Posted on 11/16/2008 8:38:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Small changes can have dramatic consequences. The electorate shifted about 4 points toward the Democrats in between the 2004 and 2008 elections--from 48.3 percent of the popular vote four years ago to 52.5 percent today. But those 4 points gave Obama the largest share of the vote since 1988, the best showing by a Democrat since 1964, the first black president, the first non-southern Democratic president since John F. Kennedy, and likely larger Democratic majorities in Congress than when President Clinton took office in 1993. In a closely divided America, a swing of four votes in a hundred can mean a decisive victory.
Obama's achievement can be explained with a few numbers. The first is 27 percent--President Bush's approval rating in the national exit poll. Pretty dismal. The poll found that voters were split on whether John McCain would continue Bush's policies. But those who thought McCain would be another Bush broke overwhelmingly for Obama, 91 percent to 8. That's a huge, damning margin.
The second number is 93 percent. That's the percentage of voters who gave the economy a negative rating in the exit poll. They supported Obama. And they were right to give the economy a negative rating. The financial crisis is spilling over into the real economy of goods and services. Unemployment is rising and consumption is falling. The week before the election, the Commerce Department announced that consumer spending had dropped 3.1 percent. Consumer spending hadn't fallen since 1991, and this year's decline was the largest since 1980.
The day before the election, the auto companies announced that they had had their worst month in a quarter-century. When economic conditions are as bad as this, of course the party out of power is favored to win an election.
Considering those numbers, the 2008 electoral map isn't all that surprising. Bush, the economy, and Obama's personal and political appeal have pushed the nation toward the blue end of the political spectrum. But, for the most part, the shift is gradual and on the margins. Obama will be president because he took states that Bush won in tight races four years ago. Bush won Ohio by 2 points in 2004. This year Obama won it by 4. Bush won Florida by 5 points in 2004. This year Obama won it by 2.5 points.
Obama's victories in the West were impressive. Bush won Colorado by 5 points in 2004. Obama won it by 7. Bush won New Mexico by 1 point in 2004. Obama won it by a substantial margin--about 15 points. Bush won Nevada by 2 points in 2004. Obama won it by about 13 points.
Virginia has been trending blue since 2001, when Mark Warner was elected governor. In 2004, John Kerry won the Washington suburbs of Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax, but still lost the state to Bush, 45 to 54 percent. The next year, another Democrat, Tim Kaine, succeeded Warner. And the year after that, voters replaced incumbent Republican senator George Allen with Democrat Jim Webb in a contest decided by just a few thousand votes. In 2008 Virginia went totally blue. It handed the Democrats as many as three more House seats, replaced retiring Republican senator John Warner with Mark Warner (no relation) by a vote of two-to-one, and swung for Obama by a margin of 5.5 points. Virginia's electoral votes went for a Democrat for the first time since 1964.
The two major surprises on our new map are North Carolina and Indiana. Bush won North Carolina by 12 points in 2004. This year Obama erased that margin and won by a couple tenths of a point. It's the first time since 1976 that North Carolina has voted for a Democratic president. In Indiana the swing toward Obama was even more pronounced. Bush won there by a huge margin of 22 points in 2004. Obama made up all of that ground, eking out a victory of about a point. No Democrat had won Indiana since 1964.
If I were Obama strategist David Axelrod, I'd--well, I'd probably be exhausted right now. But I'd also make sure that President-elect Obama spends the next four years visiting North Carolina, Indiana, Virginia, Ohio, and Florida. He needs to deepen his support in all five states. And I'd also make sure Obama visits Missouri, where at this writing it appears he barely lost; Montana, where he lost by 2.5 points; and Georgia, where he lost by 5.5 points. If Obama holds all the states he won this year and adds those three to his column in 2012, he'll be reelected in a landslide. That's a big "if," of course. The key is a successful first term.
Where does this leave the Republicans? In deep trouble. The GOP is increasingly confined to Appalachia, the South, and the Great Plains. When the next Congress convenes in 2009, there won't be a single House Republican from New England. The GOP is doing only a little better in the mid-Atlantic. There will be only three Republican congressmen in New York's 29-member delegation in the next Congress. Only a third of Pennsylvania's delegation will be Republican--about the same proportion as in New Jersey. There will be a single Republican in Maryland's eight-man delegation. The Rust Belt is hostile territory, too. So are the Mountain West and the Pacific Coast. The GOP is like the central character in Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." It's on its own, no direction home.
The Republicans are in demographic trouble. When you look at the ethnic composition of Obama's coalition, you see that it's kind of a mini-America. About two-thirds of Obama's supporters are white and a third minorities. The Republican coalition, by contrast, is white, male, and old. There's the first problem. Overall, Obama may have lost the white vote (while still doing better than Kerry did), but in 2008 whites (not counting Hispanics, per Census convention) made up the smallest proportion of the electorate since the start of exit polling. Obama scored tremendous victories among minorities. He won more than 90 percent of the black vote. He won the Hispanic vote by a two-to-one margin. He won the Asian vote by a similar margin.
Then there are the young. Voters under 30 turned out in only slightly higher numbers than they did in 2004, but they overwhelmingly backed Obama, 68 percent to 30. A successful Obama presidency could lock these voters into the Democratic column for a long, long time.
