Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
Normally when one party gains ascendancy over the other or one candidate moves ahead in the race, he does so by nibbling away at the soft supporters of the other side, swinging the undecided voters and those who are only mildly committed to the opposition to his ranks. But this is the exact opposite of what Donald Trump is doing to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Rather than nibble at swing voters they are taking gigantic bites out of the Democratic base of young voters, Hispanics, and African-Americans.
While the head-to-head numbers between Trump and Biden have shown a steady increase in Trump's vote, this increase has largely come from the former Democratic core voters. Now that that the racism that used to cripple the Republicans has largely passed, we are dealing only with its artifact — the solid support it left in its wake among young people and minorities for the Democratic Party. Republicans are transforming the ethnicity of politics and making the former Democratic base into the new Republican base.
These shifts are not incremental but reflect a change in consensus among young and minority voters about the parties. Increasingly young people, Latinos, and blacks are moving toward a tipping point where they were are shifting wholesale to the Republican party.
Tipping points start gradually and gain momentum quickly. Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary leader, put it well: "change that once was impossible now becomes inevitable".
Philosopher Herbert Marcuse amended the Marxist doctrine that change had to originate among the working class to posit that, these days, it has to begin in the schools and work its way up through the aging process to the opinion leaders. He called that process "cultural Marxism."
That is how the left took over our society.
But now it is going in reverse. Starting among the Gen Z voters — under 25 — Republicans are becoming the strong majority. Howe and Strauss, in their seminal book The Fourth Turning observe that older people are more likely now to be Democrat and that younger voters are increasingly Republican.
The abiding casualties of the Biden economy are convincing Gen Z voters that their interests now lie with our side. As Trump succeeds — after he wins — in solving many of these problems, the Republican hold on these young voters will spread and intensify.
Among blacks and minorities the impact of this shift in their political thinking will accelerate. The tipping point is now underway. As it becomes more acceptable and widespread for Black people and Hispanics to vote Republican it will catch on and spread in the community rapidly.
Polling in the current presidential race has reflected for example a tremendously rapid shift among Latinos. As recently as three or four months ago the Trump vote among Latinos was a palty 26%, itself an important uptick from the 32% he likely won in 2020. But in a few months Trump's vote share has zoomed to the high 40s and he now beats Biden among Hispanics in the most recent NY Times/Sienna poll Harvard Harris poll, by 46 to 40.
Shifts on this order of magnitude are only possible when the consensus develops in an ethnic community and spreads by word of mouth anointing one candidate and one party over the other. Particularly with young voters the fact that Republicans are becoming the in crowd and Democrats the outsiders is especially significant.
Media guru David Garth once said that the "hardest thing to do in politics is to reverse direction."
That's not going to happen here. Not in this election anyway.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.