"Texodus" Bodes Badly for Republicans

Like many Republicans who ultimately became "Never Trumpers," for years George Will served as an apologist for many of the forces within the GOP base - e.g., Christofascists and others who would use religion and a perverted version of "religious freedom" as a basis to harm others while grabbing special rights for themselves.  Then, of course, there were the dog whistle racists who paved the way for the outright white supremacists who now comprise a significant portion of the party base. Both of these factions of the GOP base helped hand Trump the nomination and helped him eek out an Electoral College win despite losing the popular vote by 3,000,000 votes. Belatedly, in my view, Will is playing Cassandra for the Texas Republican Party that has grown increasingly extreme and shamelessly panders to racists and the ugliest and often most ignorant elements of the evangelicals in Texas. The problem the Texas GOP faces is what has already happened in Virginia: the population has changed racially, become increasingly suburban, and finds the GOP's racism and religious zealotry disgusting and loathsome.  In a column in the Washington Post, Will warns the Texas GOP to learn the new reality before it is too late.  Here are excerpts:

I am a classically trained engineer,” says Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican . . . . And he sees portents that his blinkered party would be prudent to notice.

Hurd is one of six Texas Republican congressman who have decided not to seek reelection next year. Until this year, none of them had, since 2011, experienced the purgatory of being in the House minority. In the 2018 “Texodus,” five Texas Republican representatives retired (a sixth resigned) and two were defeated. Of the 241 Republicans in the House when President Trump was inaugurated, almost 40 percent are gone or going. See a trend?

His district, which includes 23 percent of Texas’s land and extends from San Antonio’s fringe to New Mexico’s border, is the state’s largest, encompassing all or parts of 29 counties and 820 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It is 58,000 square miles — almost as big as Georgia and larger than Illinois and 25 other states. It is 69 percent Hispanic and just 4 percent African American.

Hurd, an articulate, assertive 6-foot-4 former CIA operative and the only African American Republican in the House, thinks voting trends “are moving so fast” that 2020 “has nothing to do with 2016.” Just as “U.S. economic and military dominance are no longer guaranteed,” neither is Republican dominance in Texas, a state that is hardly immune to national trends.

In the 2016 House of Representatives elections, no Republican incumbent from Texas lost . . . In 2018, there were eight losses, and 16 won with less than 55 percent. . . . Nationally, Republicans are decreasingly strong where two generations ago they were especially robust — in suburbs. Texas ranks high among the states in terms of the percentage of the population that is suburban. And statewide, whites are a minority.

In Texas’s most important 2018 contest for a federal office, incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won by just three. See a trend?

If the Democratic Party can collect Texas’s electoral votes — 38 today, perhaps 41 after the 2020 Census — as well as California’s 55, it will reap 35.5 percent of a winning 270 from just two states. Then the GOP will have almost no plausible path to 270. . . .

And Hurd will repeat what he says today: Texas is “already purple.” Republicans “have to get out of our own way” because “if the Republican Party in Texas does not start looking like Texas, there will not be a Republican Party in Texas.”

Trump Is Driving Out Republican Voters

A piece in the New York Times looks at an issue that I have long argued ought to be terrifying the Republican Party both nationally and here in Virginia: the GOP is driving away younger, non-rural voters at an alarming rate and putting the party's long term viability at risk. The GOP base is aging and literally dying off and in states like Virginia, the rural vote can no longer outweigh the collective vote of the urban voters, which is precisely why GOP operatives sought to create chaos in the Virginia Democrat Party with its orchestrated attacks on Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax and, to a lesser extent Mark Herring (a piece in the Washington Post suggests the GOP strategy is not working with the Democrat donor class).  The majority of voters increasingly do not want what the GOP is selling.  And Donald Trump is exacerbating the problem, especially with younger voters who over time will replace the GOP's steadily dying base.  Personally, the death of the GOP and everything it has come to stand for cannot come soon enough, but one would think alarm bells would be going off somewhere with the GOP leadership.  Here are article highlights:

Ever since Donald Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, much of the media attention has been on how Democrats need to reconsider their strategy for winning voters in future elections, particularly Obama-to-Trump voters. But the results of the 2018 midterm elections suggest that Republicans have some soul-searching to do as well.

They lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections and suffered battering losses in the House in 2018. Republican strategists must grapple with how to keep their party viable nationally, and our data suggests that Trumpism may continue to hurt them in the future.

