From US News:
…”When you get into a presidential election, it decidedly favors Democrats, and every year it is going to decidedly favor them more and more,” says Carville. The duo, armed with polls, detail the changing demographics: Younger voters are leaning Democratic more, as are Hispanics, blacks, and unmarried women—all expanding constituencies. “Look at what’s coming in 2012. Every election becomes less white,” says Carville. “Republicans are forced to double down on older whites, which is, long-term, not a very productive place to be,” he adds…
Translation: “If we can just keep people divided up in to groups and stir up inter-group hatred, we can pull off a win in 2012”.
What Carville is ignoring is the fact that young voters, hispanics and Independents swung towards the GOP in 2010. To be sure, we can expect Obama to win a majority (or, at least, a strong plurality) of young and hispanic voters in 2012, but in order to win he must get overwhelming support from such people. And while Democrats hope that everyone they shove in to a particular category will think and vote alike, the actual people out there aren’t like that.
To say that the GOP is the “white party” is to ignore trends which should scare the bejabbers out of Democrats – including large numbers of non-whites who ran as Republicans in 2010 (Nevada’s new governor is a hispanic Republican, as is the new governor of New Mexico; Florida’s Marco Rubio isn’t exactly white bread, and people like Allen West are the new heroes of the GOP). We GOPers must, indeed, work very hard to get even more non-white support – but, we’re doing it; and unless Democrats get nearly lock-step support in that area, they simply can’t win nationally.
Obama still has to be considered the favorite for 2012 – but simply because beating a sitting President is very difficult. But there is not much chance that Obama will do nearly as well in the South as he did in 2008 – more than likely, he won’t repeat his wins in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, and that switches 55 Electoral Votes to the GOP. Indiana and New Hampshire will probably go back to the GOP, putting 15 more in the GOP basket – which, added to McCain’s 2008 wins, brings the GOP to 228. The toss ups will be Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Michigan, Colorado and New Mexico, holding 77 EVs, and thus deciding the election, one way or the other. And let’s face it, GOPers, with unions still strong in PA, MI and OH, Obama will have a good chance in those States (all of this pre-supposes a moderately improved economy by 2012…unemployment 8% or less by October, 2012; if the economy is in the tank, then all bets are off; ditto if the economy is booming).
The fight is on – between those of us who want to reform and revive America, and those who want to cling on to power and don’t care what nasty, dirty and divisive things they have to do to win. Democrats will make crude, naked attempts to secure votes by appeals to group identity. They will paint us in the most disgusting terms as racist, sexist, homophobic bigots. Whomever we nominate will be cast as pure evil. They will try to provoke us in to saying or doing something stupid.
We must not let them draw us on. We have the issues which appeal to a broad cross section of the American electorate. As Dr. King instructed us, we judge people by the content of their character – while liberals have ignored this lesson, we have taken it to heart. Thus we were able, in two short years, to turn from complete defeat to stunning victory. We can win; it will be very hard – we must think not in terms just of 2012, but of 2014 and beyond. It took 100 years to screw up America, it will take a generation just to get us back on track to greatness.
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