Be wary I suppose of taking up a subject at length, because it might not ever quite come to an end. Certainly I thought four parts on why Democrats need to win more white voters was enough, though this is a follow-up rather than an elaboration.
The first update: not only Phyllis Schlafly has been warning Republicans that their assumption that the route back to the presidency requires winning more Hispanics. Byron York, has been doing likewise, though rather than just assuming Republicans can't win more Hispanics, he said he crunched some numbers and found that winning more Hispanics won't be enough to win the electoral college unless they can win the same sort of majority Democrats are winning now. Bolding is mine:
In 2012, President Obama famously won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote to Mitt Romney's 27 percent. If all other factors remained the same, how large a percentage of the Hispanic vote would Romney have had to win to capture the White House?
What if Romney had won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, the high-water mark for Republicans achieved by George W. Bush in 2004? As it turns out, if Romney had hit that Bush mark, he still would have lost, with 240 electoral votes to 298 for Obama.
...
According to the Times' calculator, Romney would have had to win 73 percent of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012. Which suggests that Romney, and Republicans, had bigger problems than Hispanic voters.
The most serious of those problems was that Romney was not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP and in many cases stayed away from the polls altogether. Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day. If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won.
Likewise, the white vote is so large that an improvement of 4 points -- going from 60 percent to 64 percent of those whites who did vote -- would have won the race for Romney.
So which would have been a more realistic goal for Romney -- matching the white turnout from just a few years earlier, or winning 73 percent of Hispanic voters?Let's assume York's numbers are even approximate and that Republicans accept his case. Regarding immigration reform, the entire reason Republicans have been somewhat supportive is the theory that they need to be seen as pro-immigration to win more Hispanic votes (probably right, and probably applies to winning more Asian voters too), and more Hispanic votes are the route back to the White House. If, however, they look at the numbers and decide winning more Hispanics is just a nice-to-have, something that would get them closer but not be nearly enough, and would be tough to do anyway, then they might try what's easier and more likely to succeed --- win more whites, and get more whites to turn out.
I suspect York is jumping to a conclusion in assuming additional white voters would vote in the same proportions as those who did turn out, but it's plausible, as is winning a higher proportion of white voters. If Republicans think that way, then immigration reform isn't happening. They'll decide it's bad politics in terms of both letting more non-white people vote, and angering the nativist base that votes in Republican primaries.
My case that Democrats need to look for a way to win more white voters is based on assuming Republicans succeed at winning more non-whites, and on addressing our problem with winning more districts when Democrats are packed, but another reason presents itself: we can box in the Republicans. If we succeed in wining more white voters, the strategy York is suggesting gets closed off to them. Either they're back to trying to win more non-whites, which could happen (assuming they stop tripping over their own tongues), or they have to get a lot better at voter suppression. Let's be thoroughly optimistic and imagine we cut off all their options except winning more non-whites: they'll eventually have to realize they can't just tweak their messaging and put some brown faces on their convention stages. They'll actually have to make policy changes, like immigration reform or, as long as we're being optimistic, protect rather than attacking voting rights; fund public schools instead of focusing on pushing people into religious schools; raise the minimum wage to a livable level. They would indeed succeed in cutting into our lead if they did those things, but we would get some policy changes we want, which ultimately is the point.
Second update: looks like someone was listening to me regarding what I called "a Texas project". OK, I'm sure the people behind Battleground Texas (BGTX) came up with the idea independently. Maybe I can encourage Democrats to support their effort, which seems to have the GOP worried. They should be worried. I advocated something like what BGTX is doing based only on the importance of Texas to the national Republicans, so I'd be for it even if demographics made Texas just a big Utah --- but it's not a big Utah. It's already "majority minority", which mean whites are just a plurality (before I get scolded again for using that term without explaining it, a plurality is the largest group when no one has a majority). So the goal of winning in Texas is far from hopeless. BGTX's blog referred to organizing in South Texas where there's a string of rural Hispanic counties, and a voter registration effort among whites in Austin. If you're going to do better among white voters, urban liberals are the low-hanging fruit. Looks like they're plucking it, and I see a couple ideas that can be borrowed for voter registration drives anywhere. Bolding theirs:
In just over two hours, five Battleground Texas voter deputy registrars registered 42 people to vote at Blues on the Green in Austin.