It has flown under the radar a bit, masked perhaps by the switch of millions of Barack Obama’s voters into Mr. Trump’s column, but in 2016 Mr. Trump did not receive support from a large segment of voters who pulled the lever for Mitt Romney in 2012. In fact, our data shows that 5 percent of Romney 2012 voters stayed home in 2016, while another 5 percent voted for Mrs. Clinton. These voters tended to be female, nonwhite, younger and more highly educated — the very voters Republicans feared would be alienated by a Trump victory when he was seeking the party’s nomination.

Most strikingly, one-third of 2012 Romney voters who were under 40 in 2016 did not vote for Mr. Trump, but rather stayed home, voted for Mrs. Clinton or voted for a third-party candidate. Among the under-40 Romney voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2016, 16 percent appear to have defected from the party to vote for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. Of course, we don’t know how they will vote in 2020, but what this means is that in the past two elections Republicans may have lost more than 40 percent of Romney voters born after 1976.

Republican House candidates performed worse among 18- to 39-year-olds than they have in decades. The voters Mr. Trump and his party lost in 2016 and 2018 represent the future of American politics.

Defectors were disproportionately women; 63 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters were female compared with 46 percent of Romney-to-Trump voters. Romney-to-nonvoters were 54 percent female.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, Mr. Trump shed a large share of 2012 Romney voters of color — precisely the type of voters that Republicans have been struggling to attract for some time.

Trump also lost support from Romney-supporting college-educated voters. While only one in four Romney-to-Trump voters had a college degree, 39 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters did, and 31 percent of Romney-to-nonvoters were college-educated.

Crucially, the Trump campaign alienated a lot of younger-to-middle-aged voters who had turned out for Mr. Romney in 2012. Four percent of Romney-to-Trump voters were under 30 years old in 2016. In contrast, 18 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters were under 30, as were 21 percent of Romney-to-nonvoters. Each of these patterns should raise red flags for Republicans, even more so after 18- to 29-year-olds went from supporting Mrs. Clinton by a 25-point margin in 2016 to supporting House Democrats by a 44-point margin in 2018. . . .

But it is the graying of the Republican coalition that is arguably the biggest threat to the party’s prospects. It is true that on average, older people are more reliable voters than younger people. But the partisan identities and voting behaviors that people adopt early in the life cycle tend to stick, becoming routines that people carry on for the remainder of their lives.

Can Republicans solve their demographic problem? A look at issue preferences indicates wooing back defectors will be difficult. On crucial issues facing the country, Romney-to-Clinton voters, Romney-to-nonvoters and Americans over all hold positions that are relatively far from Romney-to-Trump voters.

Trump may have won the White House with a thin margin built on winning over just enough Obama voters in the right places. But this victory may ultimately have come at the expense of the Republican Party’s long-term electoral prospects. To win some of the Romney coalition back, Republicans would need to moderate their stances on some key issues, like immigration and trade, and, of course, exactly the opposite is happening.

Again, let's hope the exodus of GOP voters accelerates!

Trump is Accelerating Virginia's Shift to a Blue State

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The reverberations of Tuesday's election triumph for Democrats continue to shake Virginia and my well lead to further Republican defeats next year: Ralph Northam won roughly seven out of Virginia's eleven congressional districts and could put Republican incumbents on the firing line in the 2018 mid-term elections. Change has been coming to Virginia for years now, but one thing seems to be accelerating change and a rejection of the Republican Party: Donald Trump.  While popular in backwards, reactionary Southwest Virginia, parts of Southside and a few areas with lots of military personnel and retirees - although Virginia Beach went for Northam - Trump is increasingly toxic everywhere else, especially in the large population areas.  The map above shows locality drawn to reflect the number of registered voters.  The take away?  Southwest Virginia and other rural areas simply do not have the votes to elect Republicans statewide if Democrats run good candidates and smart campaigns.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the seismic changes taking place in Virginia.  Here are excerpts:

The sweeping gains won by Democrats in Tuesday’s elections complete Virginia’s transformation into the only blue state of the old Confederacy. Where the Harry Byrd machine once conspired to keep black students out of white schools, now a transgender delegate will take her seat alongside Latino women, a socialist and only the second African American elected statewide since Reconstruction.

