There are more of us than there are of them

The 14^th Amendment isn’t going to save us from Donald Trump.  Nor is a ruling in New York state that he defrauded multiple banks and insurance companies over a ten-year period.  Nor are the 91 charges against him in his four criminal indictments.  Nor is another ruling by a New York judge that he raped E. Jean Carroll and is liable for $5 million in civil damages.  His base loves him for every scam he pulled, every norm he trashed, every law he broke.

There may be red state after red state across the South and Midwest voting for Trump every time he says “jump,” but there aren’t enough of them, and they don’t have enough electoral votes.  What will save us are our numbers.  Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once in the last 35 years, when George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004.  In every other election, Democrats won the popular vote, even when they lost the election overall because of the electoral vote count.  Put simply, there are more of us than there are of them.

What we’re going through today, right at this moment, are the beginning rumblings of the ground beneath the feet of Republicans that will become an earthquake in 20 years, when demographers  predict that White people in this country will reach minority status.  For a long time, they said it was going to happen in 2050, now they say it will be 2045, but check this out:  non-Hispanic White Americans under 18 are already a minority. 

And  it’s happening from both directions.  There are more non-White babies being born at the same time that there are more White people dying. 

This is my bi-weekly column in Salon. To read the full column, follow this link:

Truscott's Salon column