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A Reader Asks About W and the Emerging Democratic Majority; Peter Brimelow Replies.

I read Alien Nation several years ago, which permanently altered my view on current immigration policy in the U.S. I have also enjoyed VDARE for some time as well. One item in the local newspaper (Atlanta-Journal Constitution) caught my eye recently, and I thought I would ask your opinion of it. In an article about the new administration, it stated that Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist, warned him that winning the same percentage of minority votes in 2004 that he won in 2000 would put him in danger of losing by 3.5 million votes!

I've read your (classic) article "The Emerging Democratic Majority" and this would seem to indicate that the seismic shift in voting patterns is occurring even faster than you previously estimated. Is this correct? I don't understand how this can be, though, since your predictions had Republican candidates with 23% of the Latino vote (their percentage in 1988 election), and Bush won 35%. Didn't this at least buy the Republican party more time past the 2008 expiration date you had predicted? Or, are increasing voting rates among Hispanics (which you held to no more than that of Blacks) negating this? Couldn't Bush simply pick up more White votes (more than the 54% he won) to counteract this alleged deficit? And lastly, are these supposed gains among Hispanics (which RNC chairman Gov. Gilmore has referred to as a "natural constituency" of the Republicans) benefiting Republican Senate and House candidates, or is this simply a result of the pro-Hispanic George Bush personality cult (such as radio broadcasts in Spanish and meeting endlessly with Vicente Fox) that will undermine the rest of his party and ultimately benefit himself?

Please keep up the good work. Your web site shows great promise.

Peter Brimelow writes:

Many thanks for your kind words. As it happens, I was up most of Sunday night updating our 1997 article for the Hudson Institute magazine! We'll post it on VDARE in a few weeks. The short answer is that W performed v. poorly right across the board, whereas our 1997 article was extrapolating from a strong year, 1988. So if W can't do better than this, the GOP is going to move into minority status a couple of election cycles earlier. Already, he only got 48% of the vote - Nader split the Democratic vote and elected him.

There is a simple arithmetical reason W's (marginally) improved Hispanic performance isn't helping him: there are a lot more Hispanics. So while he has a relatively larger share of their vote, his absolute Hispanic vote deficit - Hispanics voting for him minus Hispanics voting against him - is still huge. Ed Rubenstein calculates that W's Hispanic vote deficit was virtually the same as Dole's - about 2.8 million votes.

Of course, you are completely right that whites are W's real weakness and his most obvious opportunity - I presume you've read Steve Sailer.

Why the GOP doesn't see this is the question of the age!

July 15, 2001