Another Peter Zeihan video, this one on domestic politics, where his insights have usually been…less than stellar. But this time it’s about how screwed the Democrat Party is, though he mostly dances around the real reasons behind their decline, instead wielding his well-worn hammer stenciled “demographics.”
“Is there a future for the Democratic Party in the United States? And the short version is ‘probably not.'”
“The Democratic Party is not what it used to be. It has been through several iterations since it was formed back in the 1800s. But in its most recent iteration, one that dates roughly back to the post-World War II environment, the party basically it it’s formed around three big pillars of voters. The first is organized labor, with capital being on the Republican side of the equation. The second are ethnic minorities with most white people edging towards the Republicans again. And then the third group is coastal elites, specifically of the white tower crowd. People who live in cities and have a very different way of looking at the world than say rural voters who are more likely to be Republicans.” On the last point, Zeihan has shifted from talking about the postwar Democratic Party to the modern one, as Democrats used to own a goodly portion of rural voters, AKA “the farm vote,” especially in the South. Look at this county by county map of the 1932 Presidential election, and you see that Republican rural counties are few and far between. By 1952, rural counties really like Ike…but not in the South, which is still overwhelmingly blue. That change accelerates with the rise of the “new left” in the 1960s and the conscious decision by the left to start pushing conservatives out of the Democratic Party. (At least that was the case in Texas, as outlined in Wayne Thorburn’s Red State.) By the 1980s the process was well underway, as seen by party switches from such politicians as Phil Gramm and Kent Hance, and was mostly complete everywhere except minority majority counties, though in Texas we’re now seeing that Democrat-to-Republican pattern repeat itself with Hispanic majority counties. Smaller cities and suburban voters were where Republicans managed to maintain a foothold during the Democrat-dominated period between FDR’s election in 1932 and Reagan’s in 1980.
“If you look at it just on the numbers, if you add up all racial minorities in the United States with all organized labor or blue-collar workers with everyone who’s living in the cities, it’s a super majority of the population. And it’s pushing 70% of the total. It should, by the numbers, not only be the dominant party, but it should be the only party in the United States. And yet and yet and yet, they keep losing elections by ever more impressive margins.” “All organized labor or blue-collar workers” is another slight of hand, as those are two ever-more-divergent categories. All across the Western world, not just in the U.S., ruling liberal elites can rarely be bothered to hide their contempt for native blue-collar workers, which seems to be one driving factor in their importing immigrant classes to supplant them.
I’m snipping the “but the world changes and politics changes” section (Cold War, digital revolution, Baby Boomers retiring) because it’s all so very non-specific to the question at hand.
“But for the Democrats, this has not been a gift. Three basic things have combined to make it nonfunctional in its current form.”
“First, those liberal, coastally educated, urban living elites, they’re not nearly as united as you might think. And more importantly, they have a hard time resonating their ideas with the rank and file of the United States.” Here’s the first time Zeihan tiptoes up to the central truth that “their ideas,” the whole panoply of radical leftwing social justice, victimhood identity politics, DEI racism, radical feminism, importing millions of illegal aliens, supporting Islamic terrorists killing Israelis, etc., are all profoundly unpopular with everyone outside the leftwing college educated urban elites who make up the ideological core of the Party.
“Most Americans do not own six figures.” Actually, they sort of do, but I think what he meant was most Americans don’t earn six figures. “Most Americans have not graduated from graduate programs. And so, the sort of tunnel vision that you can get if you’re a part of this coastal elite just doesn’t really carry out to others. And when you see people starting to protest for trans rights, that just doesn’t resonate for most of the country.” Americans were more than happy to let the confused freaks do whatever the hell they wanted to with their own bodies, but once the groomers started “transitioning” and mutilating normie children behind their parents’ backs, normie parents started hating Democrats with a deep, righteous anger.
“The second issue is racial.”
“One of the huge mistakes the Democratic Party has made over the last 30 years is to simply bet that, because birth rates were higher under Hispanics than they were under whites, that the country was going to become more and more and more leftist, more and more democratic.” That is, in a nutshell, the John Judis and Ruy Teixeira Emerging Democratic Majority theory. And it 2021, Teixeira said that wasn’t happening.
