Hope for Democrats

The Washington Post makes the narrative a version of "Watch out for these (blonde) suburban ladies!" And that story is not wrong. The work of the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County in the recent Virginia elections is inspiring, turning a piece of the Richmond suburbs into fertile ground for Democratic votes. They came together through Facebook in response to Trump's election, created community and organization, and canvassed 50,000 addresses before this November's election. Do that in enough places and 2018 can begin the work of turning the country around.

But there was a lot more to Chesterfield County's shift to the Democrats than appears in the Post's lede and that analysis points to a more complex story.

“In presidential years and in governor’s races, the county where Republicans had their largest margins was Chesterfield,” said Bob Holsworth, a retired Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor. “It was where Republicans did their best.”

But the county evolved as its population mushroomed by nearly 25 percent between 2000 and 2016. While the number of whites in Chesterfield declined by 10 percent from 2000 to 2010, the percentage of blacks grew by 4 percent and Latinos more than doubled from 3 percent to more than 7 percent.

At the same time, Republicans’ victory margins steadily declined. In 2001, Mark R. Warner was the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate in four decades to get more than 40 percent of Chesterfield’s vote. By 2013, the Republicans’ winning margin had shrunk to eight percentage points. In 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by only two percentage points in Chesterfield, setting the stage for Northam to surpass Gillespie.

“I don’t think this election was generally about demographics, but in Chesterfield it was,” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. “In the next 10 years, it’s not going to be the Chesterfield where you slap an ‘R’ next to someone’s name and they win.”

Demographics are not destiny. The shift in the direction of a more diverse population was not huge -- but it helped open a crack for a progressive coalition.

Such a coalition is rooted in women of all colors, the broad communities of color, and even white men (often but not always college educated) who see hope for themselves in a more regulated, less individual-focussed, economy. Democrats win when all parts of that coalition can work if not entirely together at least in parallel. The Democratic coalition is the absolute majority nationally and becoming the majority in more and more localities.

Since the other guys offer literally nothing to the members of the coalition, if we lose in reasonably fair elections, we either failed to play well together or neglected to do the work of engaging with our communities. Neither should be acceptable anywhere when democracy itself is under threat, despite the often unpalatable reality that we're all going to have play as Democrats for a season. Equitable democracy is a longterm goal, not a political party.