The Republicans are treading water

The political climate in the United States is changing, and the Republicans are scared. 

Actually, that’s not true; they are terrified.  

The Baby Boomers, historically White and conservative, are dying off and making way for younger generations, who are decidedly less conservative.  This, coupled with the rising tide of “brown” voters immigrating from Latin America and around the world is tilting the balance of power to Democrats; maybe permanently.

The Republicans can see the writing on the wall, so they are fighting back, much like a cornered rabbit, by using every desperate trick in their arsenal.  Gerrymandering, new restrictive voter laws, loading the Supreme Court, purging minority and Democratic voters from the rolls and rigging election commissions. According to an October update from the Brennan Center for Justice, 19 states have enacted 33 new laws this year that “will make it harder for Americans to vote”. 

White Supremacy has made a comeback, as the Republicans see no choice but to weaponize the fear that Whites will be pushed off the top of the food chain.   Trump knew this well, which is why we’ve seen this country transformed in the last five years from one in which our semi-polite society kept its latent racism hidden just below the surface, to one in which almost daily examples of hate-filled invectives and acts of racism are on open display.

 Approximately 8 to 10 million Boomers are expected to die by the presidential election in 2028 and roughly another 8 million by the following election in 2032. That’s almost a quarter of the Baby Boomer generation in the next 15 years.   According to the Census bureau’s projections, between 2012 and 2060, the U.S. population is projected to grow from 314 million in 2012 to 420 million in 2060, an increase of 34 percent. The nation will also become more racially and ethnically diverse, with the aggregate minority population projected to become the majority in 2043. Pew Research has concluded that by 2050 the Millennials, a historical Liberal voting bloc will account for roughly 80 percent of the electorate.

And there’s NOTHING the Republicans can do about this.

As the number of Republican Baby Boomers shrinks, they will be replaced by a more liberal group of voters, who have different views about race, abortion, gender, gun control, foreign relations and the role of government in our lives. The voting bloc in this country will move decidedly to the left for the foreseeable future. The ranks of Democrats and Independents are growing more due to the influx of immigrants, who traditionally vote Democrat. As the number of Democrats continues to rise and the number of Republicans decline, this will cause a change in U.S. politics that may be irreversible. The United States will shift from a center-right ideology to at least center-left.

Trump and his rabid followers can see the future; their immediate reaction has been to turn right as fast and hard as possible in hopes of delaying the inevitable. In the short term, this will work, but they are treading water at best. They don’t appear to have any kind of plan other than ringing the alarm bells of the fading power of whites in America. Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis and their ilk are surfing this crest of hatred and White power, but eventually these waves will crash into the shore and their time in the sun will end. Thankfully.

In our Capitalist system, if you have a product with declining sales, you must adapt and improvise in order to survive. This means changing your product to attract more buyers. The Republicans need to understand that they must adapt and come up with a new message that attracts more voters. White Supremacy as a tactic will only work as long as whites are in the majority.

The Trump Republican’s message, politics and hatred are vile and will only last so long. The American people are essentially good people, and they want this country to survive. To follow Trump and his sycophants is to drive America off a cliff. America is becoming more culturally diverse whether the Republicans and his revanchist white voters like it or not. Any successful political party needs to recognize this and cater to the new generation of voters to survive. The real irony is that Americans in general don’t want to identify as Liberals, because the word Liberal conjures up terms like socialist, Marxist and Communist. The word Liberal has become a pejorative. We want to identify as patriotic and loyal Americans, terms generally viewed as aligning with Conservatism. The Republicans need to remember that they are driving people away from the party with their ultra-right shenanigans and hate mongering.

One only needs to look to traditional red states to see that the large urban areas are decidedly blue. As America becomes more urbanized, this trend will increase. In the last election, Arizona and Georgia, bastions of Conservatism, moved away from Trump and the Republican’s message of hate. Red states are turning purple.

It’s possible that one or more Republican Presidents will be elected, but the writing is on the wall. The Republican’s days are numbered, and without a new message, their time in America is coming to an end. Like any other species that fails to adapt to a changing environment, evolution is a cruel mistress.

Maybe we’ve been looking at the symbol of Republicans all wrong. Perhaps it’s not an elephant after all.

Just maybe , it’s a Mammoth.