“Instead, we saw two things happening with specifically the Hispanic population. Number one, they became steadily and steadily more wealthy, which tends to put them over into the Republican camp. And second, Hispanics, especially first and second generation Mexican Americans, are very strong in blue-collar work, specifically the trades like electricity and welding and similar items. Construction. Well, the United States is going through an industrial renaissance where those skill sets are massively in demand. And so if you want to look at politics through the lens of the economic halves and halves nots, the Hispanics have become more and more in the category of the haves moving forward, so for them tax rates have become as important, if not more, for most than things like racial equality.” Except we have racial equality under the law, and republicans support a color blind society based on individualism, while Democrats want perpetual social justice ethnic grievances which well-heeled upper middle class white liberals can signal their virtue by supporting.
“And so more and more of these people have shifted over in the general direction of Trump style Republicans.”
“And the third issue is cultural. If you’re a first or second generation Mexican-American, a first or second generation immigrant from any background, odds are that where you came from is less organized than the United States and less wealthy. You came to pursue the American dream, which means you have some firsthand experience in your family of what a system with weak rule of law looks like. One of the great things that we have forgotten in this country is that most migrants have a deeper degree of religiosity than most Americans. And so when you get a Mexican immigrant or Nigerian immigrant and they come to the United States, they are far more likely to be socially conservative than, say, the social liberals of the coasts.”
“We have all of these things happening at the same time, changing our idea of identity, and the net result is a lot of factions that used to be core to the Democratic coalition are now toss-ups. Hispanics were as likely to vote for Trump as they were likely to vote for Harris. Same for people under age 30. The youth are now in play as well.” No mention of why this might be the case, or why social justice, open borders and Covid lockdown policies are all widely unpopular with “the youths.”
“You pull this all together and at the moment it is absolutely impossible for the Democrats to win any big election unless there’s something else very big in play. Does this mean that the Democrats are dead forever? Not quite what I’m saying. What I’m saying is they can no longer count on winning by the numbers. There has to be another issue out there that motivates.”
Most of the the reasons Zeihan are correct (or at least correct enough), but save Hispanics, there’s very little deeper analysis of why all these various, formerly solid demographic have fallen away from the Democrat fold. And the answer is that the ideas promulgated by the ideological core of the Democrat Party are deeply unpopular. From mutilating children in the name of transsexism to importing millions of illegal aliens to legalizing shoplifting to putting repeat offenders back out on the street, there seems to be no 80/20 hill social justice-infected Democrats aren’t willing to die on.
In a way, the scarcity of details Zeihan provides on the manifest unpopularity of the Democrat Party is less notable than the fact he did a video noticing them at all. After all, a large portion of his bread and butter is speaking at various functions for those same “liberal, coastally educated, urban living elites” that he says are out of touch with much of America. That he can even tiptoe up to the truth indicates that the widespread unpopularity of Democrats has finally so established itself as consensus inside-the-beltway wisdom that it’s no longer taboo to talk about.
But the same thing that’s making the Party so wildly unpopular (the ideological capture of the Party’s core by radical social social justice) is the same thing that prevents the Party from being able to self-correct. The hard left is now so firmly entrenched in the urban centers that make up the Party’s shrinking base that they’ve nominated (and have a puncher’s chance of actually electing) a jihadi commie as mayor of America’s largest city.
A political party exists to win elections, but the Democrat Party’s social justice-infected insane wing is focused on taking complete control away from the corrupt wing, not only for the graft, corruption and patronage, but also to actively foment revolution against capitalism and “fascism” (i.e, anything that stands between their own will to power and complete control of the country). And they’re willing to lose election after election until they achieve that goal.
As the Party shrinks, it becomes ever more shrill and leftwing, and as it becomes ever more shrill and leftwing, the Party shrinks. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, a purity spiral Democrats seem incapable of escaping from.
Maybe by 2050 or so, an elderly Zeihan can post a holographic lecture on how social justice drove Democrats the way of the Whigs…
And as part and parcel of his “I have to keep getting gigs talking to these people, so I can’t explain _everything_” he also completely skips one of the most significant demographic shifts in the modern electorate, though he sideswipes the results a couple times – the gap between male and female voting patterns. His “youth are in play” is mostly male youths fleeing the Dems, and the other issues generally exhibit divergences along these lines as well, including the Hispanic voting patterns shift if I am not mistaken.
The Dems consciously decided to play to the “we’ll take care of you, just give up all your rights” and that has a very specific gendered appeal.
I should add, this is notably countered by the transing groomer “we’re cutting on your kids, but not telling you, m’kay?” thing, which has Moms who are not far left really pissed off.
It all sounds like a party that is ever more invested in blocking any measures to improve/enforce election integrity. Voter fraud— it’s all they’ve got left.
As recently as 1980, Ohio Democrats laid claim to both US Senate seats. At the state level, Democrats held the Governor’s office. This was likewise true for Leuitenant Governor, State Attorney General, etc.
