Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

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No, the problem is simply political. Mexicans and their American descendents vote D. D's want more Mexicans, R's don't want that.

There's nothing whatsoever wrong with a shared economic area and huge economic disparity. Consider Bombay, Bangalore or Pune - all lovely places which bring high skill/high income folks together with low skill/low income folks looking to move up in the world. The result is beautiful modern neighborhoods like Koramangala, Bandra or Koregaon park, up and coming areas (described by westerners as "slums") like Dharavi or Baiganwadi, and free trade that benefits everyone. You have rich Parsis/Gujus moving in and working at banks, smart Tamils working in software, poor Biharis driving their Ubers, and everyone benefits.

Do you think Bombay should close her borders to Bihar, or even inland Maharashtra?

The only big issues are political externalities - i.e., Mexicans might vote for politicians that make the US more like Mexico. That's an issue even in the US (California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states), and is best solved with disenfranchisement/reduced democracy rather than trade barriers.

> Mexicans and their American descendents vote D. D's want more Mexicans, R's don't want that.

GWB got over 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Mexicans tend to be very conservative. That's the truth in California as much as it is in the South. These conservative roots match the Republicans more so than the Democrats, but it's the immigration stance that has tilted Hispanics towards the Democrats, but only recently, and even that is probably a temporary thing.

The notion that the Democrats have Hispanic (and especially Mexican) voters locked up isn't a reality.

> The only big issues are political externalities - i.e., Mexicans might vote for politicians that make the US more like Mexico. That's an issue even in the US (California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states), and is best solved with disenfranchisement/reduced democracy rather than trade barriers.

To be clear, regardless of your political stance or your views on immigration, not giving illegal immigrants the right to vote is not the same as disenfranchisement or reduced democracy. For legal migrants, am not aware of anything showing actual attempts at disenfranchisement.

You're correct that GWB received 40% of the Latino vote in 2004, but that was somewhat of an anomaly. From:

http://latinovotematters.org/stats/

    1980 Jimmy Carter, 56% Ronald Reagan, 35% +21
    1984 Walter Mondale, 61% Ronald Reagan, 37% +24
    1988 Michael Dukakis, 69% George H.W. Bush, 30% +39
    1992 Bill Clinton, 61% George H.W. Bush, 25% +36
    1996 Bill Clinton, 72% Bob Dole, 21% +51
    2000 Al Gore, 62% George W. Bush, 35% +27
    2004 John Kerry, 58% George W. Bush, 40% +18
    2008 Barack Obama, 67% John McCain, 31% +36
    2012 Barack Obama, 71% Mitt Romney, 27% +44

More importantly, the recent trend has been for the Latino vote to be more heavily toward Democrats. Certainly, I agree that Latinos as a whole tend to be conservative, largely due to a Catholic background. However, in current times, Latinos vote more heavily Democratic and by a large margin. Though, less of a margin than African-American voters.

Nice find, thanks.

I'd love to see that broken down by race and or nationality.

I think it'd be fascinating to look at as well, but I think it'll be hard to find one. Or, at least a quick search turns of nothing. Part of the reason why it's hard is how certain Latino populations identify regionally. In New Mexico, we do not use the word Chicano as many families have been here for 400 years and are a mix of local native and Spanish. Do we count them as of Mexican descent? Similarly, in Texas, many people identify as Tejano. Don't let Wikipedia fool you; we do not safely call someone who identifies as Tejano a Mexican. I can go on and on, but the problem is that the Latino population is just a mix and much of it is indigenous. Often, I think the conversation about Latinos centers around us being immigrants and where we came from, but it's more complicated than that especially with the mixing that occurs even if a family were to immigrate.

The GOP faces an existential demography problem.

Their base is a shrinking circle whose circumference is defined by an ourobouros

That's not really true. Tino Sanandaji explains in detail:

If the Hispanic vote share would have been what it was in 2000, let alone 1992. Romney would have won. Romney however would not have won with the vote share Bush got among Hispanics with the current composition of the electorate.

http://tino.us/2012/11/why-hispanics-are-natural-democrats-a...