The weather was perfect to draw out a big crowd at the first of five concerts of the season.
This photo is uploaded to the Kos library in order to be accepted for publishing. It's embedded in the BGTX blog as quoted here.
"I just hit the jackpot!" volunteer Sarah Goodfriend said when she came back, "I registered two girls in that group plus one of their husbands."
A little experience makes a big difference. Obama campaign veteran Brian Lemons came back with 20 forms.
"It helped to have my dog with me; it was an easy conversation starter," he said.
Right --- next voter registration drive, bring a dog. Just don't register voters at a cat show.
I don't know what connection there is between BGTX and the Texas Democratic Party (TDP) or if they can even talk to each other. I don't know Texas, but I do know Will Hailer, who was made Executive Director of the TDP. He was hired away from Rep. Keith Ellison, for whom he was campaign manager last year. I'm chair of a senate district within Ellison's congressional district (MN-05), so I worked fairly closely with the Ellison campaign, and I can attest TDP made a good hire. The Ellison campaign has long run a strong groundgame that helps Democrats up and down the ballot, by design and not accident, despite being in a safe seat where he could cruise, and they stepped it up last year even from their usual high level. The fact TDP hired someone with Hailer's experience, and that they talk about demographic changes not producing the desired change until 2030 if they don't do anything, suggests that the state party also gets the opportunity and the strategy. In the linked video, Hailer talked about recruiting local candidates, which sounds smart for a party with little for a bench. That's the price of holding no statewide offices, few congressional seats, and few legislative seats. There are opportunities in other states too, but Texas deserves our attention because winning there is probably the most damage we can inflict on the national Republicans. If Hailer can scale up to a literally Texas scale what he and Rep. Ellison did in my congressional district, the Republicans are in trouble.
Finally, a couple writers for The New Republic, obviously cribbing from me just like BGTX did (teal, but why are you asking about the color of the unicorns in my little world?) are advocating for Democrats trying to do better among working class white voters, and suggesting how to do it.
If just 10 percent of the group that currently votes Republican is persuadable, a successful appeal for their votes would produce a 2 percentage point pro-Democratic shift in the electorate. This would have meant a 53 percent Democratic presidential tally in 2012, not 51 percent. This could be the critical margin of safety in presidential elections in 2016 and 2020.
Moreover it is not simply a matter of raw votes on Election Day. A 10 percent partisan shift among white workers would reduce the ideological hegemony that Republicans have in many white working class communities. Even in Red State areas of the country like the South, where Obama likely received around 24% of the white working class vote (full data on the white working class vote by state have not yet been released), a 10 percent shift could expand the limits of “acceptable” debate and subtly pressure candidates in now entirely conservative districts to shift slightly toward the center. In areas like the rust belt states of the Midwest, where Obama was likely more in the 42% range, it could provide critical margins for Democratic victory.
...
A strategy of this kind is inherently a long-term project but even in its very early stages it can materially contribute to changing the attitudes of white working class voters toward Democrats and progressives and begin to challenge the GOP for their allegiance. Carefully conducted field research by Working America, the 3 million member community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has demonstrated that shifts of substantial magnitude in white working class voting behavior can indeed be achieved by sustained and dedicated door-to-door organizing campaigns.
Andrew Levison AND Ruy Teixeira aren't suggesting blowing off middle or upper class whites. They do imply that the strategies that work with one class don't necessarily apply to all. Aside from the focus on one class, they're making the same essential point I am. Yes, Democrats are eking out wins, but we can have a bigger margin of error, and more wins, with the policy changes that entails, by improving our share of the white vote just a bit. They didn't mention what I find a telling statistic that shows just how feasible this is. Obama won with 39% of the white vote in 2012. If we could improve by four points, to 43%, that would win us a lot more elections. Is it possible? In 2008, Obama's share of the white vote was ... 43%. So, yes we can.
For reference, the series on “Democrats need to do better with white voters”:
Part 1 on why we need to do better with white voters
Part 2 on the variables of the problem
Part 3 on population density
Part 4 on strategy
cross-posted on MN Progressive Project