While the Republicans are running around congress, nit picking at anything possible, and the GOP around the country continuing their racist lock step, the numbers of how they lost is a fact. It was pretty bad.
For the past few months, political analysts and demographers have been poring over the results of the 2008 election and comparing them with presidential results from the past two decades. From whatever angle of their approach -- age, race, economic status, geography -- they have come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Almost all indicators are pressing the Republicans into minority status.
Republicans are still capable of winning individual elections, but until they find a way to reverse, or at least minimize, these broader changes in the country, their chances of returning to majority status will be severely reduced.
Broader changes, as in being inclusive, not exclusive. Broader as in the young vote, the African-American vote, the Hispanic vote, the Asian vote was lost in gigantic proportions on November 4, 2008.
Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the past five elections, though in one case (2000) they did not end up in the White House. In years in which they have also won the electoral vote, Democrats have racked up sizable margins. Obama bested John McCain by 365 to 173, and Bill Clinton's two victories were in the same range. George W. Bush's two electoral-college victories were narrow; he won 271 votes in the disputed election of 2000 and 286 in his 2004 reelection.
What has brought this about? It's not just one thing -- it's everything. Start with the Democrats' success in the suburbs. Lang's formula is that demography and density have combined to help Democrats: They dominate not just the cities but also the urbanized suburbs that contain the largest share of the suburban population in America.
Democratic strength in the counties around Philadelphia, around Detroit and in Northern Virginia have squeezed Republicans dramatically. Increasingly, Republican strength outside the urban areas counts for less. "There's just not enough rural folks and small-city people left in America in the key states that determine the electoral college to offset that difference," Lang said. "You're out of people."
They have held on to white middle class vote, but the vote size has shrunk. They have held onto the rural areas, but there are not enough people, and the suburbs? They have lost it.
That's one geographical reality. The other, which became acute in 2008, is that outside the South, Republicans are in trouble. McCain won the South in November, but Obama swept the rest of the country by an even bigger margin. The same pattern holds now for House and Senate seats. Republicans may continue to win governorships in Democratic-leaning states, but in congressional and presidential elections the geographic divides are sizable.
Brownstein reeled off a list of statistics that all arrived at the same place: The South now accounts for a greater share of Republican strength than at virtually any time since the party's founding. That base is too narrow, as even Republicans know.
Well, again, the Republican Party is the Party of the South. Period. While McCain won the South, he lost everywhere else in huge numbers. The Republican Party can not be a serious contender when their base has whittled down to just the South. And the rhetoric coming from there is enough to make you turn your back on the Republican Party for good.
The days of how it use to be are over. Really, it is. We saw this in how the Obama Campaign ran in 2008. The Republican Party will continue to be male, pale and stale, if they do not change their rhetoric, forget these divisive wedge issues, show some leadership, and show they they want someone who looks like me, part of their party. Until then, they will continue to lose support and remain in the wilderness.
Washington Post
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