America is changing, we’ve been told for the last 20 years, and that portends a more Democratic future. And some people wouldn’t even stop there. The temptation, in fact, is to extend this theory to the Democratic Party’s internal politics as well. Increasingly left-wing socialist candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are being nominated in Democratic primaries to replace standard liberal Democrats because of demographic change within Democratic districts. Right?
Well, no. Or at least, not quite in the way you’d think. The power behind Ocasio-Cortez isn’t a darker complexion within the Democratic Party, but rather the gentrification of urban Democratic districts. The idea that nonwhite Democratic voters are the ones pulling the party toward socialism is just a false assumption, and Politico magazine’s study of Ocasio’s election victory helps disprove it. It’s the wealthy white gentrifiers who are doing it:
The same piece looks at the toppling of Rep. Mike Capuano, D-Mass., and finds a similar result — the wealthiest sections of his Boston district voted against him, whereas his best precincts were poorer areas with heavy immigrant populations. This is an especially fascinating fact about the rise of socialism in America. Everywhere you look, it’s being driven by rich white people who don’t suffer the effects of racism and don’t struggle economically as their fellow Democratic Party stalwarts do.
How does this translate to nonprimary, general election voters? That’s anyone’s guess. Perhaps it just doesn’t. But just in case this creeping extremism is a turn-off for some significant share of nonwhite Americans, it’s worth keeping a close eye on the exit polls in key states this year and in 2020. The going assumption is that this year’s exit polls will show further Democratic consolidation from 2014, in the face of the Trump presidency and its daily outrages against political correctness.
If it doesn’t show that, then that’s when things get interesting.
