Samhain Fallowturn Moon
You wanna know the lessons from the Democratic win? And the Republican loss? So do I. Hard to figure. The handwringing and the moaning and the posturing in the Red locker room has only just begun. See the new conservative blogs I just added under Politics: ConservativeHQ, Redstate and The Weekly Standard.
This one will repay a good deal more thought and attention. The self-critiques of the Republican party will provide important information to the Democrats. I’ve already picked up two that reinforce current Democratic strategy, at least in part. The first? Republicans believe they have to change their attitudes on immigration.
Why? Because there are, they’ve discovered, just so damn many Americans of Latin descent, immigrants or children of immigrants. They vote, too. Democrat for the most part. The real bugger here for the Republicans? They have lots of babies.
It may be true these Americans, focused on family values and the Roman Catholic church, are, as Ronald Reagan said, “…conservative, they just don’t know it yet.” History though can trump instinct and memories of who treated you well early on linger in the minds of the electorate. Not forever. But for a good while. This one means the Democrats will have to pay attention as well. A good thing.
Second self-critique. “We’ve got to stop being a regional party of old white men.” Hmmm. You think? This happens to lace into the first one. It turns out whites are a shrinking part of the electorate and those pesky women (a part of the equation for sure, but I’ve not seen anything on this yet among Republican self-critiques), many of whom are white, also vote Democrat in large numbers. So, if you’re primary appeal is to wealthy older white men and folks who believe female bodies self-heal after the rape that God intended, well then…
Even so. Any of these insights has to be chastened with the fact that this was a close, very close election. That’s why the Democrats had better notice what the Republicans notice and work out their own strategies. This bumpy ride, in a time of rapid political transition, is far from over.
