lost in transmutation

I’ve been away for far too long and haven’t had time to make a post since returning! I will!

notthatkindagay:

vondelpark:

Ramesh Ponnuru points to a stark assessment of voting trends and hope for the GOP future:

Start by considering the electorate’s six broadest demographic groups — white voters with at least a four-year college degree; white voters without a college degree; African-Americans; Hispanics; Asians; and other minorities.

Now posit that each of those groups voted for Barack Obama or John McCain in exactly the same proportions as it actually did. Then imagine that each group represented the share of the electorate that it did in 1992. If each of these groups voted as it did in 2008 but constituted the same share of the electorate as in 1992, McCain would have won. Comfortably [50.2 to 47.9].

Instead, Obama won in a landslide. Here’s where it gets depressing for the Republican party:

Imagine that the major demographic groups voted as they did in 2008, but cast a share of the vote equal to their expected share of the population in 2020. (For argument’s sake, let’s divide whites among college and noncollege voters in the same proportions as today.) In that scenario, Obama beats McCain by nearly 14 points — almost twice as much as in 2008.

Yikes. The only hope would be for the GOP to begin formulating policies—and ways of effectively communicating those policies—aimed at these growing demographic groups. A daunting task, sure, but you better believe Republicans understand these numbers. Uh, well, not so much, says Ben Smith:

[The importance of reaching out to new, nontraditional constituencies] may be a valid argument, but it’s not one that you’ll find anywhere near the center of Republican politics now, after the Democratic takeover has purged it of its swing-district moderates. It’s not something anyone in the race for RNC chairman would dare whisper.

It’s the kind of argument that you might hear after a GOP civil war that hasn’t even shown any signs of beginning.