The reality is The USA has long been a mosaic, but this election slammed home the reality to the racists and bigots on the right that White, while it is still "Right" is no longer might. 

The Republican party has become the party of White male protestants and Catholics. 

They're getting older and shrinking as a demographic factor in elections. 

Obama won with Women,  Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, muslims,  singles and parents with children under 18 at home and people under 30. 

These are the future of the USA with all of these, except perhaps the Jews and parents with children under 18, growing as a percentage of the population. 

The challenge the Republicans face is doubled by their failure to face it head on. They use racism and religious intolerance to get out the vote. They base their identity and branding on fear of others. And most of the demographic groups that added up to a win for Obama and the senate are on the outside-- female, immigrant, non-Christian, non-white. 

Combine that huge disadvantage with the reality that young people are coming out stronger, and staying voting against conservatives-- and the Republican party is doomed. 

flickr image by sylvar

Here's a discussion of some of those dooming demographics.

Asians

Bloomberg.com reports,

For a little perspective, consider the votes of another minority -- Asians. Romney won among all voters making more than $100,000 a year by a margin of 54-44. Asian-Americans happen to be the highest-earning group in the U.S., out-earning whites, and they generally place enormous emphasis on family. A perfect fit for Republicans, no?

No. Asians voted for Obama by 73-26; they were more Democratic than Hispanics

PewSocialTrends.org reports,

" 18.2 million in 2011, or 5.8% of the total U.S. population, up from less than 1% in 1965.3 By comparison, non-Hispanic whites are 197.5 million and 63.3%, Hispanics 52.0 million and 16.7% and non-Hispanic blacks 38.3 million and 12.3%."

and regarding politics,  here's a graph from the Pew poll cited above

and the Pew poll reports: 

On balance, Asian Americans prefer a big government that provides more services (55%) over a smaller government than provides fewer services (36%). In contrast, the general public prefers a smaller government over a bigger government, by 52% to 39%.

While they differ on the role of government, Asian Americans are close to the public in their opinions about two key social issues. By a ratio of 53% to 35%, Asian Americans say homosexuality should be accepted by society rather than discouraged. And on the issue of abortion, 54% of Asian Americans say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% say it should be illegal.

Singles and Single Women

According to a December 2011 Pew poll, the percentage of non-married people in the US has been climbing. Only 51% of those polled reported being married in that poll.  And among people 18-29, forty four percent believed marriage was becoming obsolete. 

A Guardian article reports,

" The unmarried women of the 2012 make up almost 40% of the African American population, nearly 30% of the Latino population, and about a third of all young voters, or 32.7%, according to the research released on Thursday. They are divorced, separated, widowed, or have never married.

... More and more Americans are single. Singe people are now the majority in about 15 or 16 states -- several of them the swing states that decide presidential elections, said Celinda Lake, the Democratic

pollster and strategist.

Among women, unmarried women made up about 20% of the electorate in the 2008 elections. By 2012, about 23% of voters were single women -- and they opted overwhelmingly for Obama, giving him 67% of their votes.

The challenge for Democrats, however, is that unmarried women have not always been reliable voters. Nearly 11 million of the single women who turned out for Obama in 2008 skipped the 2010 congressional elections, which led to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives."

Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute, (AEI) reports,

Married voters : The voting gap between married and unmarried voters is much larger than the gender gap. In all recent elections, married voters have favored the Republican candidate and unmarried voters the Democrat. This year, 56% of married voters favored Romney and 42% favored Obama.   Unmarried voters   can be never married, widowed, or divorced. Many in this category are single and young. In 2008, 65% of them voted for Obama; in 2012 62% did. Non-married women supported Obama more strongly (67%) than did non-married men (56%). The not-married portion of the population is growing. 

The marriage gap in this election was 41 points. The gender gap was 18.

I started this article because, having seen Abdus-Sattar Ghazali's article reporting that  85% of Muslims voted for President Obama, and there are an estimated 2.5 to 7 million in the USA.

