Democrats must embrace suburban families and their concerns, or the party is toast. So says Joel Kotkin, with co-author William Frey, in the current issue of The New Republic.
Kotkin is a widely-respected author, scholar, demographer, futurist, speaker and consultant. He's got solid MSM journalism credentials as well, including posts as a regular contributor to liberal pillars such as NYT and LA Times. (Here's his bio).
His TNR piece with Frey, "The Parent Trap," is (thankfully) posted free at Kotkin's personal site (so you can eschew the pay-to-read section of the TNR's site). Read the whole thing, but here are some excepts that capture what I've been feeling for quite some time about the worldview of clueless urban "progressives" and their dysphoric "alternative media" enablers.
...in their rush to focus on religion and war, pundits have overlooked what may have been the single most important predictor of the GOP's victory--not Bibles or bullets, but diapers.....the U.S. is one of the only industrialized countries to enjoy an increase in its fertility rate since the 1970s....Other signs--rising marriage rates, declining divorce rates, and an overall increase in the number of child-bearing families--all point to a strengthening of the American nuclear family. These are welcome developments for our society. But they could spell doom for the Democratic Party. And until progressives develop a more family-friendly voice, they are likely to spend many more lonely nights in November wondering what went wrong.
Last month, Democrats swept the largely childless cities--true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston, and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation--but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably in the sunbelt cities, exurbs, and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas.
...But the problem for Democrats isn't that they are losing among families now. The real problem is that the electoral importance of both nuclear families and the communities where they are congregating is only growing. According to Phillip Longman, a demographer at the New America Foundation, Bush states had a 13 percent higher fertility rate than their blue counterparts, whose base, as he puts it, is essentially "non-replicating."
....Republican regions...have continued to grow, in large part because they have become more attractive to families. These include places like Douglas County, Colorado, the nation's fastest growing county, which also has the fourth highest concentration of white children as a percentage of the population of any county in the nation. Located in the Denver suburbs, the county voted two to one for Bush. The same phenomenon can be seen in other fast-growing suburban counties--also mostly white--near Minneapolis (Scott), Dallas (Rockwall, Collin), Washington, D.C. (Loudon), Atlanta (Forsyth), and Columbus, Ohio (Delaware). All have growing populations and all went between 56 and 83 percent for Bush.
....across the country, areas with high levels of homeownership tended to vote more heavily for Bush than areas dominated by renters, according to economist Susanne Trimbath. If Latino voters continue to move into the middle class, buy houses, and relocate to more conservative areas--in other words, if they replicate the patterns of white nuclear families who are leaving behind the childless city-centers--Democrats may have a hard time holding on to them.
....Perhaps more than anything else, Democrats need a change in style. Democratic legislators too often seem hostile to suburban concerns, and indifferent to the aspirations of those who would like to buy a home and a small green place to call their own. In Albuquerque, for example, planners working for the local Democratic regime advocated banning backyards, an essential part of the middle-class family lifestyle. One even told a local developer that his having four children made him "immoral." A small--and probably extreme--example? Undoubtedly. But it speaks to a stereotype that Democrats have been battling for years now: that they disdain suburbia and the families who live there. It is long past time for Democrats to start undoing that perception.
Finally, Democrats might want to consider a change of venue for their next convention. They have held their last four gatherings in four of America's most liberal cities--New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. Maybe next time, they should hold their convention in Houston, Orlando, or Phoenix, where families are growing, people are moving, and the future of this remarkably fertile nation is being nurtured. It's worth a try, because, after all, Democrats have little choice. Demographics will not save them. On the contrary, the Democrats' task now is to try to save themselves from demographics.
Yes, it's true. We're outbreeding the libs, and after our children are done with their rebellion phase (if any), they'll likely have families; settle in the 'burbs (because who but rich empty nesters, singles, or the very poor will be able to live in Seattle or San Francisco or Boston then?); and vote Red, too. The political ramifications of today's "breeder" culture (as gays call it), are huge, and not to be, uh, misunderestimated.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 4, 2004 04:24 PM
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David Brooks observes:Young families move away from what they perceive as disorder, vulgarity and danger and move to places like Douglas County in Colorado (which is the fastest-growing county in the country and has one of the highest concentrations of... [Read More]
Tracked on December 7, 2004 12:59 PM