The steady, boring, always-get-it-right political analysts are now predicting Republican failure in 2016 — a year that should belong to the GOP. As Greg Sargent reports in the Washington Post, 2016 is shaping up as “brutal” for the right.
It’s all about the major change in demographics: America is no longer majority “white.”
In 1980, when nonwhite voters were just 12 percent of the electorate, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and was elected in a landslide. But in 2012, when nonwhite voters accounted for 28 percent of the electorate, Mitt Romney took 59 percent of white voters — and lost the presidential race by 4 percentage points. …WaPo
You can argue on some of the fine points, but the facts march noisily onward:
… If the electorate changes in line with census estimates, the slice of college-educated whites will grow by 1 point, to 37 percent of all voters, while the portion of whites without degrees will shrink 3 points, to just 33 percent of the total.
In other words, the GOP doesn’t just have a growing problem with nonwhites; it has a shrinkage problem as well, as conservative white seniors are supplanted by college-educated millennials with different cultural attitudes. …WaPo
Gone is the pale, saccharine, Norman Rockwell image of America.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t put the right out of business permanently. What it does do is oblige them to drop the racism and the ignorance of too many in their party. They need to disappear Trump and, at the very least embrace Jeb Bush — not so much because of his membership in Corporation Bush but because of Jeb’s Latino wife and kids.
… Imagine the panic that could set in among GOP elites if Donald Trump keeps it up, and garners cheers at a GOP debate when he calls for an alligator-stocked moat along the Mexican border? …WaPo
No. Really. That’s the 21st-century Republican party.
Cross posted from Prairie Weather
graphic via shutterstock.com