Democrats Have a Good Long-Term Outlook-- If We Play Our Cards Right

     America's census results were not what anyone expected yesterday, and it provides some seeming bad news for Democrats in the short term and good news in the long term. The bad news is that Republicans could gain 0 to 10 seats in the 2022 midterm election; they only need five to switch the House of Representatives. 

     However, demographically, Democrats have a good chance in the long-term, if we play our cards right. The percentage of Americans who are white fell for the first time in history, and by a lot: 8.6 percent in a decade. Just 57 percent of Americans are white, which means that the idea of "minorities," which is, to begin with, a construct of the 16th century, will no longer be relevant by 2040 or 2050. In Georgia, for example, just 50.1 percent of citizens are white. The number of Americans living in urban areas in which Democrats do well skyrocketed across Southern states, with Hispanic and black Americans driving the population growth.

     For America, this is good news. Our biggest strength is that we have talent from all over the world on our team, as Van Jones stated. This is something that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush recognized but that modern conservatives apparently fail to. For Democrats, however, we cannot take this as a given. Conservative commentators like to say that Hispanics come to America to vote for Democrats; they don't come here to vote for anybody. They come here to work and have a better, safer life. Latin America is a region with a predominantly conservative Catholic religious sect and bad experience with socialist dictators of the 1980s and 1990s. Republicans could have a good shot at getting Latino voters, but they have chosen to pursue anti-immigrant rhetoric bordering on demagoguery and relying on the creation of ethnic tension. The majority of people under 18 are non-white, and young people tend to vote for Democrats, as well.

     Democrats need to continue using more grassroots momentum, as we did in 2018 and 2020, based on progressive values to win over this changing demographic. We are not actively driving them away like some Republicans, but we have to do more to convince them of our value as a party, and the work has to begin today.