Republican Wave?

[Skill and Chance]

If Republicans do take the senate and make big house gains, these are the types of voters that are likely swinging toward them:

A. Jim
Location: Decaying Rust Belt suburb
Age: 52
Married
Race: White
Religion: Disaffected Catholic
Occupation: Store Clerk
Family Income: $50,000 (he lost a $80,000 union manufacturing job in 2008)
Voting history: Obama 2008 and 2012
Reason for GOP vote: Thinks Obama has officially failed to fix the economy.

B. Sara
Location: Rural West
Age: 41
Married
Race: Hispanic, family has been in the US >50 years
Religion: Active Catholic
Occupation: Stay-at-home mom, husband is rancher/farmer/miner/oilfield worker
Family Income: $75,000
Voting history: Obama 2008 and 2012
Reason for GOP vote: Much more concerned about economy than immigration, mildly pro-life

C. Emily
Location: Generic wealthy suburb
Age: 35
Single
Race: White 
Religion: None
Occupation: Management, on executive track
Family Income: $175,000
Voting History: Obama 2008 and Romney 2012, against crazy downballot GOP candidate in 2010-12
Reason for GOP Vote: A low-tax business moderate who was very turned off by social issue rhetoric, still proudly supports Hillary 2016

D. Danny

Location: Rural South
Age: 65
Married
Race: White
Religion: Protestant, possibly Evangelical
Occupation: Local sales
Family Income: $40,000
Voting History: McCain 2008 and Romney 2012, has repeatedly voted for Dem incumbent senator
Reason for GOP Vote: Finally decided that Dem incumbent senator is too liberal/supportive of Obama.

It was something of a fluke that Obama was able to draw Emily and Jim into the same coalition.  Future Sara's could give the Dems major medium to long term problems.

[Skill and Chance]

If Republicans do take the senate and make big house gains, these are the types of voters that are likely swinging toward them:

A. Jim
Location: Decaying Rust Belt suburb
Age: 52
Married
Race: White
Religion: Disaffected Catholic
Occupation: Store Clerk
Family Income: $50,000 (he lost a $80,000 union manufacturing job in 2008)
Voting history: Obama 2008 and 2012
Reason for GOP vote: Thinks Obama has officially failed to fix the economy.

Jim and his cohort definitely flipped.  But this was expected and probably old news at this point.

B. Sara
Location: Rural West
Age: 41
Married
Race: Hispanic, family has been in the US >50 years
Religion: Active Catholic
Occupation: Stay-at-home mom, husband is rancher/farmer/miner/oilfield worker
Family Income: $75,000
Voting history: Obama 2008 and 2012
Reason for GOP vote: Much more concerned about economy than immigration, mildly pro-life

Sara and her husband are the reason Mark Udall is out of a job.  Nevada was of course a turnout disaster.  However, Dem performance among Hispanic voters was up over 2010 nationally and moderate Hispanics seemed to have split their tickets Hickenlooper/Gardner and Martinez/Udall rather than going wholesale GOP.

C. Emily
Location: Generic wealthy suburb
Age: 35
Single
Race: White 
Religion: None
Occupation: Management, on executive track
Family Income: $175,000
Voting History: Obama 2008 and Romney 2012, against crazy downballot GOP candidate in 2010-12
Reason for GOP Vote: A low-tax business moderate who was very turned off by social issue rhetoric, still proudly supports Hillary 2016

Emily, and her less wealthy college-educated cousins, were the one potential bright spot of the night for Democrats.  They saved Mark Warner and Jeanne Shaheen and kept the GOP wave much less dramatic in Colorado, California and Oregon.

D. Danny

Location: Rural South
Age: 65
Married
Race: White
Religion: Protestant, possibly Evangelical
Occupation: Local sales
Family Income: $40,000
Voting History: McCain 2008 and Romney 2012, has repeatedly voted for Dem incumbent senator
Reason for GOP Vote: Finally decided that Dem incumbent senator is too liberal/supportive of Obama.

And Danny is officially never going to vote for a Democrat again, at any level of government.  Coalitions have changed, and I only expect the GOP margin in the Deep South and rural Midwest to increase at this point.  There also might be a new generation of Danny's-in-waiting in Iowa, Maine and non-Chicago Illinois, but no one took notice until now.