That got me wondering about Buddhists. I couldn't find any specific stats on Buddhist voting, but about 14% of Asian Americans are Buddhist. There are also a growing number of formerly Christian or Jewish Americans who identify themselves as Buddhist.

Finally we have the youth. Romney and the Republicans thought and hoped the young would lose motivation and not show up for this election. The opposite happened. Policymic.com reports,

Predictions that the youth voter turnout of 2008 was a fluke or that the youth is largely apathetic fell flat on Tuesday. Youth voters, aged 18-29, turned out as 19% of the electoral vote -- a 1% increase from the 2008 election -- and these voters were overwhelmingly in favor of President Obama. 

Although youth voters were not as one-sided in 2012 as in 2008 (66% and 32% in 2008 vs. 60% and 37% in 2012) it still had a substantial impact on the election. According to a study by The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the youth vote affected "at least 80" electoral votes. Had Romney been able to split the youth vote in key states like Ohio (62% Obama vs. 35% Romney) or Florida (66% Obama vs. 32% Romney), these blue states could have flipped to red.

In the words of Heather Smith, President of Rock the Vote: "I think we've now established a fairly decent pattern that this generation is different from their older brothers and sisters, and we can put those rumors of apathy to bed " This voting bloc can no longer be an afterthought to any party or campaign." 

It's hard to see Fox backing off on its Islamophobia, which affects Muslims and Asians and maybe more. Good people don't like bigotry and they smell the stink of it. 

It will be even more difficult to silence the white male Catholic Cardinals and Bishops who speak out against Democratic candidates, who order priests to speak out against voting Democratic. This works a bit for white, non-hispanic Catholics, particularly males. But it is turning a lot of women off. 

The Republicans depend on big money billionaire and wealthy donors like Adelson, the Koch brothers and their ilk to fill the coffers of campaigns. They didn't look very good this last election. People want fairness. Buying elections with great wealth doesn't cut it. 

That leads me to voter disenfranchisement. The right has been doing this in many ways-- particularly at the state level. That's where the right has had most success. They take control of state-houses and win governor races, then do all they can to make it harder for minorities and the poor to vote, using voter ID, eliminating early voting, reducing the number of voting locations in minority and poor areas. Ben Jealous of the NAACP calls these latter approaches, which lead to long  lines where people have to wait many hours a form of Poll Tax, because people lose hours at work. 

As I've written, there is a revolution under way from a top down to a bottom up world, culture, even way of seeing and doing. The top down powers are fighting hard to hold onto their powers. It will, as Lawrence Wilkerson has said, be bloody.  The billionaires will buy and corrupt what they can. 

The inevitable doom of the right will come slowly. They've used gerrymandering to hold on to the house. That has to be overturned. The way to do this is simple. Tip O'Neill said all politics is local. Those demographic groups who won for Obama do not perform so well in off year elections. Single Women, young people-- their participation drops off dramatically. If we are going to progress faster towards a more progressive, bottom up politics, it's going to be essential for those demographic groups to get out and vote, so the legislatures and governor's mansions are taken over by people who will clean up elections-- ending bizarre gerrymandering and maximizing access to elections for all. Those should not be partisan issues. 

But wait. There's more. All these demographic disadvantages should be advantages for progressives. But they're not. They've accrued to the lesser of two evils party-- the Democrats. There's a lot of work to be done, but the trends are hopeful. Cleaning up gerrymandering at state levels could lead to federal legislation that ends gerrymandering in any state. 

Getting more democrats in Congress may do little, but if Obama keeps his word and fixes election problems, and future Congresses continue that process, then the American people will be in a better position to actually choose their candidates. We will hopefully, eventually see some form of instant run-off voting that allows second and third choices to be expressed-- an essential step towards ending two party duopoly rule. 

Still, ending the worst of two evils, or seeing the dark at the end of its tunnel is a good thing. It is likely that the GOP will not roll over and die. They will make some adjustments. Hopefully they will be towards justice, fairness and the light.