The old edifices are falling faster than the state’s Confederate statues — but those are under scrutiny in Richmond these days, too. Even Virginia’s most politically powerful corporation — Dominion Energy — is being rattled: Some 14 of the newly elected Democrats have pledged to refuse contributions and challenge the priorities of a company that’s known as the state’s shadow government.

Change has been coming to the increasingly diverse state for years, but the evolution was turbocharged by the provocative influence of Donald Trump.  The president’s victory last fall and subsequent knife-twisting tweets inspired a surge of Democratic candidates to run for office and pushed many voters to the polls.

“This election, more than anything else, was a Trump-effect election,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington. Democrat Ralph Northam won the governor’s race over Republican Ed Gillespie by a comfortable nine-point margin, but Farnsworth said the outcome could have been much tighter if not for highly motivated anti-Trump voters.

The sentiment turned up in voices across the state. In Fairfax Station, where Pam Rodriguez, 44, showed up in the chilly evening rain to vote for Northam partly because she is “not a fan of Trump . . . I loved the commercial where Northam called him a narcissistic maniac,” she said.

It was in eastern Henrico County outside Richmond, where a few days before the election Nick Hall was all set to vote for the Democrat for governor even though he wasn’t sure of his name. Hall just wanted to strike back at the party of Trump. “Trump is an idiot,” he said.

An especially striking aspect of that anti-Trump fervor was that most of those new candidates he inspired were women. Of the 15 Democrats who were on track to flip Republican seats in the House of Delegates, 11 were women.  All of the delegates they will replace are men.

Some Republicans saw Tuesday’s result as a tsunami that couldn’t have been avoided — thanks, of course, to Trump.  “I’m for 90 percent of what President Trump wants to do, but I’m against 90 percent of what comes out of his Twitter,” said former Republican delegate Dave Albo, who stepped down this year and on Tuesday saw his seat in Fairfax County go to a Democrat.  The president whipped Democrats into a frenzy, Albo said. “One of the rules of politics,” he said, “is pissed-off people show up.”

The results did, in fact, amplify the state’s divisions. Blue regions got bigger, as more suburbs flipped for Democrats — especially in the outer D.C. suburbs and around Richmond and Hampton Roads. But rural red areas went for Gillespie in great numbers, sometimes even more than for Trump last year.

Now, Democrats need to unite and take aim at winning congressional races next year and reelecting Tim Kaine to the U.S. Senate.  Trump will likely aid in that effort through his constant toxicity. 

The Proud Embrace of Ignorance

With the world, the scope of knowledge and technology changing at breath taking speed, nations and societies that embrace change and strive to meet the new challenges through innovation will prosper.  Those that do not will be doomed to fade to second tier status.  After World War I, many in Britain - especially conservatives - failed to grasp that it would never be possible to return to the pre-war era.  One consequence was that Britain began its slide from world super power status even though the full result wasn't realized until after World War II.  Here in America we stand poised at a similar cross roads where we can try to pretend it is still 1950 or face and embrace the new world we face.  Sadly, the Christofascists and Tea Party and their political prostitutes in the Republican Party seem determined to pursue the path to decline and second tier status.  The image above from Joe Jervis' blog sums up the mindset that these people who in their self-congratulatory piety are working diligently to lead the nation to long term disaster.  I find these people frightening. 

Victory for Obama Nationally and for Kaine in Virginia

I haven't been blogging this evening because (i) we had guests over for dinner and the early portion of watching the election returns and (ii) I've been working on a VEER Magazine piece that's due in the morning.  That's not to say that I haven't been following the election returns closely.    At this point - 12:04 AM - Romney is still refusing to concede that he has lost to Barack Obama.  The man's arrogance and sense of entitlement just never ends.  He's a spoiled, rich brat who is out of touch with reality as I have always contended.  While Virginia has not yet been called for Obama,  the current numbers via WTKR-TV show Obama up by roughly  5,600 some votes and the areas with numbers still straggling in are all strong Democrat areas.   I am finding equal pleasure in Tim Kaine's defeat of my former classmate, George Allen in the race for the U. S. Senate seat being vacated by Jim Webb.

Another first also took place tonight -  Tammy Baldwin who I was lucky enough to meet back in 2008 at the LGBT blogger summit in Washington, D. C., has won her race and become the first openly gay U.S. Senator in the nation's history.  Kudos and hugs to you, Tammy!

