By 2040 seventy percent of Americans will live in fifteen states, which means that the population of the thirty five least populated states will have a super majority of seventy seats in the Senate. So a political party that has most of the senators from those thirty five states combined with a few of the larger states could have a lock on the Senate and prevent the other party from passing any legislation at all, even if the other party had a majority in the House and the presidency. It could also block all supreme Court appointments, cabinet picks, and treaties.

I imagine there will be a renewed interest in John C. Calhoun’s doctrines of the concurrent majority and nullification. They might even put his statue back up.

And then there’s this: by 2060 (I’ll be a spry 103, repeating myself on Geezerbook) one of every four American voters will be over 65. That’s not one of every four registered voters, or one of every four people of voting age, but one of every four people who actually vote. Over seventy per cent of people over 65 vote. The number of voters drops by age. Under thirties vote about 40-45 per cent of the time. This was true when people over 65 now were in their twenties as well (though they won’t admit it now. They were clean and respectful too.) Which means that if this voting trend continues as it always has, combined with the continuing decline in the birth rate (there has never been this few children as a proportion of the population as now) and increase in lifespan (people live an election cycle longer now than they did forty years ago) by 2060 about one out of every three voters will be over sixty. A virtual gerontocracy. Lawns will be kept off of by law.

To tie these paragraphs together, the states where the proportion of the population over 65 is growing and that under thirty is shrinking are almost all (if not all) among the 35 least populated. And I once looked at a map that showed the counties where the population was aging in red and those where the population was growing younger in blue. Then I looked at a map of the counties in the 2016 election, Trump’s in red, Hillary’s in blue. It was remarkable how similarly the colors were distributed on both maps. The older the county’s residents, the more likely Trump won it’s vote. But is this an age thing, or a generational thing? I’ll never know.

(Apologies for the lack of links to sources but I’m a dumb guy on a smart phone. When I get back on the computer I will add sources.)