The Next Republican Age

Do you remember when, after Barack Obama was elected President, everyone was predicting an era of Democratic party dominance? Remember when changing racial and ethnic demographics were expected to doom the Republican Party to irrelevance? Neither can I. The Tea Party has not only revitalized the Republicans, it's set the stage for the GOP to dominate Washington for a decade - at least.

Let's start with the House of Representatives. The Democrats are going to lose control of that chamber in the midterms. Many liberals and mainstream Democrats are trying to console themselves with the notion that the entire House will be up for re-election in only two years, and depending on how the economy turns out, the Democrats can win in back in 2012. No, they can't. See, these folks forgot about redistricting based on the new census figures. Several Southern and Western states - most of which lean Republican - are expected to gain seats at the expense of largely Democratic Northeastern and Midwestern states. Don't look to Congress to add seats to the House - the chamber at the Capitol can only hold 435 seats at the most, which is why that number of seats has been fixed since 1912. And most of the states losing seats will likely have Republican governors who will likely make sure that Democratic districts are the ones that get eliminated, and there should be plenty of legislative chambers in many of these states in which Republicans ride the Tea Party wave to majorities.

Oh yeah, New Jersey has Democratic majorities in both houses of its legislature, but as Chris Christie proved when he outmaneuvered both the Senate and the Assembly to get his budget passed, that isn't going to matter much.

But at least the Democratic Party is expected to retain its U.S. Senate majority this year, right? True, but 2012 looks to provide the Guardians of Privilege with another opportunity to expand their presence in Congress to the point where Democrats get so demoralized that they remain a permanent minority - a cherished goal of Newt Gingrich. The Democrats, see, have twice as many Senate seats to defend in 2012 as the Republicans - as a result of the Democrats's lopsided Senate victories in 2006. Even if the Democrats garner high approval ratings by the time President Obama runs for re-election (assuming he runs - he might want to let someone else go for it, what with all that's happened of late), the mathematical odds of continued control of the Senate are against them.

Then there's the final leg of the stool - money. The Republicans have money, and lots of it, as a result of the Citizens United decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Attempts to re-regulate campaign finance within the parameters of the Supreme Court ruling have been stalled in the Senate by Republicans. A Republican-controlled House will not pass such a bill in the next Congress. None of the Court's conservative justices are likely to be replaced any time soon. In short, unlimited campaign financing is the law of the land for the foreseeable future, and big business will see to it that the Republicans will have much more money to spend on their campaigns. Democrats will have to rely increasingly on small donations from ordinary people - the same ordinary people who are too lazy to go out and vote but find the time to see Jackass 3D at the movie theater. (It's the most popular movie in America now, folks!)

Yes, the country is much more racially and ethnically diverse and becoming more so each day, even as the Republicans remain overwhelmingly white, so you might believe that, theoretically, this all has to favor the Democrats. Oh no, it doesn't! If you disagree, I ask you to consider Mississippi. Mississippi was a black-majority state between 1840 and 1940. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, blacks had citizenship, black men had the right to vote, and black people were the majority in the Magnolia State. So how come, despite a black majority in Mississippi, every elected official in the state was still white? Because demographics don't matter. In late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Mississippi, blacks were undereducated and forced into sharecropping. Those who tried to vote likely were unable to pass the literacy tests or pay the poll taxes that were required at the time to cast a ballot. When Reconstruction ended, so did the protection of black civil rights, which wouldn't return for another hundred years.

And wait until you find out what some Tea Partiers think of the Voting Rights Act!

Democrats will continue to be on the losing end in American politics until the playing field is leveled. But if Obama can't level it, it's hard to imagine who could.

Prepare for the new age of the New Right. It's going to be a long one.