"Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

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"Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

Postby cmsellers » Fri Oct 19, 2018 4:44 am

So there is this article in The National Review complaining about Betomania. And I agree, the fawning media coverage is obnoxious. I don't like Beto, hate how much of a role charisma plays in politics, and wish the Democrats could have nominated someone more moderate and thoughtful.

That said, what struck me is how the author is saying she is baffled how people could move from blue states and then vote for Democrats.

Of the countless head-scratching elements of the O’Rourke phenomenon, one wins handily as the head-scratchingest of all: A troubling percentage of the Betomaniacs I have met in Texas moved here after fleeing places ruined by Beto’s favored policies. These locales are often expensive, increasingly dysfunctional, wildly overregulated, sometimes mystifyingly poop-ridden despite being wildly overregulated (here’s looking at you, San Francisco!), and inevitably run by Democrats. Why does no one seem to make this connection? I don’t know! One hero in Austin has taken to posting stickers around town featuring an image of a giant locust, paired with the following text: “I MIGRATED TO A THRIVING TEXAS FROM A LEFTIST [NIGHTMARE] AND NOW I’M VOTING FOR BETO FOR SENATE.” (The posters feature a word much worse than “nightmare,” which I’m not reprinting because I run a PG-13 column here.)


Speaking of someone who did exactly that, I am baffled that she is baffled. Below are a list of possible reasons, with the ones that apply to me in this election starred.

  1. People may have moved here for things that the government has no control over, like the climate, or family, or the culture of Austin.
  2. People may have moved here for cheap property and any job they can get, but then seek higher wages and property values once here.
  3. Though Beto is a bit of an exception, Texas Democrats are usually less left-wing than California Democrats.
  4. Different cities specialize in different things, and it is possible to move from a place with a strong job market that just happens not to specialize in your thing. *
  5. Texas is unusual for a red state (you don't exactly see people flocking to Alabama, Utah, or South Dakota), and a lot of its success probably isn't based on things that any politician from the last couple decades has done. *
  6. Sustained one-party rule is never desirable in red or blue states. *
  7. Unfortunately, we have a binary choice between Democrats and Republicans. It is possible to hate Democratic zoning policies that make housing unaffordable and still think the Democrats are the lesser of the two evils. *
  8. Beto is running for the Senate, he has no control over state politics. *
  9. The Trump-era GOP is something that many people feel need to vote to oppose even if the Democrats lead to undesirable policy outcomes. *
  10. Political science has shown repeatedly that people vote based on things other than the policy outcomes they hope to achieve. *

There are probably other reasons too, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I've been trying to figure out why it bothers me that she claims she couldn't think of any reason someone would move from a blue state to Texas and vote Democratic, and I think I figured out why. It suggests that she is making no attempt to understand people who disagree with her. And given that the National Review is supposed to be the most thoughtful member of the right-wing media, I find that worrying.
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Re: "Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

Postby JamishT » Fri Oct 19, 2018 6:55 am

Reading that article made me question why I didn't go to college for journalism rather than not going at all, but that's a conversation for a different thread. I understand that journalists aren't (and shouldn't) be made to write in formal, stodgy English, but it was a little too laid-back for me. That really has nothing to do with anything, but I'm writing as I think, unlike my ideal journalist.

I understand where she's coming from though. Every so often, people realize that a city in one of the red states has a drastically lower cost of living, lower taxes, and overall is a pretty great place to live. I'm thinking of Missoula, Denver, Austin, Memphis, Atlanta, and others. Of course those who move there don't really consider the politics of the state or city, and OP listed additional non-political reasons to move somewhere. Being that they voted Democrat or otherwise have Liberal ideologies, they vote for Democrats. This leads to city governments turning Democrat, but then they nominate candidates for state wide office that lose because the rural vote and the Republicans who were already there (and those who moved for the same economic reasons) outnumber them.

Anyway, you meet a Democratic voter in one of those cities who moved there from a coast, and ask them why they moved. They'll likely cite jobs off the bat, along with cost of living, and then other non-political stuff. The confusion comes in when they vote for candidates, who to a conservative, have policy positions that will lead to fewer jobs and higher costs of living.
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Re: "Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

Postby Absentia » Fri Oct 19, 2018 7:26 am

The cost of living stays low in Texas because they have enough open, undeveloped land to meet any housing need with minimal investment. Politics doesn't enter into it. Northern California has less suitable land to build on and demand keeps growing (because of the continued growth of the tech sector despite all those years of being managed by wascally Democwats).
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Re: "Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

Postby cmsellers » Fri Oct 19, 2018 7:43 am

Like I said though, there are plenty of reasons to vote for Democrats that don't have to do with jobs or the cost of living, and may even outweigh those factors. I don't think it's the least bit baffling.

Now, I fully agree that ill-conceived Democratic policies have a tendency to drive up the cost of living, though as Absentia notes that's not the only factor. But I've seen a high rise go up in West Campus in Austin in under a year. In Massachusetts zoning laws might would not have allowed a high rise in an area like that at all, so I accept this possibly even more strongly than the evidence alone warrants.

I am also skeptical that Republicans are particularly good at creating jobs. The assumption that drives that belief is that red states have lower taxes and less red tape than blue states and that attracts investment. The tax burden thing is kind of true: though there are a few red states with very high taxes, there are no blue states with very low taxes. However blue states also tend to spend more on things that have high fiscal multipliers, especially when it comes to higher education.

As for the regulation thing, I think that that's one of those myths that persists because it was true a generation or two ago. For example, when it comes to licensing requirements, a study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found that the best five states (least burdened by occupational licensing laws), were four blue states and Utah, while the worst five state were two red states and three purple states.

And I have noticed that legislatures in Massachusetts and even California tend to be pretty sympathetic to the concerns of major industries. Meanwhile, legislatures in red states increasingly pursue culture war policies at the expense of business, as various recent controversies over bathroom bills and RFRAs showed. Red states also do things like taxing electric vehicles or trying to ban Tesla.

At this point, I know of nothing that shows Republican state legislatures are better for job creation than Democratic ones, but that's sort of beside the point. The point is simply that there are plenty perfectly good reasons to move from a blue state to Texas (or other red states) and vote Democratic even if you believe that Democrats destroy jobs and drive up housing prices, and yet somehow the author of that article couldn't come up with even one.
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Re: "Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Oct 20, 2018 2:17 am

If your argument for a liberal policy or vote isn't being shouted from the rooftops by a bunch of high-profile op-eds or millions of bleating lambs on Twitter, NR probably isn't going to hear about it, and certainly won't address it unless it's comically bad (single Twitter posts get critical entries in their blog all the time). I hate to bag on the guy again so soon after the Kavanaugh mess, but David French is a perfect example: despite making an obvious sincere effort to reach out to the left, he's so unfamiliar with newer progressive arguments he thinks the phrase "toxic masculinity" means that masculinity is inherently toxic. You know, the same way that calling Batman and Robin a "bad movie" implies that all movies are bad. This is not a man who has many long, two-sided conversations with modern progressives, and he's the best they've got at this. Forget about trying to get, say, Victor Davis Hanson or Rich Lowry to address what people on the left are actually saying outside of Twitter mobs or the NYT op-ed section.

In short, NR is certainly thoughtful, but like all explicitly ideological organizations they're also very thoroughly enbubbled.
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Re: "Why do people move to Texas and then vote Democratic?"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:09 pm

Because they hate you. It's because they hate you.
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