When all is said and done, the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both respect legal precedents more than they trust legislation and the transitory will of the people in states. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress.
The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2008 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once
No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red.
Is anyone impressed by the states that ever voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 or 1956? Most were (and still are) toward the bottom in measures of human development, including formal education. To be sure, Missouri and West Virginia still had the strong and militant United Mine Workers who could make the difference between Democrats and Republicans winning the state -- but now Missouri and West Virginia are statistically awful.
...Barack Obama has picked up lots of voters who would be conservatives in other times. Asian-Americans (except Japanese-Americans and Indian-Americans) used to be more conservative than Americans as a whole. But have their cultures really changed? It's America that has changed. Republicans used to exploit anti-Communist sentiments among most Asian-American groups successfully, but their anti-intellectualism now alienates some Asian-American groups (Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese). Asian-American voters are as culturally-conservative as they ever were, but Republicans offer the wrong sort of conservatism. This is a growing part of the electorate, and when California was competitive they may have been the difference between R and D victories.
The Japanese-American component of the Asian-American vote has not increased -- but the Chinese-American, Korean-American, Vietnamese-American, and Filipino-American parts of the electorate have grown. So has the Indian-American vote. Anti-intellectualism offends them.
American blacks may not have grown as a group, and paradoxically the states with the highest percentages of blacks are the strongest places for Republicans. But add Latinos, many of whom have joined the middle class and in earlier times might have been expected to start voting Republican are staying away from the GOP. The Latino vote is the difference between California being a swing state and being Solid D.
But those are ethnic groups.
Barack Obama did not win these interests which may have been the difference between a near-landslide (2008) or a middling win (2012) and blowout wins in 2008 and 2012:
Mormons
plutocrats
ranch interests
oil interests
which likely made the difference between Obama and Eisenhower in their coalitions of victory. Obama did extremely well with just about any discernible minority group; Eisenhower probably fared better among Latinos and blacks than any subsequent Republican. On the other side, Eisenhower probably never won a majority of organized labor and Obama probably saw organized labor at its political weakest since the 1920s during his Presidency.
I look at Eisenhower winning Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island together -- twice. Such is remarkable. No Republican since has ever won both Massachusetts and Minnesota together; Massachusetts and Rhode Island were the only non-Southern states that Herbert Hoover failed to win in his 1928 landslide.
...It is hard to understand what Barack Obama did to offend Mormons, who have heavily voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1948. A Republican would have to do something very stupid to lose the Mormon vote. Oil interests? That's the difference between Alaska being R and being D. Oil production workers have to be taken care of because they are out in the sticks.
Ranch interests? Dairy farming now implies a factory-like setting for those who milk cows for an employer. Dairy farmers can let their proletarized help fend for themselves. Ranchers must provide housing for ranch hands who get a more paternalistic treatment and are less likely to find many fellow ranch hands. Cow-milkers can be unionized; ranch hands are isolated enough (it may be tens of miles to the next ranch) that they can't unionize.
.... President Obama may have started to pull some people who might have been conservatives toward the Democratic Party.
