So it appears that the Democratic Party is facing a serious demographic crisis. If current trends continue, the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Truman and Kennedy will continue to lose its former base of older, angry white men to the Republican Party at an ever increasing rate. It seems that the party's future is mortally threatened by this statistical loss as it continues to pander to the declining demographics of younger people, African-Americans, Hispanics, women, gays, lesbians, the working class, the college educated and other such trivial and extremist groups by offering up such palliatives as affordable health care and student loans, a living wage, a dignified path to citizenship, respect for individual rights and other such pork. Come below the squiggle so we can explore this emergency further.
The Democrats' problem is exacerbated by the fact that they are gradually losing the diversity that a healthy political party needs as they alienate key constituencies needed for electoral success, including the religiously conservative, the extremely religiously conservative and the extremely, extremely religiously conservative. They are also facing down a withering of wide geographic support, starting with a substantial drop off within the deep South, many former states of the old Confederacy, and also states that are found near the bottom right corner of most maps of the US.
As the party's popularity shrinks like a dried up vine in a drought, its leadership continues to ignore the growing influence and power of the aging, white, angry, religiously conservative, southern demographic that is increasingly speaking for the whole of the country, as a majority of the nation demands fewer voting rights with decreased opportunities for voting, the ability to work longer hours at sub-minimum wage, elimination of their health insurance, a de-emphasis on science based research (the less we know, the better), an increasingly polluted environment and in general, just more angriness!
Perhaps, that may be the Democratic Party's biggest lost opportunity: the failure to tap into the raging rapids of seething viciousness that is flowing through the body politic of this country. Democratic failure seems to stem from the party's inability to get mad at most anything, including stifling taxes that are the 55th highest in the world, the looming probability that people with low incomes will be forced to use private insurance plans instead of the emergency room when ill, or even the outrageous notion that college bound students could be paying lower interest rates than struggling multi-national corporations. This complete lack of outrage is clearly completely out of sync with the mood of the country.
So it now appears that we can finally begin to write the obituary for the modern Democratic Party as it enters slowly into its demographic winter of its own discontent and its few remaining constituents huddle together desperately extracting a modicum of spare warmth over the dying embers of a lapsed progressivism.