Today, all statewide offices are Republican, as are the US Senate sears.
In 1980, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown were industrial centers. Labor unions were powerful. Democrats profited from this arrangement.
In 2025, these same cities are depopulated and deindustrialized. Their political power has been assumed by the suburbs.In 2024, 90% of counties across America shifted toward Trump compared to 2020. He won suburban voters 51% to 47%.
The Democrat party, based on the power of industrial unions is in decline. Today’s party is centered in feminism, which automatically disadvantages 50% of the electorate. A “worker’s party” has broad-based appeal that feminism cannot equal.
The Democrats are handicapped by urban violence and poverty. They are led by belligerent feminists. It is an ugly look for a political party and explains why they are losing elections.
You have to think about the endgame. Every year you have a smaller more virulent cadre of Marxists in the D party. Will the go the “politics by other means” route. Low grade insurgencies?
I’ve always been amazed that, while nearly twice the percentage of Americans self-identify as far right as do far left, that the far left dominates every institution we have, government, education, the media & Hollywood, and unions and over the last 20 years have also captured the military’s leadership and the C-suite. Granted all of that grift from the government budget pays for all that so they’ve had almost unlimited funding but still it perplexes me. If you really want to scare yourself, spend some time on Reddit; it’s just filled with rabid, foaming at the mouth Lefties who would put anyone who disagrees with them in a concentration camp in a heartbeat. Amazing so many people fall for the far left’s ideology given its abysmal track record.
I’ve always been amazed that, while nearly twice the percentage of Americans self-identify as far right as do far left, that the far left dominates every institution we have, government, education, the media & Hollywood, and unions and over the last 20 years have also captured the military’s leadership and the C-suite. Granted all of that grift from the government budget pays for all that so they’ve had almost unlimited funding but still it perplexes me. If you really want to scare yourself, spend some time on Reddit; it’s just filled with rabid, foaming at the mouth Lefties who would put anyone who disagrees with them in a concentration camp in a heartbeat. Amazing so many people fall for the far left’s ideology given its abysmal track record.
Zeilan is good at sounding knowledgeable about what just happened, as if the event is obvious if you’ve been paying attention but ht’s not so good at predicting what will happen next. And I’ve never actually seen him predicting the event that just happened, which is strange since he was obviously paying attention.
C’mon, people! Disney’s box office bomb, Snow White is not indicative of a secular decline in this illustrious brand. Feminist spokespersun Rachel Zegler (“..and always remember, free Palestine.”) does not signal Disney’s inability to connect with a wide audience.
Bob Igor’s pledge to make Disney a “change agent” is not evidence that this industry icon is wandering in the wilderness. Kathleen Kennedy is not a tone deaf producer. “Put a chick in it and make her gay” is fully reflective of Disney’s target audience.
…and the Democrat party did not get out so far over its skis that it cannot right itself in the next election.
“Zeilan is good at sounding knowledgeable about what just happened, as if the event is obvious if you’ve been paying attention but ht’s not so good at predicting what will happen next.”
Peter Zeihan famously predicted that Donald Trump had “ZERO CHANCE of being (re)elected. As a political prognosticator he now has ZERO CREDIBILITY.
Whatever skill he has as a demographic trend analyst is clearly not applicable to US politics.
“The Democratic Party is not what it used to be. It has been through several iterations since it was formed back in the 1800s.”
If the Democrats were to return to their Jacksonian roots as a State’s Rights ant-federalist party, they would win my vote every election cycle. If they worked to abolish Wilson’s Progressive legacy–the federal income tax, direct election of US Senators and the Federal Reserve Bank, I would go door-to-door registering Democrat voters.
If Democrats floated a plan to end FDR’s Welfare/Warfare State, I would donate 5% of my paycheck to the DNC.
As a result of their being unable to do any of the foregoing, their party is headed to inevitable ruin. The only remaining question of consequence is whether they will drag the entire country with them into the abyss.
Good review-fisking.
And as part and parcel of his “I have to keep getting gigs talking to these people, so I can’t explain _everything_” he also completely skips one of the most significant demographic shifts in the modern electorate, though he sideswipes the results a couple times – the gap between male and female voting patterns. His “youth are in play” is mostly male youths fleeing the Dems, and the other issues generally exhibit divergences along these lines as well, including the Hispanic voting patterns shift if I am not mistaken.
The Dems consciously decided to play to the “we’ll take care of you, just give up all your rights” and that has a very specific gendered appeal.
