Typical Americans

-- by Dave

What's a typical American? According to Michael Barone, it's white married Christians:

The Republican Party throughout our history has been a party whose core constituency has been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Northern Protestants. Today, it means white married Christians. Yet such people, however typical, have never made up a majority in our culturally and regionally diverse nation.

Evidently, the core constituency of the Democratic Party that just elected Barack Obama is "atypical Americans."

The idea that only white Americans are real Americans has been with us for much longer than Michael Barone has been alive. Someday, we hope, it will become as extinct as the Klansmen and eugenicists who once promoted it.