Titles like that annoy me. Essentially since when this is the first paragraph:
It’s an enduring contrast in Congress: Minority legislators are much less likely to represent districts where whites constitute a majority of the population than whites are to hold districts where racial minorities comprise the majority.
…and this is the ninth paragraph:
The evidence suggests[*] it may[**] be easier for minority Republicans to attract support from white voters than it is for minority Democrats. Only 14 of the 88 minority members in the House are Republicans. But they are eight of the 15 minority House members holding majority white seats. They especially have an edge in districts that are at least 70 percent white. Of those eight seats held by minority Republicans, six are in districts that are 70 percent or more white.
You see, my party doesn’t actually have a problem electing minority candidates in Republican districts. Our problem is that we need more minority candidates in the first place – which is something that I’ll be the first to say we should work on, but it’s still fundamentally different from the Democrats’ problem. Which is to say, white Democrats get cranky when it comes to electing minority candidates in their district. Heck, they have a real problem electing them in statewide contests.
Which we all know. Alas, articles like the National Journal’s are currently the closest we can get to the mainstream media actually discussing them. And people think that American liberal/progressive culture has no taboos…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*’Suggests.’
**’May.’
Forgive me if I exceed my bounds, here, but it looks like it’s going to be a great cycle to be a republican party hack…
Yes.
Yes, it is. 🙂
Well, have fun with it! It appears that the democrats are going to spend the next couple of years re-negotiating the deals that hold their coalition together….with knives! 😉 And ain’t that just a shame?
To mangle Christopher Stasheff, my grief is so great that it forced me to start dancing.
Well, in fairness, would YOU like to be represented by any of the prominent democratic minority politicians?
It’s much easier to be blase about Mia Love or J.C. Watts than it is to be so about Cynthia McKinney or Elijah Cummings.
My “representative” is Sanford Bishop…… so, yeah, point taken.
I think that’s a factor of the “minority-majority” district and also why minority Democrats do not win statewide races. They are in a racial/ethnic enclave so it is easy to just pander to that. Unfortunately for anyone of wider ambitions, such pandering doesn’t increase his appeal to anyone outside of that narrow demographic slice.