by kleinbl00

A case can be made that Donald Trump may have irrevocably tainted the Republican Party as a party of exclusion and nativism, permanently alienating Latino, Asian-American, black, and even younger white voters. But as the California example shows, demography is not destiny. Coalitions are built, not born, and they do not come into being overnight. Local activists worked for years to transform nonvoters into voters and California Democrats into a more inclusive party.

Nor, if a newly galvanized Democratic coalition emerges, will its path toward a national congressional majority be smooth. The road from Prop. 187’s passage to the state’s Democratic supermajority in 2012 was littered with losses. There were successful initiatives to ban affirmative action and bilingual education. There was Gov. Gray Davis’s recall and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who had not only supported Prop. 187 but who brought Pete Wilson, the man most associated with the law, into his campaign. Schwarzenegger, now Trump’s replacement as host of The Celebrity Apprentice, won 31 percent of the Latino vote, an early indicator of how celebrity and outsider candidacies can scramble voters’ response to party ID.

What’s more, the Democratic Party in California was starting, in the 1990s, from a stronger position than the national Democratic Party today. By the 1990s, California was no longer solidly under Republican control. Yes, there were still plenty of Republican officeholders in the state, but Bill Clinton won the state in 1992, and the Democratic Party was winning more and more state-level seats. That is not the case with the national Democratic Party today, which, with some exceptions, has been decimated at the local, state, and national level.

Still, the Prop. 187 fight does provide clues for how the Democratic Party can build durable coalitions in the coming years. The focus should be intensely local, with community leaders spearheading efforts in citizenship training, voter registration, and political activism. As in California, that work should focus not just on the biannual ballot box but on organizing those local communities, through sustained activism, around a shared set of values and policy preferences.

And perhaps more relevant: Democrats won in California not by coddling the racial fears and prejudices of white native-born Californians but by building a broader coalition that recognized and responded to Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans, and immigrants within the state. That is an important detail, given the debates coursing through the national Democratic Party today about which demographic groups should be courted, and how.

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