The most striking divide in 2008 is between rural voters and metropolitan voters. Rural voters back the Republican party overwhelmingly. The problem is that there aren't many of them--and there are fewer all the time. It's the metropolitan voters, the voters who live in cities or suburbs or exurbs, who are growing. And these voters are trending Democratic. Obama won the Philadelphia suburbs, the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the Chicago suburbs in Illinois and Indiana, the Denver suburbs, the suburban counties that make up the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and many more. He won the Orlando suburbs by 20 points. Disney World is Obama country.
Suburbs and exurbs are the most dynamic, fastest-growing places in the country. They are future-oriented. Republicans win when they build out from their rural base and gain support in the exurbs and suburbs. That's how Bush won in 2004. But in Bush's second term, things went awry. The suburban voters abandoned the GOP for the Democrats. The exurbs became volatile battlegrounds. And the GOP was left a minority party.
I think of places like Loudoun County, a northern Virginia exurb. Bush won Loudoun County by 12 points in 2004. In 2008, Obama won Loudoun by 6 points. For the GOP to have a future, it has to reverse that 18-point swing. Otherwise, Republicans better start praying for rain.
The American people want a ONE PARTY SYSTEM. Now see how happy they are with it ten years from now!
The dems are going to screw up so bad in the next two years I can see the Rep.taking back the house and senate.
Obama will open the borders to illegals, then fund ACORN (after halting the Justice Departments investigation into voter fraud) to get them registered, double registered and triple registered to vote. The MSM will turn a blind eye and American democracy will become an empty ritual like a third world dictatorship.
So, there’s no hope for the GOP?
The author assumes that the GOP will never win enough minorities to compete in upcoming elections?
Young voters, minorities, women, all favoring Dems? And the trend is locked in and completely irreversible?
Why should any conservatives even care then?
Our destiny is already set apparently.
The ‘RATS will guarantee that this becomes a one party country when they give 30 million illegal aliens amnesty after Baracko and his ‘RATS take total power on 01-20-09. The American “experiment” is over. We are just another third world banana republic now with phonyass “elections.”
I hope Obama does this too. The more campaigning he does for 2012, the less of a chance he has of getting his socialist policies turned into law. Besides, I like the fact that gov't money can go toward a sitting president's campaign...
Strange that so many of the Western democracies are moving to the right while the U.S. is moving to the left.
Given all the tactical negatives (and how severe they were,) it’s actually quite encouraging that the outcome wasn’t much worse (for Republicans.)
What good is a democratic majority or any majority for that matter in a federal government that is bankrupt?
We better start focusing on our local and state governments... thats where the real power shift is going to occur.
This is the money passage. Republicans again won the white vote, as we have done since 1964. Obama won topheavy majorities among minority groups. Democrats look forward to the US becoming majority minority and believe this is a ticket to long-term dominance. If Republicans don't make inroads into the black and hispanic middle class, that will be true.
The tricky part is this. Democrats play the race card every chance they get. Their goal is to capitalize on identity politics, but this comes at the cost to the nation of inflaming and perpetuating racial animosity organized around largely trumped up grievances. Nasty stuff. It could ultimately be the ruination of the country, but the democrats don't really care about that, as long as they win.
Against this, Republicans have to appeal to solid, legitimate interests. School choice is one. The right to life is another. Small business formation is a third. Low taxes should become a salient issue for minority voters as more of them move up the income ladder. I don't for a moment concede any permanent dem lock on minority constituencies, but Republicans are going to have to work at it.
But given GWB is gone in 2009, how do we turn this around? I say we talk about how deficit is killing economy. When they reply with Bush, say , “Why are you continuing his policies. Tell them the endless borrowing cant continue. Look attack on all positions, call them hypocrites on some positions, call them socialists on others,call them defenders of rich, like democrats did to hapless Bush for 8 years,
Do you really think it will take that long? (I don’t.)
Haa! Your crystal ball is not working right!
Who's going to vote the rascals out? The Latinos? The Jewish? The young college age voters? The University "intelligentsia"? The "African-"Americans""? The ACORN voters? Get real!
Look what happened now that the DemonRATS have gotten entrenched in OHIO.
To put in another way="These ain't your daddies type DemonCRAPS. They are In like flint, and they are not going anywhere soon. It's a whole new ballgame.
Immigrants account for one in eight U.S. residents, the highest level in 80 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13. In a decade it will be one in 7, the highest in our history and by 2050, it will be one in 5. 87% of the 1.2 million LEGAL immigrants who enter this country annually are minorities.
Minorities and immigrants vote overwhelmingly Dem. Demography is destiny.
For example, according to US Census Data, for North Carolina: In 1990 the population of the state was 6,628,637 with blacks comprising 1,456,323 of the population and Hisanics of all races amounting to 76,726.
Census data for 2006 show a population of 8,856,505 with blacks comprising 1,892,469 of the population and Hispanics of all races amounting to 597,382. Basically, of the 2.2 million increase in population from 1990 to 2006, about 1 million came from blacks and Hispanics, which now make up about 28% of the population.
I am old enough to have heard this BS before.
We don’t know what the future holds. As conservatives, we need to shape the future, instead of becoming passive whiners like the libbies.
...”the first black president”...
To the MSM: one last time - Barack Obama is not “black”, he is just as “white” as he is “black”, 50-50, a mulatto as the term was once used.
Young voters get older and pay taxes-perhaps many of them will become conservative as time passes.
The pundits have no problem saying the Republican party is
too white.I would love to hear one say the Democratic party
is too black,brown,gay,Jewish.Never wiil happen!!
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