There is a deep irony to Donald Trump’s second inauguration coinciding with the day on which we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. For decades, the Democratic Party has been the political home for minority voters, who rightly credit Democrats like President Lyndon Johnson with delivering landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Now, roughly half a century since the civil rights revolution, the role of race in American politics is changing: We as Democrats are struggling to maintain the loyalty of minority voters—and Donald Trump, of all people, is forcing us to confront an uncomfortable reality.
As Democrats, we have long believed that the country’s changing demographics would inexorably lead to a lasting majority for our party, rooted in voters of color, reducing the Republican Party to a white, rural relic of a reactionary past. This prediction of permanent Democratic control—built on the permanent loyalty of black and brown voters—was debunked definitively on November 5, 2024.