2016: Last stand of the angry, old, white American voter?

Late July, and mid-summer is in full swing here in California.  It is hot and dry in the American West.  Except where it is hot and muggy.  It's not supposed to be muggy out here; that belongs in the Midwest, and the East, and the South.  Well, it's hot and muggy in those places, too.  And out here, even with the exceptional drought, and water usage restrictions, and a developing El Nino weather pattern that is bringing the unusually high humidity to us -- this is still California, the semi-mythical land that attracts the multitudes.

Including a multitude of 2016 presidential election aspirants.  One multitude in particular:  the Republican hopefuls.



California -- though it sends lots of money to presidential campaigns, whether GOP or Democratic or something else -- hasn't been much of a campaign battleground for presidential elections over the last couple of decades.  Most of its popular vote is reliably for the Democratic candidate, which means that the truly important electoral college votes are cast for the same person.  (We have talked about the need to neuter the electoral college before, and might do so again, but not now.)

Nonetheless, we have no insulation against the heat and stickiness of the early campaign season.  The first GOP candidates' debate is soon -- August 6.  Since there are (apparently) only ten spots on that stage -- to be awarded by success in opinion polls as determined by debate coordinator Fox News -- and sixteen declared candidates, you can imagine the heat that is building as these people jockey for position.

One of the major surprises -- to me, at least -- is the fact that businessman and GOP candidate Donald Trump has managed to carve out and maintain a spot at or near the top of the polls.  It looks like he will be on stage in a few days.  Being on stage is nothing new for Mr. Trump, but the candidates' debate stage is a different setting than he usually occupies.  We might find out if kindergarten taught him how to share.

Does Trump's acceptance by Republican rank-and-file mean anything for the upcoming election, even if he is not the GOP's eventual choice as a presidential candidate?  I think it does.  (In my opinion, he will not be the Republican nominee for president in 2016.  But in 2007 I didn't think that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee in 2008.)

Trump is appealing to voter anger.  Have you ever seen Donald Trump look happy?  He usually looks angry to me.  And, there seem to be a large number of angry Republican voters if the opinion polls are a true indication of his popularity.

It's no secret that these angry voters are mostly white and mostly older (50+).  These people see the country changing around them in ways that make them uncomfortable and unhappy, and in ways that they have not been able to control, but that they feel they ought to be able to control.  Immigration from all over the world -- Mexico and Central America, to be sure; but also from Somalia, Pakistan, India, Philippines, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries -- is bringing in demographic, social and cultural changes that were generally not expected by these voters only a decade ago.

Add in the recent announcement by the U.S. Census that the majority of children in this country under five years of age is now non-white, and the result is that a large segment of older white Americans feel that something that belongs to them by right of their work and their heritage is being pulled away from them.

Take back our country!  Those are Trump's words, repeated over and over again.  He looks angry when he says them, which, of course, is appealing to others who are angry, too.

Mr. Trump is not alone in exploiting voter anger.  Mike Huckabee -- former pastor, former Arkansas governor, former Fox television personality, current Republican presidential aspirant -- recently sought to criticize the nuclear arms limitation agreement with Iran by saying that President Obama's deal is responsible for delivering Israelis to the "doors of the ovens."

Setting aside, for the moment, the distastefulness of Mr. Huckabee's comment, you have to conclude that he believes his credentials as an evangelical Protestant Christian will make this a message of righteous anger that is agreeable to other evangelical Protestants who also feel righteous anger.  That's not a big leap of logic.

What does the American evangelical Protestant demographic look like?  Largely white:  more than three-quarters so, according to the Religious Landscape Study by the Pew Research Center.  And 59% are age 50 or older, according to the same study.

Let's face the facts:  There are lots of older white American voters who are politically angry.  These people want to be a big part of the Republican political process, and they want to be a big part in the selection of the Republican presidential nominee.  They also want to be a major influence in shaping that nominee's policies and commitments.

Yes, I get it.  I understand those feelings of anger, even while not sharing hem.  These people are angry because they feel like they have unfairly lost a big part of their future lives that is greatly important to them.  They do not like the way the country is changing around them, and they want the power to at least slow the pace of change, and perhaps even reverse some changes that have already happened.

Political anger -- or, anger with the government -- is not exclusively Republican.  Nor is it confined to older white people.  At the moment, though, and in all likelihood for the current election cycle, the angry voter is overwhelmingly an older, white Republican.

Which is a group of voters that is inexorably declining in numbers and in its future influence.  As the raw number of angry, older white voters experiences its natural decrease, the other side of the equation -- the non-angry (or, at least, not-quite-so-angry), younger, white and non-white voter collection -- is increasing.  The mid-term election year of 2030 will be the first election in which the current group of under-fives -- a majority of whom are non-white -- will be able to vote.  That is well within the lifetime of many of the current over-50s.

Which brings us back to California.  Why has the state been so reliably Democratic for the last two decades?  Remember that California shortly prior to that time sent two Republicans to the White House:  Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Catalyst for the change was a voter-approved, mostly Republican-supported, mostly Democratic-opposed initiative called Proposition 187, which denied undocumented immigrants the right of receiving important public services such as health care and education.  Though found in court to be unconstitutional after its passage, the state's Republican Party (with some notable individual exceptions) just wouldn't let it go, even as popular majority opinion solidified against it.  That's when Republicans started a downward slide to near-irrelevance in California state-wide elections.  (Bear in mind that many and perhaps most of the state's Republicans do not consider Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to have been a true Republican.)

What's the lesson learned?  This:  If a party's politics is based on opposing and excluding what has changed, then those politics had better have enough highly motivated -- possibly angry -- popular support to win the next election.  Likewise and symbiotically, an angry electorate needs a political home.  If that next election is lost then those politics might never have another chance.

Nationally, the Republican Party is not faced with sliding into political irrelevance; far from it.  Nor would it be healthy for that to happen; America needs two viable and relevant political parties.

However, a sizable segment of the electorate is older, white and angry.  At the moment, their home is in the Republican Party.  The Democratic Party has no use for them, and the feelings are mutual.

In the long run, time is working against these voters.  They will naturally fade away during the years to come.

This next election might be their last chance at securing national power.  The election of 2016 could be their last stand.