But there is further cause for celebration:(1)  it appears that Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins who joined in the amazing opinion bring marriage equality to Iowa has been retained by voters despite the nasty and foul efforts of NOM and Rick Santorum, and (2) the results from Maine and Maryland where marriage equality has been called as the winner.  I've seen nothing official for Washington State or Minnesota, but my daughter who lives in Olympia, Washington, says that with 81% of the vote in, marriage equality is winning.  If this holds true, even if the Christofascists prevail in Minnesota, tonight has been a huge defeat for the National Organization for Marriage, the Roman Catholic bishops, and the Knights of Columbus who will have thrown away millions of dollars that would have been better used aiding widows and their children as the founder of the Knights of Columbus envisioned.

Overall, I am very pleased except for the loss of Paul Hirschbiel to hate group leader endorsed Scoot Rigell, a devote of Pat Robertson who seems to look increasingly like Skelator.   

So what's the moral of all of this?  It's simple: hate, bigotry, homophobia, and an open embrace of white supremacy simply no longer sell with the rapidly changing demography of the nation.  If the GOP doesn't want to suffer continued defeats, it needs to kick the Christofascists and Tea Party haters to the curb. Things are not going to get better for the GOP.  Their core base of angry white, heterosexual, homophobic men is literally dying off.  If they don't grasp the fact that it's a new world, then the GOP had better get used to the concept of being a permanent minority party.

Will Changing Demographis Pull 2012 Out of the Fire for Obama?

On this blog I look frequently at the changing demographics of the USA and the ways in which the Republican Party seems Hell bent to alienate the growing demographic sectors while kissing the vile, bigoted asses of declining sectors of the overall population. Two of the segments of the population most turned off by the GOP rhetoric are younger voters - 30% of whom identify with no religious denomination - and Hispanics who get treated by Republicans as if the were the new equivalent of the Communist threat of the 1050's and 1960's. So how will all of this play out in the 2012 elections? A new study paper entitled “The Path to 270: Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Election” by Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, suggests that with effort, Obama can make these demographic changes work for his re-election. Not surprisingly, Michael Medved, who is always blinded by his own religious extremism disagrees. Here are highlights from a piece in The Daily Beast that looks at the pro-Obama argument:.

The recent debate among pundits has been over the question of whether the path to 270 for Obama runs through Virginia and North Carolina and Colorado (and appeals to “new-economy voters”) or through Ohio and the Rust Belt (and more class-based appeals). It’s a silly debate. The answer is both. An important new paper by two leading electoral demographers on the progressive side of the fence makes the case and is well worth your time (it’s 68 pages), as it’s chockablock with fascinating information about changes in the electorate, both nationwide and in several key states—changes that may well decide the outcome next November.

The paper is “The Path to 270: Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Election” by Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress. You can probably figure out from the subtitle that the basic story is that demography favors Obama, while the likely underlying economic picture (i.e., still bleak) favors whoever is running against him.

Demographically, everything is moving Obama’s way. . . . .
The minority share of the electorate was 26 percent in 2008. It’s likely to be 28 percent in 2012. The white working class will continue to shrink. It will make up 3 percent less of the electorate than it did in 2008, dropping from 39 percent to 36 percent. White college graduates will gain 1 percent, from 35 to 36.

These changes obviously favor the incumbent. So now let’s get to vote margins. Obama took 80 percent of the minority population (26 percent of the country) in 2008. Teixeira and Halpin “conservatively” estimate that his share of the minority vote will go down to 75—basically from less enthusiasm, especially from nonblack minority-group voters. But that decline still translates into an ever-so-slightly-higher percentage of the overall vote (21 percent to 20.8 percent), because the voting pool has expanded. So Obama can suffer some decline in margins among minority groups without it being remotely fatal.

So let’s move on to geography. The authors say that Obama’s core states add up to 186 EVs, and the GOP’s, 191. They identify 12 states that are going to decide the winner, in three regions. Obama won all 12 last time, but that seems completely impossible for 2012. The Rust Belt/Midwest states are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The Southwest states are Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. The “new South” states are Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Throw it all in the wash and what does it mean? It means first of all that if the economy stinks, none of this demography will matter and Obama will lose. But it also means that he is going to have to assemble different coalitions from battleground state to battleground state around a message that can rally segments of all three groups. For all their differences, there is one thing almost all members of those three groups have in common. They’re part of the 99 percent. The authors want to see “a sustained posture of defending the middle class, supporting popular government programs, and calling for a more equitable tax distribution.”

