Pew has a great new typology out on America. I’d like to make more points but with semester winding down let me throw out a few thoughts based just on the demographics.

This tells you a lot about where America and its political parties are headed.

You see the stanch conservatives are much older and on their way out. Some think, and I have suggested, that this means that the US is headed towards a one-party state.

In the medium term I still think that’s true. Sound and fury over the Tea Party aside, the GOP is playing a losing game right now. Bush, Rove and Company tried to take steps to reverse this, but given a number of factors we can debate, they lost too much currency with their base that their efforts to broaden the GOP failed.

Over the longer term major realignment is the likely result. Lots of conservative like to point out that according to polls America is a conservative country. What they often ignore is that the conservative majority is sustained in large part by religious blacks and Hispanics who are voting Dem.

It seems to me that the emerging landscape in US politics is one where the Welfare State is more or less accepted and the on going debate is secularism vs. traditionalism.

Eventually enough staunch conservatives will age out of the GOP that Hispanics and blacks wind their way in. With Obama as the first black President it will take a long while to win over blacks but the fundamentals are there. Most black Americans are traditionalists.

With the increase in the secular / traditionalist divide libertarians and Post-Moderns will fall squarely into the Democratic camp. They will make peace with the Welfare State and will focus an internal debate in the Democratic party debate over more permissive regulation.

Advertisement