In the “Noteworthy” box at the top of this site, you’ll find information about a conference being held in Washington tomorrow by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, entitled “The Future of Red, Blue and Purple America.” We want to draw attention to this conference not just because TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira is co-moderating it, or because it features such distinguished panelists as Ron Brownstein, E.J. Dionne, Anna Greenberg, Alan Abramowitz, Mark Schmitt and Michael Barone (who knows his numbers even if you don’t like his politics). The subject is one of those few issues where Left and Right can truly cooperate: establishing the demographic facts and trends that shape political competition and enliven political analysis.
The conference will go through some of the big demographic trends, including suburbanization; race, immigration and class; family structure; religious practices; and generational change, and seek some empircally-based consensus. If you’re in the DC area tomorrow, you should definitely try to attend. And if not, you should read Ruy Teixeira’s excellent framing paper for the conference, which covers all the above topics and more.