This chart set is amazeballs:
? ONE MORE UPDATE: By request, I've added a third chart showing the breakout of the *total* U.S. population for comparison, via the U.S. Census Bureau. I also swapped the Dem/GOP charts to be on the Left and Right for obvious symbolic reasons. pic.twitter.com/5MjRgYZO2p
— Charles #GetCovered-ba (@charles_gaba) December 30, 2019
It’s not sustainable long term, having one party in a two-party system representing the country and the other repping a shrinking demographic. But thanks to the structure of Congress, it’s going to drag on a lot longer than it should.
Open thread.
FelonyGovt
It’s remarkable how graphically the pie chart shows the difference. The Republican Party is the party of cranky old white men.
Kathleen
@FelonyGovt: But…but…THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE!!!!!
Yutsano
You’re right about it not being sustainable. The problem is what can be done about it? Unless the country cracks there’s no way the empty middle is going to release its grip on power in this country.
Wapiti
Wow. That information just pops out with those graphs.
Joe Falco
And the GOP is going to lose the one black guy they have due to him deciding not to run again. The Party of Lincoln, indeed.
John Revolta
The correlation between the left-hand chart and the bottom chart (US pop.) is pretty damn good.
Better than I thought actually.
Major Major Major Major
Wow, that is something.
Yutsano
@Joe Falco: Tim Scott is retiring?
Hungry Joe
Whoa! The Dem distribution almost mirrors the national. Still a ways to go, but not bad. Not bad at all.
What’s with ”whinge” for “whine” all of a sudden? (Seems sudden to me, anyway.) “Whinge,” as I understand it, is British, and it differs from “whine” in that it applies only to a human over-complaining; an engine, for example, can’t whinge. But to my ear it sounds affected.
Sorry if I’m whinging.
feebog
Pretty damn damning. If your’e a Republican.
piratedan
bet we would see a similar breakdown in the press regarding who covers who and for what agencies…..
ruemara
It’s working as intended. Minority rule.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: Excellent point.
@piratedan: That would be a fascinating chart project.
Kent
The GOP’s largest and most loyal constituency, the Evangelical Right, was born as the religion of slavery and white supremacy. And they still don’t believe that women should hold positions of power. This is the intended result.
zhena gogolia
@FelonyGovt:
This was made graphically obvious the day of the impeachment debate in the House.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Speaking as a white guy and looking at those charts, no wonder majority of none California changed nothing in my life when white males are only 30% of the population, not 50% like the press likes to imply.
I think piratedan on to something that the press likely will show similar demographics to the GOP.
The Golux
“GOP” is an outdated acronym. “WMP” is much more on point, and has the advantage of being able to be pronounced “wimp”.
The Dangerman
Important December 30th Birthdays:
Tiger Woods (he has a MUCH better swing)
LeBron James (he has MUCH better hops)
Me
Major Major Major Major
ETA oh right, I can’t embed tweets until the technical difficulties™ are done
Roger Moore
That’s true. OTOH, it’s an improvement over the situation a generation or two ago, when almost all elected officials from both parties were white men.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Dangerman: Happy b-day.
hitchhiker
The R chart reflects exactly what their position is:
White men are natural leaders, and they’re supposed to be in charge. Yes, there are a few exceptional women and people of color, but generally speaking, white men are just smarter and more qualified to hold authority.
Period.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
Tim Scott is a Senator. The chart reflects the House.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman: Hap Day of Birf!
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Sorry really can’t read tweets at work. They mean Hurd?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@hitchhiker: That line of thinking begs the obvious question “But why that mediocre bunch losers?”
Duane
With Trumpov in charge of the upcoming census it’s likely the data will be unreliable. Intentional or not, he’ll screw it up.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
I assume so. Can’t think of any other AA GOPs in the House.
Ohio Mom
I’m always proud to be Democrat — these pie charts make my pride feel super-validated.
That is an amazingly close correlation. It’s probably as close to a perfect match as is possible, really.
Joe Falco
@Yutsano: Yep. Reported as far back as August and was a BJ thread around that time.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Duane: or forget or do the census for the wrong country, it’s Trump after all.
debbie
@Yutsano:
Wikipedia tells me you are correct, sir.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: @Joe Falco: @debbie:
I was a hair hopeful Scott was quitting too and we might end up with two plays for Senate in South Carolina. Now that would be royal flush territory as far as the election is concerned, but the way this environment is going it could happen. I could even see a couple choosing to retire after the sham Senate trial regardless of their election time.
I tend to forget Hurd is AA. I thought he was half Hispanic because of his district. Stupid of me to assume. I also know almost nothing about him.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: I’m coming round to the notion that Joe may be our candidate. Strangely, I’m a lot more at ease with it than I thought I’d be.
chris
On Impeachment Day (which should become a national holiday) a wag on twitter remarked on the diversity on the Republican side, the diversity of their neckties.
