The People Who Want to Take our Country Back

Jeff Horwitt has an interesting take from the latest WSJ/NBC News poll.

Ninety-five percent of self-identified Republican primary voters are white. That’s among the findings of the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, as well as that 74% of all Americans age 18 and older are white, a figure that tracks with census data. This means that heading into 2016, the Republican primary electorate is dramatically less diverse than the country overall. The GOP primary electorate is even less diverse than the country was in 1916, when 91% of the voting-age population was white, according to historical census data.

Nominating a candidate for president from an electorate that is less diverse than America was a century ago, when voting rights were limited to men ages 21 and over, is not good for the Republican Party or its eventual nominee.

Ya think?!!!

He then goes on to provide data about how out of touch these white Republican primary voters are with the rest of the country when it comes to current issues - like Obamacare, taxes and immigration reform.

And yet this is the group that will not only decide who the next Republican presidential nominee will be, they are the ones the Republicans in Congress are pandering to. Here's how President Obama explained it in his interview with VICE News.

A lot of times from the outside - and sometime mainstream media reports this as a food find and its a problem with both parties just being partisan. Well...that's just not accurate...There are times in history where Democrats have been unreasonable. There are times that Republicans have led the way. But right now - on a lot of the issues that young people care about - its not both sides arguing and creating gridlock. You've got one side that is denying the facts - who are often motivated principally by opposing whatever it is that I propose. That's not inevitable to our democracy. That's a phase that the Republican Party is going through right now...

One thing young people could do immediately is vote. And the fact of the matter is that in the last midterm election, about a third of eligible voters voted. And so, if you've got gridlock and you've got people who aren't producing, the fact that a lot of them got rewarded with re-election and the people who were in power creating the gridlock stayed in power, that's a consequence of everybody staying home and acting cynical.

Thanks in part to what Barack Obama did so well in 2008, we expect our political candidates to inspire us. And when they don't, we get cynical and stay home. That means we're making politics an emotional enterprise rather than a strategic one. The Republicans have mastered that by using fear to motivate those white primary voters. But we can do better than that.

Mitch McConnell's game plan from day one has been to take the energy of Barack Obama's presidency away by doing everything he can to stop him from getting anything done. Getting cynical about politics because of that plays right into his hand.

In 2016, I'm very likely to vote for politicians who don't inspire me. But I will do so anyway because I'll be strategic in thinking about who is most likely to ensure that we at least hold our ground (if not go forward) rather than going backwards. I've seen enough of what the Republican primary electorate wants these days. Giving up on the advancements we've made over the last century is not an option.