t recognize the people who make up this strong progressive group:
2. Racism is built into our society, including into its policies and institutions vs. Racism comes from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions. Strong progressives are very, very sure of America’s systemic racism, endorsing the first statement by an amazing 94-6 margin. But Hispanics disagree, endorsing the second statement that racism comes from individuals by 58-36, as do working class voters by 57-33…
4. Transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity vs. Transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender. Strong progressives overwhelmingly endorse allowing athletes to play on the sports team that matches their gender identity by 66-19. But Hispanic voters by 64-22 say athletes should only play on teams that match their birth gender; working class voters are almost identical at 63-22.
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5. We need to reallocate funding from police departments to social services vs. We need to fully fund the budget for police departments. Strong progressives want to reallocate police funding by 87-12. In contrast, Hispanic voters want full funding of the police by 50-41 and working class voters are even stronger on full funding by 59-31.
That’s just 3 of the 6 questions Teixeira considers but the others are all similar. For instance, the last question is about upward mobility and the value of hard work. The strong progressives overwhelmingly don’t believe hard work matters (88%) but a majority of blue collar workers and Hispanics (55% of each group) say it does.
Hopefully from the outlines of all this you recognize the type. These folks are still a small percentage of the electorate (about 10%) but they tend to be highly educated, white and very online. The so-called strong progressives are basically we’ve come to know as the woke left. They are on the far left of every one of these wedge issues and are probably on Twitter arguing about it. They are also way out of step with the country as a whole. For example, a recent poll of support for defunding the police (transferring money from police budgets to other priorities) showed it was down to 31% overall but in question 5 above the strong progressives support it at 87%.
So the impression you get from all of this is that the white, woke left has become if not the face of the Democratic Party at least its most strident voice. They have emphasized issues with which a majority of blue collar and Hispanic voters just disagree. And that’s arguably what is driving the Great Realignment we’re seeing now.
If you look at what this means for the Democratic Party in any poll taken this year, it’s clearly a disaster. Democrats are poised to lose the House in a red wave and are still likely to lose the Senate, though that’s a closer thing. The woke left probably hurt the party in 2020 election as well. Remember they were expected to gain seats in the House and wound up losing them instead.
I’ve been struggling with whether to say it because it has become a cliché on the right at this point, but based on the above the phrase “get woke, go broke” seems to apply. The Democratic Party has emboldened the woke left and now it looks like that has broken, or at least fractured, their long-standing coalition of minority groups. There’s no telling where that will go from here but in the near term it seems like it’s going to cost Democrats quite substantially.
Note: For those who don’t recognize her, that’s Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, in the photo above. I think she represents the white, woke movement we’re talking about here.
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