We will never know. The fact is that we have a far different electorate demographically. Do you think Reagan could be elected governor of CA today?
Probably. Arnold pulled it off. The whole “demographic change” argument is silly. The political reality of America remains the same, basically we’re divided into thirds, one third of us break fairly conservative, one third liberal, the final is the mushy middle. To win an election you need to energize your third and win over a chunk of the mushy middle. If you don’t energize your third you lose, if you can’t draw a healthy percentage of the mushy middle you lose. Romney did neither, he lost. The fact that he didn’t get WHIPPED shows how beatable Obama was.
In both 1998 and 2002 election results made people think there was a long term demographic change, 1998 supposedly gave the liberals control for the next 20 years, 2002 the conservatives. We see how both of those predictions turned out. And that’s a big reason why I don’t believe in the whole “demographic change” argument. The only thing that really changes is the candidates, and 2 elections in a row the entire GOP field sucked rotten eggs, and the eventual deeply flawed nominee that annoyed the base and had no cross over appeal lost. Next time around we’ve got an election where the mushy middle will be pre-disposed to like us (historically the longer one side is in charge the less the middle likes them, which is why sitting VPs almost never win). Now we can screw this up again if we put forth another crop of pathetic candidates, or we can win it in a walk with a decent conservative that knows how to talk to people. The choice is ours.