Voting habits have little to do with either philosophy or policy. Black Americans are socially conservative too. It's mostly just tribalism; Democrats are on the same team as Mexicans/Blacks, Trump is on the team of American Vaisya's (see http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-... to understand the terminology), etc.

To be clear, regardless of your political stance or your views on immigration, not giving illegal immigrants the right to vote is not the same as disenfranchisement or reduced democracy.

If we legalized them (which I favor), and allowed them to move to the US permanently, it would be disenfranchisement to prevent them and their children from voting.

Note: This article explains nicely why I don't consider disenfranchisement to be a dirty word: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2016/09/expressive-mean...

What you call "tribalism", political scientists would call "coalition voting". You're describing the straightforward product of Duverger's Law as if it were some idiosyncrasy of human nature and not the design of our political system.

The word "conservative" doesn't help us much here either. Are black families more likely to attend church than urban white families? Yes. Are older black voters more likely to have strong traditionalist views on marriage and marriage equality? Yes. Are black voters likely to respond to appeals to defer to the authority of the police? Very much no.

No, coalition voting is when political parties promise to support some of each other's policies in order to seize and share power.

Tribalism isn't about policy and it's concrete effects at all. Here's a great Howard Stern interview about it. The gist is that Obama asked a bunch of NY folks whether they support Obama because he wants to stay the course in Iraq or because he's pro life? His supporters agree with him on both policies and are glad he chose Sarah Palin as his VP. (The one McCain supporter in NY was no better.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqAiarOhC2U

Similar sketch from 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJbOU4nmHQ

Tribalism isn't about policy. It's about identity and it seems to be the primary driver of voting. Trump is incoherent, and insofar as he had any concrete policy goals he's backed away from them (e.g. the giant wall of ice). But he shows respect to Vaisya Americans [1] so they support him. I imagine that if I spoke to typical white Trump supporters they would probably be as incoherent as Obama voters in Stern's interview.

This is also why Modi had to go so heavy on Hindutva to get support. "Toilets First, Temples Later" will help far more people, but he needs to ensure strong support among tribalist voters too.

Or even to go with your example, ask why people who incorporate "black" or "non-racist righteous white person" into their identity care so much about blacks being killed by police, and so little about blacks being killed by black civilians? That's directly comparable to the level of attention rural/suburban whites give to terrorism vs murders by rural white civilians. The former is an attack on our tribe by outsiders, the latter isn't.

[1] I'm taking the term from this article. In the US we deny these concepts so strongly that we don't even have words to describe them; as a result Moldbug had to borrow Indian words when discussing it. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-...

Sorry, I'm not going to Moldbug for a refutation of the concept of coalition voting or the idea that America's two political parties are an expression of coalition voting. The notion that the Democratic and Republican parties are and have been coalitions is extremely mainstream. If you want to challenge it, find a non-fringe source who's making that argument clearly and directly, and I'll read it.

I made the argument clearly and directly in my comment. Coalition voting doesn't explain the behavior in the Stern videos.

I only referred to Moldbug for a description of one particular tribe (Trump's) - ignore that tribe if Moldbug causes you too much angst. I included other examples. Do you have any argument beyond highbrow dismissal and appeals to uncited authority?

I can say that water is wet without citing specific sources, just as you can clearly construct an unproductive argument that water is not always wet.

> California refugees voting for CA-like policies in their new states

That depends on which CA refugees you're talking about--the ones who fled when it was undergoing a red -> blue transition, or the ones that were priced out? The former are political refugees and tend to vote for very anti-(current)-CA policies, whereas the latter aren't exactly analogous to Mexican immigrants in the US--they love everything about CA except the price and are trying to create low-cost CAs in exile, whereas Mexicans are escaping more structural problems and are in no hurry to recreate the conditions that made them left.

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