Did the Democratic Majority emerge after all?

Revising a political classic

(Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

I had Ruy Teixeira on the Weeds last week, mostly to talk about Trump’s gains with Hispanic voters in 2020 and his new project, The Liberal Patriot.

But Teixeira is probably still best known for his 2004 book with John Judis, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” which is one of those books that’s widely referenced years after publication but typically in a kind of caricature form. Obviously, the Democratic majority that Teixeira and Judis forecast — driven by the growing nonwhite share of the electorate and the increasing liberalism of college-educated professionals and big metro areas — did not exactly emerge.

Nevertheless, the big demographic trends that the book is about did emerge, and they played out roughly the way they forecasted.

Some other things broke less favorably. But broadly speaking, I want to defend the relevance of the book’s main ideas.

The baseline matters

Let’s start with the title, which was a deliberate reference to Kevin Phill…