I should add, this is notably countered by the transing groomer “we’re cutting on your kids, but not telling you, m’kay?” thing, which has Moms who are not far left really pissed off.
It all sounds like a party that is ever more invested in blocking any measures to improve/enforce election integrity. Voter fraud— it’s all they’ve got left.
As recently as 1980, Ohio Democrats laid claim to both US Senate seats. At the state level, Democrats held the Governor’s office. This was likewise true for Leuitenant Governor, State Attorney General, etc.
Today, all statewide offices are Republican, as are the US Senate sears.
In 1980, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown were industrial centers. Labor unions were powerful. Democrats profited from this arrangement.
In 2025, these same cities are depopulated and deindustrialized. Their political power has been assumed by the suburbs.In 2024, 90% of counties across America shifted toward Trump compared to 2020. He won suburban voters 51% to 47%.
The Democrat party, based on the power of industrial unions is in decline. Today’s party is centered in feminism, which automatically disadvantages 50% of the electorate. A “worker’s party” has broad-based appeal that feminism cannot equal.
The Democrats are handicapped by urban violence and poverty. They are led by belligerent feminists. It is an ugly look for a political party and explains why they are losing elections.
You have to think about the endgame. Every year you have a smaller more virulent cadre of Marxists in the D party. Will the go the “politics by other means” route. Low grade insurgencies?
I’ve always been amazed that, while nearly twice the percentage of Americans self-identify as far right as do far left, that the far left dominates every institution we have, government, education, the media & Hollywood, and unions and over the last 20 years have also captured the military’s leadership and the C-suite. Granted all of that grift from the government budget pays for all that so they’ve had almost unlimited funding but still it perplexes me. If you really want to scare yourself, spend some time on Reddit; it’s just filled with rabid, foaming at the mouth Lefties who would put anyone who disagrees with them in a concentration camp in a heartbeat. Amazing so many people fall for the far left’s ideology given its abysmal track record.
@Pat Brady. One could make a good argument the recent violence against ICE constitutes an insurgency.
I’ve always been amazed that, while nearly twice the percentage of Americans self-identify as far right as do far left, that the far left dominates every institution we have, government, education, the media & Hollywood, and unions and over the last 20 years have also captured the military’s leadership and the C-suite. Granted all of that grift from the government budget pays for all that so they’ve had almost unlimited funding but still it perplexes me. If you really want to scare yourself, spend some time on Reddit; it’s just filled with rabid, foaming at the mouth Lefties who would put anyone who disagrees with them in a concentration camp in a heartbeat. Amazing so many people fall for the far left’s ideology given its abysmal track record.
Zeilan is good at sounding knowledgeable about what just happened, as if the event is obvious if you’ve been paying attention but ht’s not so good at predicting what will happen next. And I’ve never actually seen him predicting the event that just happened, which is strange since he was obviously paying attention.
My thought is :”Jeebus, the ‘Pubs won one whole election cycle.” We’ll see about a trend in a couple of years.
C’mon, people! Disney’s box office bomb, Snow White is not indicative of a secular decline in this illustrious brand. Feminist spokespersun Rachel Zegler (“..and always remember, free Palestine.”) does not signal Disney’s inability to connect with a wide audience.
Bob Igor’s pledge to make Disney a “change agent” is not evidence that this industry icon is wandering in the wilderness. Kathleen Kennedy is not a tone deaf producer. “Put a chick in it and make her gay” is fully reflective of Disney’s target audience.
…and the Democrat party did not get out so far over its skis that it cannot right itself in the next election.
“Zeilan is good at sounding knowledgeable about what just happened, as if the event is obvious if you’ve been paying attention but ht’s not so good at predicting what will happen next.”
Peter Zeihan famously predicted that Donald Trump had “ZERO CHANCE of being (re)elected. As a political prognosticator he now has ZERO CREDIBILITY.
Whatever skill he has as a demographic trend analyst is clearly not applicable to US politics.
“The Democratic Party is not what it used to be. It has been through several iterations since it was formed back in the 1800s.”
If the Democrats were to return to their Jacksonian roots as a State’s Rights ant-federalist party, they would win my vote every election cycle. If they worked to abolish Wilson’s Progressive legacy–the federal income tax, direct election of US Senators and the Federal Reserve Bank, I would go door-to-door registering Democrat voters.
If Democrats floated a plan to end FDR’s Welfare/Warfare State, I would donate 5% of my paycheck to the DNC.
As a result of their being unable to do any of the foregoing, their party is headed to inevitable ruin. The only remaining question of consequence is whether they will drag the entire country with them into the abyss.