It was something of a fluke that Obama was able to draw Emily and Jim into the same coalition.  Future Sara's could give the Dems major medium to long term problems.

In retrospect, the Jim/Emily tension didn't define the night.  Democrats lost the Midwest, but GOP margins in the more urban states were generally 5-10%.  "Jim" voters are presently anti-incumbent, but there is no reason they won't continue to swing with the economy.

Instead, it was a quixotic attempt to win "Danny" voters back over on behalf of various incumbent Southern senators that fell flat, when cutting those seats loose sooner to focus on liberal turnout might have saved 48-50 seats (CO and NC unambiguously).  Mark Warner in particular spent waaayyyy too much time courting Danny and ignoring the Dem base, when it was the base, plus a few Emily types who narrowly saved him.  The other Mark made the opposite mistake, and we have found that there is a limit to how much you can target suburban women without losing economic populist men.

So for the near future, it would make sense for Democrats to approach rural white voters in the same way Republicans have approached urban minorities in the Obama era--concede those areas and look for persuadable votes elsewhere.  For the 3rd cycle in a row, Democrats held on surprisingly well in wealthy suburbs, so that seems like a logical base of support to continue building upon.  It also seems that Democrats have wasted a lot of political capital in 2009-10 offering targeted help to the poor that many didn't actually want or think they need and Citizens United makes it near impossible to run an economic populist campaign without hypocrisy charges.  I still think the best bet is to try to expand the creative class strategy further out into the suburbs and smaller cities outside of the Deep South, with education being perhaps the best wedge issue available for this.  Call it the Brad Ashford/Gwen Graham strategy.

[Skill and Chance]

Yes, I agree with that order:

1. It seems that Republicans have a higher floor with minority voters and Democrats have a higher floor with white voters than the CW anticipated.  So the whole "turn Texas/Arizona blue!" line of thinking needs to go out the window with the focus instead on the Bush-Obama states.  I also think the GOP will give up on NH soon.

2. Hillary has a path to a large (> or = 2008) national victory, but it doesn't rest on the Clinton Coalition states, it rests on wiping the floor 3:1 with Emily and Sara.  And there's the added benefit that her strongest supporters won't be stuck in a small number of 75% female districts, so congress could be in play.

3. Jim-type voters are understandably anti-incumbent.  Democrats peaked with them way back in 2006.  Since then, it's been about trying to break even/limit losses.  Republicans should be very interested in trying to break 60% with them, but they won't likely put a Dem over the top until the GOP has full control again.

4. Unlike TX/AZ/GA, Florida looks surprisingly promising for Dems in the medium to long run.  Scott didn't overperform polling and the Cuban voting shift seemed to continue.  The GOP should do everything they can to lock it down while they still have full control and Hillary should spend a lot of time here.

5. If US oil production continues to rival Saudi Arabia over the long term, the Democratic position on the environment will go the way of the Republican position on gay marriage over the coming years.  It could be a non-starter to talk about climate change outside of 65% Obama districts in 2025.

6. The next time they have a big wave, the Democrats need to be ready to do in CO/NM/NV/VA/NH what the Republicans have now done in WV/KY/TN/AR/LA: sweep the legislatures, win by double digits statewide and take them off the table for good.  They can't let Republicans become entrenched in 20-25 states when they only have 5-10 of their own (CA still only gets 2 senators).

[Skill and Chance]

The next time they have a big wave, the Democrats need to be ready to do in CO/NM/NV/VA/NH what the Republicans have now done in WV/KY/TN/AR/LA: sweep the legislatures, win by double digits statewide and take them off the table for good.  They can't let Republicans becotme entrenched in 20-25 states when they only have 5-10 of their own (CA still only gets 2 senators).

Yes, it was a wave, and the G O P won on its own turf, not a realignment election, and it had more to do with Christie testing the political waters. But, we are already living under sequester cuts and G O P budgets and 90%.of Congress will look same.

As for 2016, G O P will end their unity

 and turn to the primaries. We must find a way next to translate our prez victory, should Clinton win to midterm gains, since the G O P govs will be term limited.

