Age And Race Are Changing America Forever. In 20 Years The GOP Will Have NO Base

The Party of Angry White Men

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What possessed the GOP to become "The Party of Angry White Guys?"

Certainly not democracy.

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The 'Next America' presents opportunities and challenges. "The America of today bears little resemblance to the country of 50 years ago. It is older. It is less white. And those two demographic trends will only accelerate over the next 50 years....The broad takeaway from Taylor's outstanding work is that age and ethnicity are reshaping our country, and even our ways of describing each other, rapidly and meaningfully. Those changes mean that assumptions based on the past are extremely dangerous, in politics and everywhere else. We are entering a new age for America. Both parties need to acknowledge that reality and act -- and react -- accordingly." Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post.

Primary source: "The Next America," Pew's full report.

One of the key challenges: The Republican Party's effort to remake itself. "That's bad news for Republicans, particularly because studies (PDF) have found that young political affiliations often become permanent ones. Many of those young people who voted for Obama will continue voting for Democrats the rest of their lives. As the Silent Generation dwindles and the Baby Boomers reach retirement, the electorate is going to look younger and more liberal. You can see that in two other areas in the Pew report: support for marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage." Danny Vinik in The New Republic.

Data suggest Republicans have a race problem "This doesn't mean that all Republicans are racist, of course, or that all Democrats are free of racism. Indeed, as the Harvard implicit bias test shows, we're all carrying around racial baggage of some sort or another. But the survey findings above indicate that Republicans have more work to do to address such prejudice within their ranks. There's an obvious moral imperative behind this, but there's also a strategic one: A party can't sustain itself if it continues to grow older and whiter while the rest of the nation grows younger and more diverse." Christopher Ingraham in The Washington Post.

Chart: How America's racial demographics are changing. Matthew Yglesias in Vox.