To see Medved's piece, click here.

Pollsters For Both Parties See "Dramatic" Shift Toward Same-Sex Marriage

More bad news for the Christofascist and professional Christian set: pollsters for both the Republicans and the Democrats find that the shift towards acceptance of same sex marriage is increasing and that the speed in the changing attitudes is accelerating. Hence, self-enriching cows like Maggie Gallagher and professional Christians like Tony Perkins are increasingly fighting a losing rear guard action. Politico looks at this likely good news for the LGBT community which translates into bad news for homophobes and their political whores in the GOP. Here are some highlights:

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In a new polling memo intended to shape politicians' decisions on the question of same-sex marriage, the top pollsters for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama jointly argue that support for same-sex marriage is increasingly safe political ground and will in future years begin to "dominate" the political landscape.
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The pollsters, Republican Jan van Lohuizen and Democrat Joel Benenson, argue in their memo, which can be read in full here, that support for same-sex marriage is increasing at an accelerating rate and that the shift is driven by a politically crucial group, independents. They are expected to unveil the memo, which was commissioned by the group Freedom to Marry and shared exclusively with POLITICO, at a press conference at the National Press Club today.
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The new memo, based on public polling, makes the case that support for same-sex marriage has "accelerated dramatically in the last 2 years" and that the future almost surely belongs to supporters of same-sex marriage.
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The pollsters conclude that the issue is changing fast: "It is clear that the public is in the process of rethinking its position on the issue, with all political groups — Democrats, Independents as well as Republicans — and all age groups more likely to support marriage for same-sex couples," they write.
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They also note a factor that has been increasingly clear to observers of state legislative fights on the subject: Momentum and public interest appear to be shifting in the direction of supporters of same-sex marriage.
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And they make the case for a kind of demographic inevitability that's at the core of the argument gay rights activists have been making with increasing conviction to political leaders. "Support strongly correlates with age," Benenson and van Lohuizen write. "As Americans currently under the age of 40 make up a greater percentage of the electorate, their views will come to dominate."

Hampton Roads Loses General Assembly Representation

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With its image of "old, slow and not too bright" image highlighted by a Brookings Institute study last year, the Hampton Roads area of Virginia is not growing at the rate of the generally more liberal and progressive regions of Northern Virginia. As a result, Hampton Roads will likely lose representation in the House of Delegates with Pauls Miller - a progressive delegate - likely to have her district targeted for dissolution. As Blue Virginia notes:
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Overall, on the macro level, we see a shift in power northward to Northern Virginia exurbs. The effects of this on such diverse issues such as transportation and education funding to health care and social issues will impact state politics for years to come.

Parenting by Gays More Common in the South

New Census data has confirmed what would seem to be a counter intuitive result: parenting by gays is more common in the South despite the region's legal and societal hostility towards its LGBT citizens. As noted many times on this blog, states like Virginia go out of their way to make LGBT individuals second or even third class citizens. Yet we still go on with our lives even under such a hostile legal climate proving again that we have a resilience and perhaps stubbornness that cannot be repressed no matter how hard people like Delegate Bob Marshall and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli may try. I have many LGBT friends who have children that they are raisin and I know a host of out individuals who were previously married and who have children. The New York Times has coverage on this data and here are some highlights:
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Being gay in this Southern city was once a lonely existence. Most people kept their sexuality to themselves, and they were reminded of the dangers of being openly gay when a gay church was bombed in the 1980s. These days, there are eight churches that openly welcome gay worshipers. One even caters to couples with children.
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The changes may seem surprising for a city where churches that have long condemned homosexuality remain a powerful force. But as demographers sift through recent data releases from the Census Bureau, they have found that Jacksonville is home to one of the biggest populations of gay parents in the country. In addition, the data show, child rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country . . .
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The pattern, identified by Mr. Gates, is also notable because the families in this region defy the stereotype of a mainstream gay America that is white, affluent, urban and living in the Northeast or on the West Coast. “We’re starting to see that the gay community is very diverse,” said Bob Witeck, chief executive of Witeck-Combs Communications, which helped market the census to gay people. “We’re not all rich white guys.”
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Black or Latino gay couples are twice as likely as whites to be raising children, according to Mr. Gates, who used data from a Census Bureau sampling known as the American Community Survey. They are also more likely than their white counterparts to be struggling economically.
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Experts offer theories for the pattern. A large number of gay couples, possibly a majority, entered into their current relationship after first having children with partners in heterosexual relationships, Mr. Gates said. That seemed to be the case for many blacks and Latinos in Jacksonville, for whom church disapproval weighed heavily.
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In 2009, the Census Bureau estimated that there were 581,000 same-sex couples in the United States, Mr. Gates said; the bureau does not count gay singles. About a third of lesbians are parents, and a fifth of gay men are. Advocacy groups argue that their children are some of society’s most vulnerable, with fewer legal protections and less health insurance than children of heterosexual parents.
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Married same-sex parents face legal hurdles. Florida does not recognize same-sex marriage, and its domestic partnership recognition, while growing, is an uneven patchwork, and still leaves many spouses uninsured. Even when employers agree to cover domestic partners, those couples pay higher taxes, because without federal recognition of their status, health coverage is considered income and is taxable. Until recently, Florida was one of a handful of states that expressly prohibited adoption by gay couples.

