I’m not saying it’s some written-out plan. But look at how left wing Indians and Indian politicians in the U.S. are compared to say German Americans. (Socialism was a founding principle of the modern Indian state.) People in the party are acting according to their incentives.
Is there any proof for this statement? Republicans want cheap labor, they'll tell you that themselves, but I don't believe the Democrats would ever say that they believe in labor immigration to "get more voters".
That just sounds like a ludicrous conspiracy.
"Demographics is destiny" seems to be a quote from a french philosopher from the 1800s, while "coalition of the ascendant" seems to be a description of the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term, an idea swiftly dismantled in 2016.
The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans. The only people I find talking about how it will "estrange the republican party from these growing demographics" are republicans. I'm not going to claim that no democrat has ever considered that outcome, but I am going to propose that it seems more likely to me that if that were to happen it would be a result of politics they'd be in favor of anyway.
In general, it's pretty popular to help people. I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes. They're not doing that as a sort of underhanded tactic, they believe income is good. In the same way I think the Obama democrats do believe in helping immigrants, and obviously that makes them more popular amongst immigrants. That's not a scheme, that's just a policy.
I don't think this is nearly as clear cut as you believe it is.
Moreover, foreign mindsets are durable over generations: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... ("In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.").
But what was the nature of "the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term?" Normally, political coalitions are based on things like geography or economic classes. But Obama's coalition was based on ethnic groups. Specifically, it was based on winning supermajorities among demographic groups that were rapidly growing due to immigration. Indeed, the results of the 2016 election were portrayed in U.S. media as being the last gasp of the old America before it was washed away by demographic change.
Respectfully, maybe this would be clearer to you if you lived here, and spent the last 15 years reading countless headlines and articles about demographics, which were relatively rare before 2008. And those headlines and articles suddenly stopped last November, when Donald Trump won a narrow majority of naturalized citizens. None of that is a coincidence.
> The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans... I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes.
That's a good comparison. But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit. Republicans obviously never say that in those words, but Democrats certainly characterize Republicans that way. And I think it's a fair criticism.
I have heard commentators mention ideas along those lines (never the specific formulations you used as examples, but the general vibe) post 2016, and even a little before that. That is, to me, not the same as that being the policy. Post 2016 democrats needed a cope. They needed a hope to hold on to after they had lost, what to them seemed like a slam dunk. That's not a policy proposal, but rather a strategic observation. In general I think you're better served by listening to politicians when they are trying to build, than when they have failed in building.
I also think it's quite important to note that in that analysis, we presuppose that immigrants will like the democrats. That either requires that democrat policies are good for immigrants, and immigrants to recognize that, or a vast conspiracy to take America down. If demographic change would turn America into a third world country, as some commentators have argued, surely immigrants wouldn't be for that either.
> But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit.
I surely don't hope it's that direct. I think it's fair to talk about the cause and effect, but it would be totally unfair to characterize it as naked corruption. I truly believe that the mainstream American republicans believe in tax cuts as a means to drive innovation. That they believe in slimming down the government from a place of ideology, and not simply a naked ploy to reduce the oversight of their sponsors' activities. That they believe their policies to increase the wealth of the regular American, which they then hope will make them vote Republican.
I worry that this is no longer true of the "far right"/"alt right"/"authoritarian right". That distinction, between doing something for a belief in a better world, and doing it purely for strategy to gain power, is where I place the line to "fascism". A definition I don't share with many scholars.
1) The biggest proof is under Biden's last term and at the end of Obama's last term, there were very large numbers of illegal border crossings. Especially under Biden where millions crossed. Let's conservatively say it was seven million people in four years. That doesn't happen by accident. Why do I say that? Under Trump's terms the border crossing numbers dramatically diminished. So it was just a question of enforcement which means the DHS, which happened to be run by the same guy Alejandro Mayorkas under both Biden and Obama, simply chose not to enforce the border and allow very large numbers of asylum claims (which I think are bogus and not our responsibility). That's a very nasty thing to do. Note that neither Biden nor Obama openly campaigned on letting millions of people in and it was a big concern of voters going into the 2024 elections.
2) Democrats have run on a racial platform and it has been very successful. See: https://keywiki.org/Race_Will_Win_the_Race. For example, California used to be a GOP state. Ronald Reagan was the governor of California. The demographics of California have changed dramatically in just a few decades as has the politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#202...
3) Democrats have refused to comply with ICE. ICE is responsible for deportations. They have created sanctuary cities, counties, and states. What reason is there for this besides not wanting illegals to be removed? "Human rights" is just a way of saying "endless litigation to prevent deportations".
4) The census was changed under Biden to include illegals in the population count. This is used to apportion representatives. So that would give more representation in the House to Democrats since illegals tend to live in urban areas which are all represented by Democrats.
5) Democrats have repeatedly made claims about how diversity is our strength. If diversity is to be valued, they must favor more immigration. Diversity here seems to be a euphemism. No one calls for diversity in China or Saudi Arabia for example. Why not? I think we know. So immigration and diversity are seemingly euphemisms for something else. https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-joe-...
6) The 1965 Immigration Act signed and sponsored under Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac.... It called for less homogeneity of immigrants. It has caused demographic change. If we look at how ethnic groups vote, demographic change has primarily benefited Democrats.
I think it's just obvious also. Lots of political things are put in terms of euphemisms that use watered down language. But it's quite hard not to notice ethnic conflict and balkanization beginning in the US and even across Europe.
Right, and most countries are very conservative compared to the US, in particular many of the countries that the average H1B holder is from. India, for example. That means Republican voters. The entire premise is flawed fearmongering.
I don’t have to fear monger. The cake is already baked. David Shor estimates that Trump tied or narrowly won foreign-born voters. Mass immigration didn’t kill the GOP, but it changed what kind of conservative party could assemble a winning coalition. And it looks like more like Trump (or Bolsonaro or Modi) and less like Mitt Romney or George H.W. Bush. Hope Obama was worth it!
This country just cannot get over a black man being president.
The day he was elected the first time, the statement echoed in the small diner I was in a table over was "I can't believe he won, he's not one of us."
That's the day I realized how fucked this place is.