The ‘Invade the World, Invite the World’ Election

The Republican Party got smacked in the midterm elections because of voter frustration over the Iran War and its economic consequences, as even many Republicans, including Vice President J.D. Vance, have acknowledged.

But the scale of the Democrats’ sweeping victory was enabled by another factor: America’s racial-demographic transformation over the past several decades, driven largely by mass migration. If only whites had voted, the Republican Party would have strengthened its hold on the Senate, the House of Representatives, and state-level offices. If only nonwhites had voted, well, even the Chinese Communists would envy the Democratic Party its utter dominance.

“Invade the world, invite the world,” as the right-wing social commentator Steve Sailer famously put it, summarizing our inept leadership’s military and immigration policies. That’s the story of this election.

Georgia, once a ruby-red state, has gone from being supermajority white in 1990 to minority white today. So even though white Georgians favored the Republican candidates by wide margins, the Peach State sent Jon Ossoff back to the Senate and elected Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor, both Democrats.

The results in Texas—the most populous state traditionally held by the GOP—were even more shocking. But the data tell the same basic story. Only 37 percent of Texans are white, which is a big reason why Democrats dominated in the Lone Star State. Texas Hispanics, who tend to be fairly conservative, not only shifted blue but turned out in large numbers.

Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina, the list goes on and on, but you get the idea.

To be sure, if the Trump administration had governed more competently during the past two years—and especially if it hadn’t launched the disastrous Iran War—then whites and nonwhites alike wouldn’t have swung as sharply as they did toward the Democrats, and Republicans might have held onto the Senate. But that’s not the whole story. America’s racial diversity sets the context for its elections, and that context is an increasingly difficult one for Republicans to navigate.

I’ve argued in print and online (and online again) that the Democrats are heading toward a permanent majority because of America’s changing demographics. Few people agree with my analysis—and even the authors of the classic text The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002) have disavowed their book’s thesis—but I harbor little doubt.

If you remain skeptical, reflect on these two facts for a while: 1) No Republican presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover has won a majority of votes from any nonwhite racial group, and 2) America will be majority nonwhite by around 2045.

Done reflecting? Here’s another fact: Whites remain more divided than other racial groups between the two parties. A Democratic coalition of white liberals and nonwhites, if it holds, will achieve stable domination years before America’s electorate turns majority-minority.

Several factors have slowed the emergence of a permanent Democratic majority. The voting electorate is whiter than the general population. The Red Team can occasionally win more than 40 percent of Hispanics, America’s largest minority group. Many non-college-educated whites have fled to the GOP, partly in reaction to the Democrats’ boutique cultural fixations like transgenderism. And countermajoritarian institutions—gerrymandering in the House, malapportionment in the Senate, and the electoral college—mostly benefit the Republicans.

Some analysts, after Donald Trump’s dramatic victory in 2024, posited a new “multiracial coalition” that would keep the GOP in the game. It was wishful thinking. Trump made inroads with nonwhites, but he merely brought the GOP back to its George W. Bush numbers, more or less.

The margin of error for Republican presidential candidates is apparently slim. In 2024, Trump mobilized blue-collar whites and did reasonably well among minorities. And yet, facing a disastrous candidate installed at the 11th hour, Trump won the popular vote by a smaller margin than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

What transpired this week was a different matter altogether—an electoral backlash that some thought impossible in our age of polarization—and it will have long-lasting political consequences. The Dems will probably maintain their Senate majority over several election cycles, and if Texas just became solidly blue, Republicans won’t stand a chance at winning the White House in 2028.

Of course, a permanent Democratic majority doesn’t mean an eternal one. Perhaps the Democratic Party will splinter between its moderate and progressive factions, or maybe a viable third party will emerge that, over time, replaces the GOP. On the other hand, in cities and states that long ago became majority nonwhite, the Democrats enjoy one-party rule, and governance generally suffers.

A nation is its people, as right-wingers often say. And you can’t transform a nation without upending its politics.