I voted Obama (are you shocked?!), and I’m incredibly happy with this election. In brief: fuck yes!
In slightly less brief: Obama: awesome, gay marriage: awesome, Elizabeth Warren: awesome, first openly gay rep elected: awesome, legalization of marijuana: about time we stopped wasting money keeping it illegal.
I’m not just happy because of those wins, either. I’m happy because I genuinely suspect that the GOP’s days are numbered, and that this is another inevitable nail in the coffin. I suspect this because of data like these:
You see that age distribution? I don’t think that’s a transient thing. I don’t think that’s just happening with Obama. I think that’s a trend that’s going to continue to lean further and further away from the GOP as time goes by. I think their days are numbered, and it’s because I think those numbers are a result of each subsequent generation having more and more access to information via, among other things, the internet. Each new generation will have an easier and easier time finding access to real information, to fact checks, to solid policy analyses, etc. To put it bluntly: when the facts win, the GOP loses, hard. As long as the accessibility of facts continues to improve, I think it’s only a matter of time before candidates like Santorum are laughed and shamed off the political stage, and any politicians associated with the GOP as it operates today become unelectable.
They’ve done this to themselves. They’ve nurtured the far right of their base, and pushed their base even further right in doing so. The only way they keep the serious right-wingers with them is to continue cycling further right, and the only way to keep cycling further right is to further divorce themselves from the facts. The future GOP has two choices: spiral into conservative oblivion, or reinvent themselves into a party with positions that aren’t so obviously, blisteringly at odds with reality. Either way, whether or not they see it yet, I think the GOP of today is doomed. They’ll hold on for a while; I’m not saying there aren’t potentially a few tough elections ahead. Long term, though, they’re doomed. The writing is on the wall. A party so energetically divorced from facts cannot survive in a world where facts are coming out more consistently, rapidly, and accessibly with each passing year.
In brief: fuck yes!
Research to be Done 