If that group split from the D party, would anyone even notice? If the split were to happen 30 years from now, it would consist of three octogenarians deciding that another Pinot Grigio (bought skulkily, late at night, in a brown paper bag, in another neighborhood) sounds better than going to vote, no?

I think the same applies to the constituency of the liberal blogosphere. There are not that many people like that. The Obama coalition is blacks, downscale whites, highly educated whites/asians, and single women, no?

Isn’t the Hillary-Obama split more likely? Or a similar one related to the rising influence of Hispanics? A split coming from whites flipping over the fact that the D party falls from their control (and, of course, not quite saying this out loud)?

I see that eventual split being between the constituency of the liberal blogosphere, whose shocking hatred of life has been quoted on a few different occasions in TAC; and the liberal religious milieu which is the core of what passes for a left in this country and which, even if it is pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, still is something of a pillar for bourgeois morality.

This para is either way too smart for me or unclear. Does this split relate in any way to Hillary voters vs Obama voters? Who are the “liberal religious milieu?” Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Methodists and Episcopalians? Not trying to be a prick, I really don’t get what you are trying to say . . .

I haven’t experienced American Hispanics in the suburbs so much as illegals who never lived in American cities in the first place.

Of course this may not be the case in other regions.

But I think you have the demographic shift exactly backward – its the blacks who tend to stay in the cities or at least move to the lower-end inner suburbs, its the Hispanics who are moving way out to McMansion country as it becomes the new 8-Mile.

1. The increase in urban population I’ve seen is largely due to illegal immigration. Immigrants in general, and illegals from the third world have never been a conservative constituency.

2. Native minority populations are being forced out of cities. But they are just moving to inner suburbs and towns, Forming ghetto ring cities and bring their one party boss dominated political culture with them. They’re not going away or changing their ideological orientation anytime soon.

3. In my experience the same people who move back into cities tend to either work for government or non-profit sectors. Some urban pioneers are genuinely Urbanists but that has never been a fertile ground for conservatives.

4. Many American cities have ancient dilapidated infrastructures. This, as well as crime problems drives a high tax regime and a reliance on massive government spending. Typically, urban centers rely on the pockets of states to keep them afloat. For instance, while New Jersey has been at the center of suburbanization, state politics is still dominated by urban political machines. The population of lockstep voters in cities like Newark, Trenton, Camden is still large enough to mandate income redistribution to themselves at the expense of the rest of the population. This is not a situation conducive to the growth of conservative voting in urban areas.

5. One would think that suburban voters would hold to conservative political values, they don’t. My experience with New Jersey and Pennsylvania suburbs is that they are filling up with young urban professionals who bring their city mentality with them, demanding explosive growth in town budgets for education, and infrastructure. They have all the expectations of government service provision with none of the self reliance of country folk. Most work in the New Economy and have the same tired NPR mentality they had before they left the cities. Forcing them back would change nothing. Meanwhile their here complaining about “Those people and their pickup trucks and big families.”

6. The outsourcing of American manufacturing killed the hopes put in the Reagan Democrat phenomenon. The GOP never really embraced them, just used their votes to further their establishment agenda. I do believe that a kind of Tory working class conservative movement was possible. But now that we are on a path to post industrial society with Mexicans doing all the yard work, they are a diminishing segment of the voting population.