After last night's final debate, it's clear that Hillary Clinton will be elected president by the largest popular vote margin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. The breadth of her victory will almost certainly elect a Democratic Senate and threatens Republican control of the House. But it's not just Donald Trump's idiosyncratic demagoguery that now threatens the Republican Party. It's the party's anachronistic policies, vitriolic rhetoric and abandonment of the political center that are triggering a classic realignment and reconfiguration of American political parties.
The coming Republican electoral debacle has been long in the making. Since 1964, the party has moved steadily in the opposite direction of the ideology and demography of what America has become. More than the presidency, the Senate and House is at stake: the very future of our two party system is at risk.
American democracy depends on the viability of a center-left party and a center-right party competing for the American electorate. Systems that can't adapt die. The Republican Party's elephant has morphed into a dinosaur being sucked down into the inevitable quicksand of political atrophy by cowing to the dictates of a dying base.
African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians consistently vote 70 to 90 percent Democrat. These groups comprised 12% of the American electorate in 1980. But America has changed. By 2012 that figure had risen to 28%, and it's expected that that these groups will account for 31% of the vote on November 8th. No party can expect to win the presidency when they concede four-fifths of 31% of the vote.
The middle-aged white vote alone can no longer be counted on to win a national election. Mitt Romney won a solid 59% of the white vote in 2012 while being beaten decisively by President Obama. Millennial evangelicals are in favor of marriage equality. And young people under 30, the future of American politics, are registering three to one Democratic. Young Cubans in Florida vote like their peers not their parents.
On November 8, the Republican Party will have lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. Blaming it all on Trump is too simple and too easy. Clearly the ideology of the Republican Party writ large -- not just the unique circumstances of Donald Trump -- is out of sync with the beliefs of the new American demographic.
So instead of conveniently scapegoating Donald Trump, Republicans should also blame their losses on their refusal to support bipartisan immigration reform, or on their ridiculous rejection of climate change that makes them a global laughing stock, rejecting both science and logic, or on a rejection of increasing the minimum wage and supporting paid family leave. They can blame their losses on being against equal pay for equal work for women, or on being against marriage equality or on policies and a platform that are openly hostile to Hispanics, Asians, immigrants, refugees, women, young people and gays. They should blame their defeat on their passage of voter suppression and intimidation laws that blatantly aim to keep minorities, the young and the old from voting. They have coddled an aging and often bigoted political base that is evaporating even in the reddest of red states. They can't blame all of the losses on Trump. They need to blame themselves, "the party of NO."
The Republican Party conducted an "autopsy" following its 2012 presidential defeat that recommended a course of moderation and outreach to appeal to America as it is and as it is moving as opposed to the basest elements of what it once was. But the response of Republican governors and state legislators was to do the opposite, passing voter suppression legislation, shouting that if these groups won't vote Republican, they would ensure they won't vote at all. Republicans in the House and Senate have continued their stated eight-year agenda of attempting to block all and every Obama policy initiative.
The direction of the country in myriad domestic and international issues is at stake. President Clinton will almost certainly have a Democratic Senate confirming possibly as many as three Supreme Court nominees who will shape the direction of American justice and American society for two generations. The outcome of the presidential election will likely determine, among so much more, abortion rights, marriage equality, voting rights, and the role of unlimited money in politics.
The House of Representatives, that the Republicans believed they gerrymandered into safe control, is suddenly very much in play. Democrats initially targeted 31 House seats for 2016: IA 01, IA 03, FL 07, CA 25, NV 03, NV 04, AZ 01, TX 23, CO 06, MN 06, MN 08, WI 08, MI 01, IL 10, PA 08, CA 10, FL 26, NY 01, NY 22, NH 01, NH 02, NY 24, CA 10, CO 03, MN 03, MI 07, IN 09, UT 04, CA 49, NY 23 and IL 12.
As a result of the Trump debacle, (compounded by his extraordinary failure to agree to the legitimacy of the American electoral process) that list of targeted Republican House seats has been expanded to at least 42.
A 10-point Clinton landslide will likely crest over Arizona, Georgia and Texas, rapidly accelerating these three critical states move from red to purple to blue that was already under way. Between Hillary Clinton's wave and Donald Trump's rip tide, November 8th looms as a repositioning and realigning election for American political parties.
Envision the dilemma for Speaker Ryan even if the Republicans manage to retain narrow control of the House. At least two-dozen Republicans, most from blue states with moderate constituencies, will disappear. Tea Party Freedom Caucus extremists will not only dominate his unruly caucus, but also be egged on by an emerging "Alt Right" faction that is openly racist and paranoid. It may very well be that the only way Paul Ryan can remain Speaker is if Democrats give him the additional votes he will need. He will not get those votes from the Alt Right Freedom Fringe.
And in any case Ryan and McConnell and other Republican leaders will then have to decide whether they will try to compromise and cooperate with President Hillary Clinton or declare war on her presidency as they did on Obama's. At this point we can't even predict whether they would accept a President Clinton invitation to a weekly congressional leadership White House lunch after her Inauguration.
The Republican Party is at a crossroads.
On Election Day, it will see the results of a half-century of pandering to and even promoting bigotry and fear. On November 9, it can get the message and implement the pragmatic and rational outreach prescriptions in the RNC's 2012 "autopsy."
It can help pass bipartisan-partisan immigration reform. It can address the concerns of African-Americans with policies other than voter suppression. It can understand the opportunities of policies geared to America's millennials. It can help to improve Obamacare instead of trying to repeal it. This will require that Republican leaders finally actually lead instead of just genuflecting to the darker, shameful elements of society.
The Republican Party will need to decide whether it's an elephant or a dinosaur. If it doesn't adjust its policies to address the concerns and demography of the new America, it will, like the dinosaur that couldn't adapt, become extinct. And the party, not Donald Trump, will have brought it upon itself.