Ruy Teixeira
Monthly Commentary and Analysis
June 2021
Has the Most Important Part of Bidenomics Already Been "Passed"?

No, I don't mean the American Rescue Plan though it is bound up with what I'm referring to: Bidenomics' commitment to a full-employment, high-pressure economy. America has now had four decades or so of *not* being committed to a full employment economy and it has not gone well, generating a chronic disadvantage for labor vis a vis capital, stagnating wages, soaring inequality and slow productivity growth.
Demographic Change Always Works for the Democrats--Except When It Doesn't

In my new article on Persuasion, I try to explain as clearly as possible how to think about the political effects of demographic change and get beyond the standard naive interpretation of these effects. It's not that complicated if you keep an open mind and think logically about that attendant possibilities.

"Rising racial diversity is an ongoing trend in the United States, as the latest Census Bureau data confirms. In fact, the figures suggest that over the past decade, the white population will have declined for the first time in the nation’s history.
Class Is Back in Session

My latest at The Liberal Patriot:

"Lurking beneath the surface of the 2020 election results were some important reminders of the central importance of class to American politics. According to Catalist data (two party vote), Republicans carried the overall working class (noncollege) vote by 4 points for the second straight time. Of course, the anchor of Republican strength among the working class is dominance among whites within that group, which only subsided slightly in 2020.
Cultural Leftism and the Defeat of Sandersism

There's a very interesting polemic by Shant Mesrobian on the American Affairs website that i missed when it first came out. In "The Left's Culture War Rebranding" he argues that not only has cultural leftism been bad for the Democrats' broad electoral prospects but it has actually redefined the left away from the promise of Sanders' 2016 campaign to something quite different and less effective. Sanders' 2020 campaign was a casualty of this turn as the hegemony of professional class cultural leftism proved impossible to resist.

I don't agree with everything in this piece but Mesrobian makes a strong argument that is worth reading in its entirety.
10 More Things We Now Know About the 2020 Election!

The conventional wisdom is reeling.

"The good folks at Catalist, the Democratic-oriented data analytics firm have dropped their 2020 national analysis of demographic voting trends in the 2020 election. It’s a cornucopia of interesting findings, even if their report at times seems to gloss over disturbing trends in favor of findings that support advocacy group talking points about the election results. But no matter! This is great data, the best we have so far, and can be trusted despite the left-leaning provenance of the analysis. In terms of the numbers, their methodology is sound and as objective as these things can be.
"They" Do Not Like "Us" and That Matters

The growth of dynamic metropolitan America and the faltering of much of the rest of the country is hugely important to understanding the evolving political terrain of the country. Many on the left prefer to reduce the story to one of xenophobic, racist reaction to a demographically changing country but this is lazy, self-congratulatory thinking.

Bill Galston provide a more sympathetic--and more accurate--interpretation of the heartland revolt in an excellent article in Francis Fukuyama's new site, American Purpose. Here Galston provides a concise summary of why "they" don't like "us".