I’m a woman, and I’ve voted in every election since 1976, but I would gladly give up my right to vote if it meant we would get more presidents like Ronald Reagan and not be saddled with any more Barack Øbamas.

After the 2008 election, someone did a statistical analysis (I wish I’d saved the article) which showed that demographic shifts were responsible for Øbama’s victory. Certain demographic groups can be counted on to vote certain ways (e.g., married men with children vote Republican, single mothers vote Democrat, etc.), and their voting patterns stay remarkably consistent over the years. What has changed is the distribution of those groups. Back when Ronald Reagan was elected, we had more married people with children (who tend to vote Republican) and fewer single women with children (who vote about 99.9% Democrat). Over the years since then the numbers have shifted — marriage is down, broken homes are up, illegitimacy is up, and of course so is immigration, which has skewed the numbers to favor Democrats. If we could somehow bring back the culture of marriage and family formation, and decrease the incidence of family breakup and illegitimacy, that alone would go a long way toward solving the problem. But I don’t suppose that’s any more likely than repealing the 19th Amendment. Sigh—