Thursday, February 8, 2018

Michael Barone: Gentry liberals own the Democratic Party

Michael Barone: Gentry liberals own the Democratic Party
Excerpt: Amid the brouhaha about the Nunes memo and the DACA controversy, an item from Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business caught my eye. Local demographers crunching Census data estimate that Chicago’s black population fell to 842,000 last year, while its white non-Hispanic population increased to 867,000. National political significance: in our three largest central cities—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago—gentry liberals have become the dominant political demographic group. That’s consistent with election results. Gentry liberals—the phrase is urban analyst Joel Kotkin’s—are the political base of each of those cities’ mayors, Bill de Blasio, Eric Garcetti, and Rahm Emanuel. That’s something new in American politics. Modest-income Jews used to be a key group in New York, white married homeowners in Los Angeles, “bungalow ward” ethnics in Chicago. In time they faced challenges from candidates with non-white political bases—blacks, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, Mexicans in Los Angeles, blacks and Hispanics in Chicago. Now gentry liberals are on top.

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