Bits like this make me smile.
But party insiders believe Democrats have a structural advantage regardless of who runs, due to demographic changes and the formerly red or purple states that have turned fully blue in recent years.
“Democrats start out with nearly a lock on 242 electoral votes, and Republicans start out with 102,” notes the second strategist. “They can win in a number of different ways, while Republicans have to win everything.” Beyond the numbers, Democrats believe deep down that today’s Republican Party is in such a mess that it will find a way to alienate voters no matter who runs on the Democratic side.
“There is a structural advantage for Democrats because Republicans just don’t get it,” says a third party insider.
…Because that is precisely the attitude that we had in 2005, and that the Democrats had in 1997, and that the Republicans had in 1991 after the First Gulf War, and so on, and so on. In other words, it is the attitude of political junkies who forget that there are very few very Blue, or very Red, states. Truth of the matter is, the big question in 2016 will be whether voters will or will not be sick of seeing the Democrats’ stupid faces every day in the White House section of the news*. This is whether or not the very bad candidate Hillary Clinton is the nominee, or the very bad and walking PR disaster Joe Biden is, or one of the rather parochial Democratic governors is, or one of their desperation candidates is. 2016 will be what we call a Return to Normalcy campaign in this business; the Democrats are not really positioned to win one of those.
(H/T: Instapundit)
Moe Lane
PS: No, I don’t really expect any kind of amnesty to suddenly sprout millions of Latino voters by 2016**. Mostly because the Senate is not actually comprised of idiots who think that citizenship-in-three-years would pass the House. I also don’t particularly expect existing Republican voters to stay home, either. Especially if it means letting either Clinton or Biden (and right now I give the odds that it’d be either to be about 90%) become President. Yes, I know that a lot of people online disagree with me: but if online people were representative of the culture then Snakes on a Plane would have become a durable franchise with an animated cartoon spin-off.
*Spoiler warning: probably.
**This is not an endorsement of the Gang of Eight proposal; merely a recognition that they are pushing off the problem for the 2020s. Like the Senate likes to do.
Cat is wondering about “amnesty rebound”, i.e. what the existing, *legal* Hispanic voter will make of an amnesty, de-facto or otherwise…
.
I concur that the Dems seem to have a low amount of presidential timber, likely because their party machinery has been busily killing it young to prevent it getting in the way of the insiders…
.
Mew
I support the Gang of Eight proposal, because, to be frank, I don’t think we will make it to 2020. I am hopeful we will run out of other people’s money by then.
How on earth do they get 242? They got the Northeast minus New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. They got the West Coast and they got Hawaii. Illinois and Minnesota are the only two States in which the GOP is fairly incapable of competing nationally in. ( one could make the case for Michigan as well). All the others are purple states, and in some like Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, Obama was the biggest reason Dems won. Selecting either Old White scary Lady or Old White Drunk, will not get them to turnout young people and African americans. And the Democrat Party relies on those two groups to win.