Yutsano
@Miss Bianca: His VP candidate choice is CRUCIAL. It has to be someone much younger (Sorry Elizabeth!) and preferably someone not white. I would love Kamala or Stacy Abrams, but I could also see him picking Andrew Gillum. Or Julian or Joaquin Castro. There’s so many good VP options.
Duane
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: An unfortunate lack of census workers in urban areas wouldn’t surprise me. Hey, we tried. Nothing we could do!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Senator Doug Jones, in a Washington Post op-ed, calls for a “full, fair and complete” Impeachment trial in the Senate, because the American people deserve to know the truth.
Time to send him some more money… But I’m having trouble finding what looks like a dedicated ActBlue link. There are so many, and they are all splitting between Doug and another party – like AmericaBlog, or Senator Ron Wyden.
This one looked pretty good, so I sent them some cash: Re-elect Doug Jones, elect Jamie Harrison, and take win both Georgia Senate Seats – Act Blue
Miss Bianca
@Yutsano: I don’t disagree.
jeffreyw
@The Dangerman:
Mrs J!
Patricia Kayden
Mo MacArbie
I was favorably inclined toward Harris, but I don’t see her checking any boxes that Biden needs to check, save perhaps old guy insurance. He’s already looked upon favorably by women of color, and locking down California isn’t really a problem.
Mary G
@The Dangerman: Happy Birthday!
ETA: @jeffreyw: also to your Mrs.!
Kattails
Nice charts, thanks for posting!
Bernie surging?? Saw that somewhere else as well, perhaps it’s just BS. Sincerely hope so. If the best the Democratic Party can offer me for a Presidential candidate is a shouty, old (and I’m not young), white, finger-wagging, non-Democrat male quasi Russian asset heart attack victim* who effectively helped Trump to office, and I have to vote for that against Trump, I may do so but mark my X in blood. Not to be melodramatic or anything.
*And yes, I know people who are alive and quite well years after a heart attack, but you know Hillary fainted…
Mike in NC
@chris: It’s like the retirement community on a golf course that we live on: old white men with gray hair, old white men with no hair, old white men with brown hair. The diversity is amazing.
Amir Khalid
@Hungry Joe:
“The engines howled and whined like tired children at the supermarket.” — Douglas Adams
Mike in NC
@Kattails: Bernie Sanders did about as much as Putin to give us Trump in 2016. Barring a fatal heart attack or stroke, he will run again in 2024 and possibly 2028 if he has good genes. Perennial spoiler.
Splitting Image
I notice that the yellow section of the Democratic pie representing hispanic women and the blue section representing white women are both considerably smaller than they are in the pie representing the population as a whole, and that there are twice as many white men in the Democratic caucus as white women.
In short, both sides are equally to blame.
In other news (and I’m not supposed to tell anybody this), but I’ll be replacing Bret Stephens at the New York Times when he moves on to other projects after a decent interval.
Kattails
@Mike in NC: Agreed. Grrrrrrr….Sometimes I wish I had an actual tail so I could thrash it.
Kent
Thinking rationally, Klobuchar would make some sense if she could bring along MN, WI, MI, and maybe put Iowa in play. If Biden carries PA, that’s the election.
Kent
@Splitting Image: I know you are just goofing. But the 2018 Dem Freshman class was 35 women out of 67 total. The 2018 GOP freshman class was 2 women out of 44 total:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/28/us/politics/congress-freshman-class.html
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
On my way home, I heard a local radio announcer remind us that at midnight tonight The Ramones Hour begins, as we will be at the point where it’s 20-20-24 hours to go…
https://youtu.be/bm51ihfi1p4
JPL
@Splitting Image: How will we be able to tell if you are truly a splitting image?
Another Scott
@Mike in NC:
Bernie Sanders – Early Life:
Bernie can’t count on “good genes”…
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
@Mo MacArbie: She might be able to get out the vote because she is energetic.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: I was about to ask why you couldn’t embed tweets, but now I’m thinking you posted this before you got the all clear to log back into WordPress?
Percysowner
Joe Biden would choose GOP running mate if one would ‘step up
I will vote for anyone who is the Democratic nominee, but if Susan Collins, or Lisa Murkowski is the VP I will throw up afterward. NO JOE! There ARE no more ‘good’ Republicans.
Ascap_scab
So as an old white male, it could be said that voting for any Democrat is “voting against my own self interest”, except that I’m not “billionaire” rich, never have been, never will be.
Ken
@Percysowner:
Obviously
Biden is hoping a bunch of Republican Senators will vote to remove Trump from office, hoping to be seen as “non-partisan” and thereby get picked as Biden’s running mate.This plan depends on Republican Senators being absolute idiots interested only in personal self-aggrandizement, but how far wrong can you go with those assumptions?
satby
@The Dangerman: Happy Birthday to you!
TomatoQueen
And me. And I’m long past the age when age is meaningful, except it’s that particular one:
https://youtu.be/HCTunqv1Xt4
satby
Steeplejack
@TomatoQueen:
Happy birthday! ???
TomatoQueen
Thank you thank you