THE REPUBLICAN MARCH TOWARD EXTINCTION

2045 will be a landmark year, because if current population trends continue, that will most likely be the year the United States becomes a majority-minority country. To spell that out, if you are on the planet in 2045 and you happen to be a non-Hispanic white American, you will no longer be in the majority.

And just to rub it in for those who proudly wear a MAGA cap and for whom tear gas at the border brings tears of joy, 2015 marked the year that racial-ethnic minority babies in the U.S. officially outnumbered white babies.

Donald Trump can stop a caravan, but he can’t stop reality. Of course, he can lie about reality, which is just fine for the roughly one-third of our fellow citizens who have taken up residence in Donald Trump’s alternative universe.

The MAGA in your life will tell you that immigrants, which in this case does not mean Norwegians who have overstayed their visas, but rather those dangerous brown people from poop-hole countries, who come here specifically to bring crime and disease, are the number one problem facing each and every one of us.

I know a few of you who have placed your faith in Donald Trump. I know many more of you through your posts and comments on social media. I hear your anger.

You happen to live in one of the many cities, towns, or neighborhoods across the country that has already shifted from white majority to white minority, leaving you surrounded by others, who speak English with odd accents, or speak languages that are not American, or attend services of a dangerous religion, and these non-white invaders now live in homes where the friends from your childhood once lived. I get it. I do.

You used to ask yourself: How did this happen?

Now you tell yourself and anyone who will listen: This country is being taken from us!

So, when Donald J. Trump arrived on the presidential scene, after he had already convinced you that the first Black President was actually born in Kenya, thereby making him an illegitimate POTUS, there was no question about it. Trump was your candidate.

And when he came back to you in 2016 and told you to support his war to save the real America, you absolutely had go to the polls, and you absolutely had to vote against every open border, soft on crime, caravan loving Democrat on the ballot.

You answered the call. Of course you did! You voted Republican.

As the exit polls told us, 75% of Republicans believed that the number one issue facing the country was Immigration.  Fox News told them that the caravan of invaders was within striking distance. There were Middle Easterners and tough hombres hiding amongst the innocent looking families and they were carrying diseases like small pox. Troops had been sent. Barbed wire was being strung. Tear gas had been fired. This was a national emergency!

But angry Hillary-loving, Trump-hating Democrats just didn’t get it. 75% of them believed that Health Care was the most serious issue facing the country.

Propaganda won Republicans, but would it win the midterms?

Democrats won back the U.S House of Representatives with a 40 seat advantage, flipped 7 governorships, 6 state legislative chambers, and over 300 House and Senate seats.

Not only did Donald Trump’s phony caravan politics lose the midterm elections by a landslide, but it may well have lost the future for what has become a party of cowardice, hypocrisy, and unconscionable opportunism.

How is the party of Old White Men, currently owned and operated by Trump, going to survive until 2045 when the midterm exit polls tell us that 76% of non-Hispanic white voters voted Democratic and only 22% voted Republican?

How is the party selling fear of the future going to stay in business when their most important potential customers – young voters – are not buying the necessity of putting children in cages?

67% of voters age 18 to 29 (aka: the future) voted Democratic while 32% voted Republican. And, if we add early-middle agers to that group, we see that voters age 18 to 44 broke for Democrats 61% to 36%.

Donald Trump was never really a Republican. He was just a loud mouth celebrity, who mainlined notoriety. Even he was probably shocked at how easily the Grand Old Party turned over the keys to the car. With their permission, he has taken the nation on a terrifying joy ride.

  

However it ends, they are as guilty as he is, and they should never be forgiven. Just going out of business is not punishment enough.

Until it ends, I will continue to survive Trump two minutes at a time.

THE MIDTERMS: DID HEALTH CARE ANXIETY TRUMP CARAVAN CRAZINESS?

The 2018 midterm elections are now history (except for results yet to come in), and the exit polls tell quite a story.

Actually, they tell many stories, so you may want to examine the results for yourself and pick the ones that mean the most to you. I will tell you what resonates most with me.

Voters were asked: What is the most important issue facing the country?

For months, the opinion polls had been telling us that the answer would be Health Care. And it was.

41% of voters answered: Health Care, making that the number one issue, by a wide margin. Democratic candidates had already figured that out from hearing the fear and rage coming from those lost in the cracks of a badly broken system.

In the United States of America, 62% of bankruptcy filings are due to medical bills. Health Care anxiety has become a middle class disease. Quite simply, you might have to lose your house to pay for your child’s cancer treatment.

Meanwhile, Republicans have worked tirelessly to repeal Obamacare, shrink Medicaid, undermine the health exchanges, and return to insurance companies the right to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the number of non-elderly Americans with some kind of pre-existing condition may total 130 million. That number alone just might translate to an awful lot of high anxiety health care voters.

As the midterms grew closer, Republican candidates realized that they would likely pay a steep price by being on the losing side of this issue. So they shrewdly put together a two-pronged strategy to save the House, increase their numbers in the Senate, and save their governorships.

First, they would proudly present themselves as the true champions of Health Care, especially when it came to protecting pre-existing conditions. Not hard to do! It just required using alternative facts in the context of an alternative Trump-Fox News reality.

The second prong of the midterm strategy would be to go full-Trump and scare voters into believing that nothing would endanger life and liberty more than lax border control, and for that, the caravan presented them with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Without stopping the caravan at the border, MS-13, ISIS, a loose collection of bad hombres, and of course people carrying diseases, including smallpox, would be spreading through America, raping, murdering, dropping babies, collecting benefits, and illegally voting Democratic.

So, did the Republican strategy work?

On some level, did genuine Health Care anxiety trump manufactured caravan craziness?

Well, of the 41% of voters who told exit pollsters that Health Care was their number one issue, 75% were Democrats and 23% were Republicans.

And, would you care to guess which issue finished second to Health Care, as the most important issue facing the country? 23% of voters answered: Immigration.

That party breakdown was the exact opposite of the Health Care answer. 75% were Republicans and 23% were Democrats. Of course, for some of those “Immigration” Democrats, the threat of deporting a family member would likely outweigh even severe Health Care anxiety.

I guess you could say that the Republican strategy worked on Republican voters.

Republicans made a good short term bet, but a bad long term bet when they first vowed to repeal and replace “every word of Obamacare.” Remember when Ted Cruz was willing to shut down the government to stop Obamacare from becoming law?

He warned his Tea Party friends that by getting subsidized health insurance, Americans would become “addicted to the sugar.” But that was back in 2013, when Ted had job security. He had no idea that one day he would get battered by a guy named Beto, running around deep red Texas, championing health care for all.

Texas will never be the same, and neither will Ted.

Besides electing leaders and policies, elections tell us a lot about who we are as a nation. Sometimes those answers are perplexing, but sometimes they are loud and clear.

The 2018 midterms delivered a big blue wave, but they also provided some answers as to what we have become in the last two years. 

The exit polls have a lot more to tell us, but I am at the end of my two minutes.