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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   30520 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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I'm confused. "Demographics is destiny" - that literal phrase, not some euphemistic rephrasing - was never a talking point for Democrats. They have always maintained it's racist.

This is exactly the opposite of my experience of how the phrase is used. Consider the opening paragraph of this Time article:

It’s become something of a cliché in Washington for Democratic strategists to assert that “demographics are destiny.” What they mean is that the diversifying electorate—and the shrinking role of white voters—will render Republicans incapable of sustaining power for much longer. After Barack Obama won in 2008, Democratic legend James Caville even wrote a book predicting as much; 40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation remains a fantastic, if flawed, reading of America’s trajectory.

To your next point:

Of course, the phrase is correct: if America had the demographics of 1960, the Republicans would always win.

Then how come a Democrat won the presidency in 1960?

Not OP but I imagine his argument would be that the policies of 1960's Democrats would have more in common with today's Republicans than today's Democrats.

Of course, but even in the sixties the Democrats were radically more economically and socially progressive than the Republicans. During the campaign, Republicans accused JFK of being a closeted socialist on the back of his healthcare policy proposals, and JFK appealed to black voters by publicly showing his support for Martin Luther King. If the argument is that "white Americans as a group can always be presumed to vote for the more socially and/or economically conservative of the two candidates", that invites the question of how JFK was elected in the first place, given the demographics of the 1960s.

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