I hope so.
I’m worried that we appear to have tapped out the white white vote, taken it as far as we can. And we had a pretty good run with it.
But it’s the law of diminishing returns and it’s shrinking every year. 2012 will be the last election where it tops 70%. It’s shrunk from 87% in 1992 to 81% in 2000 to 74% this year. The growth is all in the black and hispanic vote, and things don’t look so bright there. Combined with the way Obama seems to have captured the younger whites(although not nearly as much as you’d think. he won whites 18-29 around 55-45, a decent margin, but based on the media and all you’d think he absolutely dominated that age group)
There’s something like 250M+ over 18 and eligible to vote in the US. Even in a high turnout election this year, only around 130M or so voted. They’re another 100M or so that either registered and didnt vote or didnt even register. Obama and the dems did a very good job of finding those folks on their side for this year particularly among blacks, hispanics and the youth. We have to do the same. There’s plenty of rural folks, white voters, religious folks, etc... that didn’t vote this year. In the next four years we have to find them and make sure they show up in 2012.
We need to find a few issues where the public supports us big time and opposes the dems big time and go from there. Like the dems did with Iraq, the economy and Bush. The public was 70% against us on those issues and more and the dems went from there. In the next year or two I’m thinking opposition to amnesty, to further bailouts/spending, and capitalizing on the foreign policy/natl security blunders Obama is sur eto make will be a good starting point.
But you are right that the party has to grow and find new areas of support. 72 year old lifers like McCain and Dole aren’t the answer.
If McCain and Palin could pull close to 59M in the worst year for the GOP arguably since 1964 or 1932 and still win 22 states, we have something to go on. IN and NC were decided by less than a pt. FL was 2 pts or so. OH was around 4. It’s not like we were blown out everywhere.
There was clearly an anti GOP backlash for the past 2+ years and we bore the brunt of it last month, but things can turn around fast. We went from Nov 92 to Nov 94 in only 2 years. Look how fast the dems went from despair after 04 to now. Things change in politics all the time.
We’ll see. A lot depends on Obama, though. If he does well, it could be a long road. If he turns out to be another Carter, things will look quite different next time around.
It’s the economy.
Another of McCain’s flaws was taking the SW Hispanic vote for granted, he just never really did much to garner votes from them, Obamao hit him with negative ads, and McCain never fought back or even bothered to fight back.
Hispanics is where the future will be, like it or not.
And I don’t care for it, not a bit, the Obamao will try and grant them amnesty, if he wins, 10 years from now will be ugly.
You made a lot of good points. Just by registering new voters in IN,NC,FL and NV we would have won 50 EVs more. In OH, the conservatists just sat on their butts. I don’t think, the black and latino voters will turn out in great numbers for Obama in 2012. They will soon find out that Obama is only 50% black. Once, they find out that Obama just used them to get elected, things might get ugly. Those brothas and sistahs just won’t sit home in 2012. They will come out in droves and get him out of the office. Meanwhile, Palin has to just pound each and every battleground state and appeal to the young and conservative voters.