THEY'RE CALLED ARTICLES AND CONJUNCTIONS. USE THEM

We blew the 2014 election with Obama, but 2016 wont have Obama to kick around anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RV4K6YHTfg

And another question about "Jims". Isn't deadman, grumps and gausslaw "Jims" but they are very different on the social issues. It seems like deadman and grumps are Emily-like and GaussLaw is Danny-like.
[/quote]

Jim's have diverse views on social issues, but they are generally social moderates who just want their jobs/benefits back in a way that overshadows everything else.  But it's unlikely that they ever actually will get those jobs back.  This is why fixing college funding could be such a powerful wedge issue.  Jim will eventually have to face his economic reality, but he will strongly support a political movement that gives his kids a fighting chance at a 6 figure career.

I don't think there is much risk of Sara becoming the next Danny.  If you look at the Upper Rio Grande area in NM and rural CO, the Hispanic Catholic people who have lived there more than 200 years still vote about 60/40 D.  I think they represent the long term state of the Hispanic electorate after 2050.  Texas R's can do better because they have a Hispanic Evangelical bloc.  But the idea of Democrats getting to 80-90% with Hispanic voters in perpetuity needs to go.

Regarding climate change, it would be a dormant issue until/unless there is Dust Bowl/Katrina level event that is unambiguously linked to it.  This is speculative, but maybe that will be the next realignment at mid-century that brings the Dems back into rural contention?  And the GOP becomes the urban party because the resent paying for the mess they tried to avoid?

[Skill and Chance]

That reminds me of this off-the-wall scenario I put together earlier this year.  IL and MA are majority Western/Southern migrants, and the DC area wants more government jobs:

Isabel Martinez (TX-GOV)/Calvin Brown (IL-SEN)  56.7% 390 EV
J. A. "Jeff" Kearney (MI-GOV)/Sarah Fitzpatrick (CT-GOV)  42.5% 148 EV

And here's a toss-up race:

President Alissa Cruz-Warren/Vice President Nathaniel Morrison 50.3%  298 EV
Marianne Williamson (TN-SEN)/Arthur J. Cohen (NY-SEN)  48.0%  240 EV

[Skill and Chance]

That reminds me of this off-the-wall scenario I put together earlier this year.  IL and MA are majority Western/Southern migrants, and the DC area wants more government jobs:

Isabel Martinez (TX-GOV)/Calvin Brown (IL-SEN)  56.7% 390 EV
J. A. "Jeff" Kearney (MI-GOV)/Sarah Fitzpatrick (CT-GOV)  42.5% 148 EV

And here's a toss-up race:

President Alissa Cruz-Warren/Vice President Nathaniel Morrison 50.3%  298 EV
Marianne Williamson (TN-SEN)/Arthur J. Cohen (NY-SEN)  48.0%  240 EV

So, I am guessing that the biggest city in the country in Chicago and that much of Florida is underwater,  jungle has overgrown the Southeast and that the west has run out of water?

Yes to Chicago, Florida, and a permanent drought in the West/Southern Plains.  The first map is supposed to be the realigning election, originally set in 2092, with Democrats finally getting a governing majority large enough to pass New Deal 2.0 and start rebuilding.  So it would be 2 realignments out, after a libertarian Republican era mid-century.  The Western drought has been ongoing for 30-40 years and by this point the desert states are backsliding into the 19th century as utilities go under.  The realigning event would be a combination of multiple Cat 5 hurricane hits in the same year and a tropical disease spreading through the South during the aftermath.  The shading is meant to reflect sincere NY-15 or MI-13 style voting in NV/AZ/NM/CO/FL, not rigging by machines.  They probably haven't voted R for 50 years at that point.

The coalitions would be Hispanics and culturally Southern/Western whites for the Democrats and Northern whites and all other minorities (who are by this time in a much better economic position) for the Republicans.  Democrats would also have a religious fundamentalist End Times streak, and this would lead to some William Jennings Bryan style flameouts during the libertarian era.  Republicans are basically locked out of the Senate so the courts would get very populist left.

[Skill and Chance]

Except it's more optimistic than that.  Similarly to the 1930's-40's, freedom/democratic government hobbles across the finish line in a way that suggests Millennialist predestination to many.

In the current era, it's somewhat remarkable that things didn't get anywhere near as bad as the 1930's in the aftermath of 2008, but the problem is that it's not obviously getting any better.  Even the desperate are now pretty far away from the ancestral standard of desperation.  So Romney fell flat, and Obama never got his 1936.  You don't get much populist rage from people with electricity, cars and computers.