Much of the piece is a thorough debunking of The Emerging Democratic Majority by Judis and Teixeira. See what Trende writes about that book's thesis:
To make the theory work, you have to find a way to explain the fact that, from top to bottom, the Republican Party is the strongest it has been since the 1920s. Whatever majority may be emerging, it does not look particularly Democratic right now.Did you have any idea the evangelical vote is consistently bigger than the vaunted minority vote? I sure as hell didn't. Trende is one of the best election analysts in the business.
If you look at turnout rates as reported by the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey dating back to 2002, African-American rates have always lagged Republican rates by around five points, give or take. (snip) This was true in 2010 as well as 2014. The exceptions were 2008 and 2012, when African-American turnout rates exceeded white rates.
Analysis focuses on the “fast-growing” Hispanic vote, but the Hispanic share of the electorate has actually increased glacially. (snip) The fact that Hispanics are increasingly adopting a “white” identity (what Reihan Salam calls “racial attrition”) may blunt this growth in the future.
Trump received more votes from white evangelicals than Clinton received from African-Americans and Hispanics combined. This single group very nearly cancels the Democrats’ advantage among non-whites completely. This isn’t a one-off; it was true in 2012, 2008 and 2004
If the last few elections have done nothing else, it has been to convince me that history has no arc; it bends toward nothing; we are certainly ill-equipped to harness whatever power it has. Rather, it simply meanders like a lazy river; we are carried along by the current.
