AHC/WI: A Republican California
- Thread starter Calcaterra
- Start date
And why would that cause a shift to the Democrats? Because after 1994 the Republicans were perceived as anti-immigrant and anti-Latino. Before then, both parties had tried to appeal to immigrants and minorities. It was Reagan of all people who, in 1986, enacted the most wide-ranging amnesty law up to that point. Not to mention that CA had Republican Governors and Senators like Deukmejian and Hayakawa who came from minority backgrounds. So a state becoming less white doesn't make it more Democratic unless the opposing party deliberately takes a hard line stand against new non-white residents, as the GOP did in 1994. This had the short term boon of re-electing an otherwise unpopular Wilson, but the long-term defeat of the GOP in CA.
If Reagan can't be governor he could always redeem himself by running for the Senate, so losing the governorship won't necessarily work. A better option is to keep him as a Liberal Democrat, as he was before his stint at GE. He had actually sought to run for an open US House seat as a Dem in 1952, but he was rejected by party bosses who thought he was too liberal. Perhaps if Dewey defeated Truman in '48 and goes onto have a successful presidency, the Democrats would be desperate to cut their losses in '52 so they hold their noses and endorse Reagan. With his Hollywood charisma, Reagan could easily win even in a Republican year, and from then on he remains a liberal.
kernals12
Banned
Latinos were a heavily Democratic group before 1994 and their share of the vote for the Democrats didn't change afterwards.
If Jerry Brown - who opposed NAFTA - didn't make his Jesse Jackson gaffe in 1992, he could have beaten Clinton in the primaries and won the general. If he maintains his position as President and blocks NAFTA, that would help the Mexican economy and butterfly the resulting mass migration across the border.
I think the idea is that the protectionism NAFTA allows in the U.S. agricultural sector helped to weaken Mexico's, thus creating a situation wherein many Mexicans found themselves out of work.
kernals12
Banned
Conversely, it made food cheaper for Mexican consumers. Mexico's unemployment rate never exceeded 8%, even after the tequila crisis. That simply doesn't explain the emigration. The problem is Mexican wages are too low because of low productivity.
That's a bizzarre interpretation of what I said. I was referring to helping the economy in retrospect, that is to say it wouldn't be made worse by NAFTA. That deal severely hurt Mexico's agricultural sector and forced many farmers to immigrate to the US. You can point to areas where NAFTA had positive aspects like making consumer goods cheaper, but on balance it was bad for Mexico. Why do you think that all of a sudden Mexican immigration to the US spikes after the deal is passed? Just a coincidence? Please.
kernals12
Banned
The problem with threads like this is that the way states vote is based on complex cultural and demographic factors, not based on singular events or the actions of politicians. California is heavily Democratic because it's:
A. Highly Urban
B. Majority-Minority
C. Well Educated
A. Highly Urban
B. Majority-Minority
C. Well Educated
kernals12
Banned
Mexico had an economic crisis completely unrelated to NAFTA a year after it passed.
Wasn't a lot of it the fact that the wording on the ballot was different from the original petition?
Exactly. Not to mention that even controlling for immigration attitudes most Latinos would still vote Democratic due to class reasons.
You're referring to the peso crisis. While that wasn't directly caused by NAFTA, the devaluation of the peso did correlate with it's implementation. What did result from NAFTA was increased speculation that contributed to the crisis. So the two are related but indirectly so. At any rate, no scholarly source I've found has held the peso crisis responsible for Mexican migration to the north. On the other hand, academics and journalists have found reason to believe (for the same reasons I mentioned earlier) that NAFTA's impact on Mexican agriculture did contribute to increased Mexican immigration. But as you pointed out earlier Mexico was already in dire straights before 1993-94. NAFTA was one of a series of measures that Mexico was taking in attempt to save it's economy; restructuring the debt under the Brady Plan is another example. So a better POD than getting rid of NAFTA would be some sort of action that boosts the Mexican economy before migration spikes in the 1990's. The US could give Mexico some sort of debt relief or stimulus for instance. This is what Clinton did in 1995 when he loaned Mexico twenty billion dollars.
After the boom of the 1960's and 1970's Mexico's economy has been in a relatively poor state since the 1982 meltdown--recovery from which was slow well before NAFTA. NAFTA has not cured Mexico's problem of slow growth, but it did't cause it, and it is unclear that it made it worse (overall) than it otherwise would have been. For an alternative explanation:
"Yet it seems that, at the end of the day, the reason why post-NAFTA Mexico has failed to grow comes down to something much more fundamental: a fear of growing, embedded in the belief that the collapse of the 1980s and early 1990s (including the devastating “Tequila Crisis” of 1994-1995, which resulted in a another enormous devaluation of the peso after an initial attempt to contain the crisis was bungled) was so traumatic and costly as to render event modest efforts to promote growth, let alone the dirigisme of times past, as essentially unwarranted. The central bank, the Banco de México (Banxico) rules out the promotion of economic growth as part of its remit—even as a theoretical proposition, let alone as a goal of macroeconomic policy– and concerns itself only with price stability. The language of its formulation is striking. “During the 1970s, there was a debate as to whether it was possible to stimulate economic growth via monetary policy. As a result, some governments and central banks tried to reduce unemployment through expansive monetary policy. Both economic theory and the experience of economies that tried this prescription demonstrated that it lacked validity. Thus, it became clear that monetary policy could not actively and directly stimulate economic activity and employment. For that reason, modern central banks have as their primary goal the promotion of price stability” (translation mine). Banxico is not the Fed: there is no dual mandate in Mexico.
