At the heart of the debate over immigration reform is the idea that demography is destiny; more precisely, that it is the destiny of the Democratic Party to dominate American politics because the electoral demographic that tilts its way (non-whites) is increasing while that which tilts Republican (whites) is decreasing.
The earliest proponents of this thesis were Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis, in their influential 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority. Although other groups in the Democratic base, including single women and blacks, would be important, the key to their thesis was Hispanics, both because their numbers were increasing most rapidly and because their shift toward the Democratic camp has been more pronounced (even since Teixeria/Judis, the Hispanic vote for Democratic presidential candidates has gone from 56 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2012).
Both sides, one with enthusiasm, the other with trepidation, suspect that that's where the votes of the future will be found; hence Democratic support for and Republican opposition to anything that smacks of "amnesty" disguised as immigration reform.
Underlying the Teixeira/Judis thesis is, however, a broader theory that has been circulating among political scientists since roughly the middle of the 20th Century--the idea of "critical elections" that produce enduring "majority coalitions."
According to this theory, every three or four decades a major crisis or issue emerges that produces an especially important election. Such "critical elections" reshuffle the deck of American politics in such a way as to make one of our two parties the dominant party for decades to come, or at least until the next critical election.
The paradigmatic critical election came in 1932, when, amid the Great Depression and growing disillusionment with the Hoover administration's response to it, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency in a landslide. The coalition FDR assembled for that victory held together long enough for Democrats to win six of the next eight presidential contests and to dominate Congress all the way into the 1990s.
That New Deal coalition is long-gone, but Democrats have obviously been buoyed by the results from 2008 and 2012. Indeed, they are hoping that 2008 might have been that long-overdue critical election that produced, amid financial crisis, what Teixeira and Judis had earlier predicted--a new dominant Democratic coalition subsequently cemented into place by Barack Obama's re-election (an "affirming election" in critical election theory). A glorious electoral future in which the GOP is reduced to dependence upon old white guys with a limited Southern geographical base begins to hover into view.
Not all political scientists buy into Teixeira/Judis or the broader critical election/enduring majority coalition argument that their thesis rests upon. In his 2012 book The Lost Majority, RealClearPolitics senior analyst Sean Trende noted that when you dig beneath the surface, supposed majority coalitions tend to be highly fragile, often consisting of uneasy voting blocs (think Southern whites and Northern blacks for FDR), and therefore tend to begin crumbling around the edges even as they are being put into place. In a two-party system, as each party poaches groups from the other with targeted appeals and becomes either complacent and lazy or desperate and innovative with victory or defeat, there tends to be a certain back-and-forth dynamic that limits either's degree or duration of dominance.
At the heart of Trende's critique, then, is skepticism over the possibility of maintaining the kind of dominant coalition that Democrats think they've acquired. As he points out, Obama's victories were built around a coalition that is deep but exceedingly narrow, such that the weakening of even one component abruptly jeopardizes their prospects. Black voters might not turn out in the same numbers for Hillary Clinton as they did for Obama. Or today's young Democrats might follow a familiar path toward conservatism and the GOP as they pursue careers, become married with kids, and acquire mortgages.
There are even reasons to believe the Hispanic tilt toward Democrats might prove ephemeral. Along these lines, it is possible that their long-term electoral behavior will come to closely resemble that of previous immigrant groups such that as assimilation continues, they begin to vote more like the white majority.
Finally, there is the risk factor Democrats face in seeking to aggressively build a "majority-minority" coalition. As Obama's declining support among white voters over time suggests, there is always the chance that a political strategy built around rewarding and energizing minority voters might at some point alienate the majority (which, after, all, still comprises more than 70 percent of the electorate). Indeed, no Democrat has ever won the presidency in a two-way race with as low a percentage of the white vote (39 percent) as Obama did two years ago.
The dilemma for Republicans, however, remains--do they confidently embrace immigration reform (and, implicitly, demographic change) and then seek to "convert" Hispanics, or do they simply cede Hispanics to the Democrats and try to limit their numbers?
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 06/30/2014