I'm going to combine a few things I've posted just to get more discussion. Please bear with me, if you've read them, or if you haven't.
Obama's coalition is young voters, minorities and traditional liberals. McCain's was older white voters (obvious problem with that demographic, they die). If the 2008 election had been whites only, McCain would have won. In 2008 the voters were 74% white, 26% minorities, in 2012 it's looking to be 70% white, 30% minorities. That's a huge expansion of Obama's base through no other means than just demographics (i.e. not policy). Furthermore, the success of Obama's campaign among young voters ages 18-29 was around 70%, some of these voters will obviously go the other way, but he's likely to keep most of them in 2012 when they will be the 22-33 age bracket. The voters who are now 15-18 who couldn't vote last year will probably also follow their near peer group and vote for Obama again.
Having YOUR voters die off while the nation's demographics increase your opponent's has to be a nightmare situation for any political strategist. Pat Buchanan of all people wrote a column about this noting that in 5 election cycles starting in 1992 18 States with 248 electoral college votes went Democratic EVERY time (This was called The Blue Wall in a noted paper), while 13 states with 93 electoral votes went Republican. Imagine the difference for Karl Rove and James Carville. Rove has to find 178 electoral votes to win, while Carville has to find only 23. It's a huge uphill climb.
Because of increased legal Hispanics, how does a Conservative party win elections? The party that woes the Hispanic vote will win in increasing numbers, and while Hispanics can be socially conservative on many issues, they love entitlement programs. I'd be interested in anyone's reasonable (meaning real world) answers to how conservatives will win national elections in the future.
If you didn't read the thread I initially posted on you missed this:
makattak wrote:
Liberals plans are unsustainable.
Liberals don't breed at replacement rates.
Conservatives will win because liberals will die off. Your analysis is the near future. Long term, liberalism will die.
I had to look this up...
It's from the center for vital statistics, and the numbers quoted are yearly per /1000. This is as 2006
Birth rate was 11.6 for non-Hispanic whites, 16.5 for non-Hispanic blacks, 14.8 for American Indians, 16.5 for Asians and 23.4 for Hispanics.[45]