Gerald McGrew wrote:trdsf wrote:So, in rough outline, here's what I think is going to happen. In 2014, the GOP will be reduced to a razor-thin majority in the House, and may even lose their majority entirely. There will be no significant movement in the Senate -- maybe one or two seats will be GOP pickups, but the Democratic majority won't be seriously threatened.
I wouldn't count on it. Remember all the premature declarations that the GOP was dead after 2008? That they had been reduced to a "regional party" of the South? They came roaring back in 2010, didn't they? Of course it was because so many on the left didn't vote and the conservative base was fired up about Obama, but it happened nevertheless.
The only way this trend continues is if the Democratic base votes in off-year elections.
That can be headed off -- the point is to make sure the new voters don't leave, and to keep bringing in more. Basically, we need to apply Obama's superb GOTV machine to the off-year elections. And while we're at it, turn Big Dog loose to get the base fired up. There really isn't a more natural and comfortable campaigner than Bill Clinton.
Funny thing is, if you look at the county-by-county results, what's more interesting are not the broad swathes of sparsely-populated red counties, but the streak of blue that runs right through the heart of the Deep South. This is the sign that Nixon's deal with the devil, his Southern Strategy, is running out of time; the old segregated South is dying off and a modern multiracial South is more or less becoming the norm.
Ultimately, we may end up with two regional parties out of the old GOP, with the libertarian wing taking up residence in the high plains and mountain states, and the social conservatives in the deep South, and neither one of them able to build broad national appeal.
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy