And the world will never be the same again. 

Nixon's evil genius was in realising that racist Southern whites who had historically voted Democrat out of tribal loyalty, were there for the taking after Johnson's civil rights reform, and if you could give them something to replace the Jim Crow laws that they lost, they would give you their votes. Not only that, but you could use race to split the working class, and thus get white working class voters in large swathes of America to vote against working class interest.

This strategy, embodied most notoriously in the "War on Drugs" (terminology cynically chosen to ape Johnson's "War on Poverty") was devastatingly effective and put Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes and Trump in the White House, and unleashed a version of capitalism and "conservatism" red in tooth and claw that would have left Eisenhower spinning in his grave.

Cracks have been appearing in the Southern Strategy for years, as states such as Virginia, New Mexico and Nevada moved Democrat, but this year the dam is bursting.

As a follower of US elections since 1988, I never thought I would see the day when Texas and Georgia were in the "toss-up" category. And yet that is exactly where they are now.

The implications of this are profound and positive: the Republicans now have no choice if they ever want to win the White House again but to move towards the centre ground. That means that they are going to have to court the votes of women and the majority of blacks and Hispanics and are going to have to replace the racist white vote with moderate white votes.

More over, the cynical alliance between religious conservatives and big business is over. Religious conservatism will not get you into the White House anymore. For all the frothing about the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, I would not be surprised at all if abortion was legalised at the federal level within the next few years, because pandering to the anti-abortion Christian right now guarantees the political wilderness.