People Coming Out Yonger and in Larger Numbers

More bad news for the Christian Taliban: people are coming out younger and in larger numbers than in the past. The world is moving on even if the Christianists and the bitter old men in the Vatican want to stay in the 13th century. A new survey in the United Kingdom indicates that the average age of coming out has plummeted by twenty years and the younger generations are not buying the poison peddled by anti-gay religious denominations and Neanderthal politicians (think John McSenile). Obviously, there are many people who remain in the closet to please family members, out of job fears and for other reasons - I frequently hear from some of them from all corners of the globe - but the trend is so very different than when I was in my teens or twenties. The anti-modernity forces like NOM and its allies may be winning some rear guard actions, but time (and the dying off of older homophobes) is against them. Here are some highlights from the Guardian:
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The average age at which people come out as gay, lesbian or bisexual has fallen steadily over the last four decades, according to Stonewall, the gay rights group. A poll for Stonewall of 1,500 people who were already out found that among the over-60s the average age they had come out was 37. But those in their 30s had come out at an average age of 21, and in the group aged 18 to 24 it was 17.
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The survey, conducted via social networking sites, does not take account of the numbers of people who know they are gay or bisexual but have not come out. But Stonewall said it nonetheless revealed a pattern of people having the confidence to come out earlier.
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[T]he change was likely to be because young people today were given a lot more information about sexuality, and were more likely to see gay people in the public eye, in TV programmes such as Sugar Rush, and soaps such as Emmerdale and EastEnders, with whom they could identify feelings they might be having. . . . "What we're seeing is an explosion of role models and people talking about being gay, so people are more able to associate what they're feeling with something they can see."
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Changes including the introduction of civil partnerships and the end of Section 28 – which banned the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools – had also helped, she said.

The End of White America?

The End of White America? That's the title of an new article in the Atlantic Monthly the substance of which will no doubt get the Kool-Aid drinking elements of the GOP and Christian Right all a twitter and hyperventilating since they go absolutely crazy over the idea that America may cease to be a white majority nation. These are after all the same folks - or their descendants - who used the Bible to justify segregation and bans on interracial marriage. The only segment of the population that they like less than non-whites and mixed race individuals are LGBT citizens. They do not judge people by their character or abilities but rather only by their skin color, religious affiliation and sexual orientation. In my view, they are what's wrong with America and U.S. politics. And I expect that we will see even more intolerance arise from these self-styled "real Americans" as they seek to marginalize non-whites, mixed race, and gay Americans, all of whom are examples of the dreaded "other." Here are some story highlights:

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Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities—blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians—will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation. Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America.

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As a purely demographic matter, then, the “white America” that Lothrop Stoddard believed in so fervently may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still. But where the culture is concerned, it’s already all but finished. Instead of the long-standing model of assimilation toward a common center, the culture is being remade in the image of white America’s multiethnic, multicolored heirs. For some, the disappearance of this centrifugal core heralds a future rich with promise.

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Not everyone was so enthused. . . . [I]in his 2001 book, The Death of the West, [Pat] Buchanan rote: “Mr. Clinton assured us that it will be a better America when we are all minorities and realize true ‘diversity.’ Well, those students [at Portland State] are going to find out, for they will spend their golden years in a Third World America.” Today, the arrival of what Buchanan derided as “Third World America” is all but inevitable.

