Bloomberg Businessweek notes changes in the House that, in many ways, mirror the demographic shifts that have altered the country’s landscape:
Come January, women and minorities for the first time in U.S. history will hold a majority of the party’s House seats, while Republicans will continue to be overwhelmingly white and male. The chamber, already politically polarized, more than ever is going to be demographically polarized, too.
"One thing that’s always been very startling to me is to see that on the floor of the House of Representatives when you look over on one side where the Democrats caucus and you look to the other side and it looks like two different visions of America," Edwards, 54, a black woman who has served in Congress since 2008, said in a telephone interview.
Those changes are symbolic, but not enough. As Rinku Sen noted yesterday, "demographics alone aren’t going to run a policy agenda through the system." Take a look at our roundup of racial justice thinkers making sense of the election.