For a long time, I bought the argument that the emerging majority in
this country was Democratic. The key forces, it seemed, were the rising
Hispanic population, which everybody talks about, and the rising professional
population so well described by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. In upscale
regions across America -- on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia,
in the North Shore suburbs outside of Chicago, and in Silicon Valley -- there
is a sharp and significant swing to the Democrats.
But now I am not so sure about this Democratic trend. In fact, I'd bet
that the emerging majority is a Republican one -- or at least it can
be.
Consider just one statistic: In 1979, less than 15 percent of the office
space in America was in the suburbs. Today, almost half of the office
space is in suburbs, often in those low-slung office parks you see near
the airports and along the highways. That means that we now have a whole
tribe of Americans, a majority in fact, who not only don't live in cities,
but don't work in cities, don't go to movies or restaurants in cities,
and don't have any regular contact with urban life.
The Democrats are strong in urban "blue state" America and
Republicans are strong in rural "red state" America. But this
new tribe of people is not red or blue but is a mix -- a purple America.
These are the sprawl people, and they are the swing voters who will shape
the destinies of both parties. At the moment their values are moderately
conservative, when they think about politics at all.
We are in the midst of a great period of suburban growth. Sure, some
cities rebounded in the 1990s, but the suburbs grew twice as fast. The
suburbs around Atlanta now sprawl for hundreds of miles. In a few decades
the greater Phoenix area will have almost 10 million people; it will be
a more significant city than Chicago. Already, Mesa, Ariz., has a larger
population than St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Minneapolis.
Moreover, the opportunities and goodies that will attract people in the
future are all in the suburbs. The biotech revolution is taking place
in towns like Rockville, Md.; other innovations will take place in Douglas
County, Colo., and King of Prussia, Pa. The populations of these office
park communities are exploding.
But it's easy to miss the significance of this development because our
image of suburbia is motionless. We think of the suburbs as a place where
people with families go to live. In fact, a majority of households in
suburbia have no kids. We think of suburbia as white. But in fact, the
majority of Asian-Americans live in suburbia; half of all Hispanics live
in suburbia; and 40 percent of all African-Americans live in suburbia.
Teixeira and Judis seem to assume there is still such a thing as a coherent
metropolitan area. That blurs a key distinction: The most important political
divide in the coming decades will not be between coastal and inland regions,
or between urban America and rural America. It will be between one kind
of suburb and another: inner suburbs, which have large numbers of people
at the top and the bottom of the income scale and are hence Democratic,
and the faster-growing outer suburbs, which have greater similarity of
incomes and are hence Republican.
The really crucial question is this: As new people move to the outer
suburbs and sprawl areas, will they bring their cultures and voting patterns
with them, or will they adapt to the local suburban culture?
I used to believe that people would keep their old voting patterns. After
all, I figured, there is no such thing as a culture of fast-growth suburbs.
The sprawl areas, I thought, were a blank slate to be filled in by the
cultures of people moving there. But with the explosion of office park
people and institutions, a new culture is emerging. And people who are
part of that culture tend to adopt the values of George W. Bush, regardless
of the values they had in their old towns. These include order and neatness
over disorder and dysfunction; achievement, sports, and competition; and
a sense of responsibility and success. It's a jock culture filled with
talk of college football, NASCAR, and kids' sports teams that travel.
It's a culture in which seeker-sensitive mega-churches are part of the
atmosphere, even if you never set foot in one. It's a culture of big-box
mega-malls with parking lots as big as nuclear test sites where sprawl
people gather to brag about how much they're saving by buying in bulk.
In this culture, politics plays a small role. Sprawl people show an active
dislike for labor unions, jobs-for-life civil servants, and professional
ethnic agitators -- many of the groups that are identified with the
liberal wing of the Democratic Party. This is a culture that is extremely
intolerant of racial spoils systems and of people who try to get by without
acting entrepreneurially.
Such is the culture of suburban sprawl. Its inhabitants are acutely aware
of the fact that many of the people who write for and read The New
York Times, or who live in university towns, look down on suburban
sprawl, disdain big-box malls, sneer at Olive Garden restaurants, and
are completely ignorant of Pentecostalism, NASCAR, country music, golf,
beltless slacks, and the rest of boom suburb culture. They resent those
people for being snobs and know they tend to be Democrats.
This culture wins out over the culture the newcomers left behind for
several reasons. One is that new arrivals are hungry to connect and form
communities, which creates powerful social pressures for new bonds and
a high degree of conformity. As these fast-growth suburbs transform the
immigrants, they create Republicans, mainly moderate Republicans. The
already Republican suburbs just become more Republican. In states like
Colorado, the suburban Republican surge in fast-growing Douglas County
is counterbalancing the Democratic advantage in Denver and Boulder. In
Virginia, the Republican surge in Loudon County counterbalances the Democratic
advantage in Arlington.
Right now much of the Democratic Party is being driven by antipathy for
George W. Bush and the people who are perceived to be his corporate cronies.
The people in growth suburbs are never going to hate Bush. They are disgusted
by corporate greed, but they are never going to be disgusted by country
club communities, gated suburbs, and SUVs. In fact, those are the things
they are striving for. George W. Bush fits right into their picture of
the world.
Growth suburb culture is a powerful thing. And it will grow more powerful
as the years pass. You take, say, a Hispanic family that now votes Democratic.
You put them in a suburban development with a name like Falcon Crowne
Point, and I suspect that over several years you will see them conforming
to the local mores and building their identity around institutions that
are more identified with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party -- country
clubs, business groups, Pentecostal-influenced modes of worship, and so
on. They will not become ardent conservatives with a taste for culture
war, but they will make certain judgments about which party shares their
values.
My warning to Democrats is this: The party that alienates the sprawl
people will reap what it sows.