"The Mexican banking system has scarcely made things easier. Private credit stands at only about a third of GDP. In recent years, the increase in private sector savings has been largely channeled to government bonds, but until quite recently, public sector deficits were very small, which is to say, fiscal policy has not been expansionary. If monetary and fiscal policy are both relatively tight, if private credit is not easy to come by, and if growth is typically presumed to be an inevitable concomitant to economic stability for which no actor (other than the private sector) is deemed responsible, it should come as no surprise that economic growth over the past two decades has been lackluster. In the long run, aggregate supply determines real GDP, but in the short run, nominal demand matters: there is no point in creating productive capacity to satisfy demand that does not exist. And, unlike during the period of the Miracle and Stabilizing Development, attention to demand since 1982 has been limited, not to say off the table completely. It may be understandable, but Mexico’s fiscal and monetary authorities seem to suffer from what could be termed, “Fear of Growth.” For better or worse, the results are now on display. After its current (2016) return to a relatively austere budget, it remains to be seen how the economic and political system in contemporary Mexico handles slow economic growth. For that would now seem to be, in a basic sense, its largest challenge for the future. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-history-of-mexico/
"Yet it seems that, at the end of the day, the reason why post-NAFTA Mexico has failed to grow comes down to something much more fundamental: a fear of growing, embedded in the belief that the collapse of the 1980s and early 1990s (including the devastating “Tequila Crisis” of 1994-1995, which resulted in a another enormous devaluation of the peso after an initial attempt to contain the crisis was bungled) was so traumatic and costly as to render event modest efforts to promote growth, let alone the dirigisme of times past, as essentially unwarranted. The central bank, the Banco de México (Banxico) rules out the promotion of economic growth as part of its remit—even as a theoretical proposition, let alone as a goal of macroeconomic policy– and concerns itself only with price stability. The language of its formulation is striking. “During the 1970s, there was a debate as to whether it was possible to stimulate economic growth via monetary policy. As a result, some governments and central banks tried to reduce unemployment through expansive monetary policy. Both economic theory and the experience of economies that tried this prescription demonstrated that it lacked validity. Thus, it became clear that monetary policy could not actively and directly stimulate economic activity and employment. For that reason, modern central banks have as their primary goal the promotion of price stability” (translation mine). Banxico is not the Fed: there is no dual mandate in Mexico.
"The Mexican banking system has scarcely made things easier. Private credit stands at only about a third of GDP. In recent years, the increase in private sector savings has been largely channeled to government bonds, but until quite recently, public sector deficits were very small, which is to say, fiscal policy has not been expansionary. If monetary and fiscal policy are both relatively tight, if private credit is not easy to come by, and if growth is typically presumed to be an inevitable concomitant to economic stability for which no actor (other than the private sector) is deemed responsible, it should come as no surprise that economic growth over the past two decades has been lackluster. In the long run, aggregate supply determines real GDP, but in the short run, nominal demand matters: there is no point in creating productive capacity to satisfy demand that does not exist. And, unlike during the period of the Miracle and Stabilizing Development, attention to demand since 1982 has been limited, not to say off the table completely. It may be understandable, but Mexico’s fiscal and monetary authorities seem to suffer from what could be termed, “Fear of Growth.” For better or worse, the results are now on display. After its current (2016) return to a relatively austere budget, it remains to be seen how the economic and political system in contemporary Mexico handles slow economic growth. For that would now seem to be, in a basic sense, its largest challenge for the future. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-history-of-mexico/
Obviously, with ballot initiatives, wording can be important, but the fact is that open-shop measures failed almost everywhere in 1958 (except Kansas): "..in five of the six states the right to work proposals suffered defeat. In Kansas the open shop won the support of 57 percent of those voting; but in California, Colorado, Ohio, and Washington, it garnered only between 36 and 40 percent of the ballots, and the Idaho measure lost by a narrow margin. That same year, right-to- work measures also failed to pass in the legislatures of Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, and Rhode Island." https://books.google.com/books?id=Oosq_O1vDwcC&pg=PA193
In the 1950's and 1960's, right-to-work laws were mostly a feature of southern states and a few rural Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states. California was just not a good "fit" for them.