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You can flee into whiteness as well. This can mean pursuing the authenticity of an imagined past: think of the deliberately white-bread world of Mormon America, where the ’50s never ended, or the anachronistic WASP entitlement flaunted in books like last year’s A Privileged Life: Celebrating WASP Style, a handsome coffee-table book compiled by Susanna Salk, depicting a world of seersucker blazers, whale pants, and deck shoes. . . . But these enclaves of preserved-in-amber whiteness are likely to be less important to the American future than the construction of whiteness as a somewhat pissed-off minority culture.

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Like other forms of identity politics, white solidarity comes complete with its own folk heroes, conspiracy theories (Barack Obama is a secret Muslim! The U.S. is going to merge with Canada and Mexico!), and laundry lists of injustices. The targets and scapegoats vary—from multiculturalism and affirmative action to a loss of moral values, from immigration to an economy that no longer guarantees the American worker a fair chance—and so do the political programs they inspire.

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[T]his white identity politics helped swing the 2000 and 2004 elections, serving as the powerful counterpunch to urban white liberals, and the McCain-Palin campaign relied on it almost to the point of absurdity (as when a McCain surrogate dismissed Northern Virginia as somehow not part of “the real Virginia”) as a bulwark against the threatening multiculturalism of Barack Obama. Their strategy failed, of course, but it’s possible to imagine white identity politics growing more potent and more forthright in its racial identifications in the future, as “the real America” becomes an ever-smaller portion of, well, the real America, and as the soon-to-be white minority’s sense of being besieged and disdained by a multicultural majority grows apace.

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There will be dislocations and resentments along the way, but the demographic shifts of the next 40 years are likely to reduce the power of racial hierarchies over everyone’s lives, producing a culture that’s more likely than any before to treat its inhabitants as individuals, rather than members of a caste or identity group.

Why Time is on the Side of Gay Rights

While there have been some major set backs in the progress of gay rights in the last election, over all, time is on our side and the demographic changes and voting pattern changes that are taking place mean that in time, our enemies will either die off and/or be out voted by younger and more tolerant voters. While this bodes well long term for gay rights, it is not good news fro the Republicans and Christianists - who increasingly make up the Republican voters who now control that party. Larry Sabato - an under graduate classmate of mine - of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia has a guest article on his site that looks at these developments and trends. Here are some highlights:

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Discussions of the current political situation and comparisons between the 2008 election and earlier contests frequently overlook a crucial fact. As a result of changes in American society, today's electorate is very different from the electorate of twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. Three long-term trends have been especially significant in this regard: increasing racial diversity, declining rates of marriage, and changes in religious beliefs. As a result of these trends, today's voters are less likely to be white, less likely to be married, and less likely to consider themselves Christians than voters of just a few decades ago.

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The declining proportion of married white Christians in the electorate has important political implications because in recent years married white Christians have been among the most loyal supporters of the Republican Party. In American politics today, whether you are a married white Christian is a much stronger predictor of your political preferences than your gender or your class.

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Married white Christians have gone from close to 80 percent of the electorate in the 1950s to just over 40 percent of the electorate in the first decade of the 21st century. . . . the decline in married white Christians has been even more drastic among younger Americans. The proportion of married white Christians among voters under the age of 30 has plummeted from almost 80 percent in the 1950s to less than 20 percent in the first decade of the 21st century.

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The danger posed to the Republican Party by the declining size of its married white Christian base was clearly illustrated by the results of the 2006 midterm election. According to the 2006 national exit poll, married white Christians made up just under half of the midterm electorate and they voted for Republican House candidates over Democratic House candidates by a decisive 62 to 38 percent margin. However, voters who were not married white Christians made up just over half of the electorate and they voted for Democratic House candidates over Republican House candidates by an even more decisive 68 to 32 percent margin.

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Republican leaders will need to find ways to reduce the Democratic advantage among voters who are not married white Christians in order to maintain the party's competitive position. However, given the generally liberal views of this group, this will not be easy. In 2006, according to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 57 percent of these voters supported a woman's right to choose an abortion under any circumstances, 66 percent opposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, and 71 percent favored a single-payer health care system.