What corners were turned yesterday?....
1. A failed president can run a low, dishonest, divisive campaign and win re-election, fanning racial & class divisions, incIting counter-racial agitators, and thus win without any true mandate to govern.
2. Low-rent personal charisma can trump job performance, if enough emotionally-addled new-generation voters are brought to the polls.
3. Low-rent cultural charisma--including, tragically, race & attitudinal oppositional "cool"--can be a major political market asset in a popular culture dominated by trash celebrity.
4. Mainstream media's liberal bias trumps alternative media's contrary leanings, immensely furthering re-election of a failed president.
5. America is already Europeanized sufficiently so that "takers" (to be fair, many of whom once "makers"--e.g., moms, veterans, retirees)--voters who, in Bill O'Reilly's tart phrase, "want stuff"--now outnumber and thus can outvote those they want the government to get "stuff" from.
6. Demographic change favors candidates who promise "stuff" to the voters. Dick Morris sums up the impact of voter demographics:
The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to “normal” levels. Didn’t happen. These high levels of minority and young voter participation are here to stay. And, with them, a permanent reshaping of our nation’s politics.
In 2012, 13% of the vote was cast by blacks. In 04, it was 11%. This year, 10% was Latino. In ’04 it was 8%. This time, 19% was cast by voters under 30 years of age. In ’04 it was 17%. Taken together, these results swelled the ranks of Obama’s three-tiered base by five to six points, accounting fully for his victory.
I derided the media polls for their assumption of what did, in fact happen: That blacks, Latinos, and young people would show up in the same numbers as they had in 2008. I was wrong. They did.
Morris also cited the fawning photo-op Chris Christie gave Obama after Hurricane Sandy, as giving "O" a veneer of bipartisanship. Possibly with some independent women this helped, but the demographic argument Morris documents is stronger.
Buttressing this is Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald, who writes that in California Hispanic voters cared more about economic gaps than illegal immigration or social issues; thus the GOP faces a huge uphill battle with Hispanics. And depressingly, the "war on women" rhetoric resonated with unmarried female voters.
Nationwide state ballot results show some areas where popular referenda may be used to limit federal power, including, notably, the reach of ObamaCare. Left-wing unions lost most ballot measures, too.
Bottom Line. America may already have crossed the "tipping point" of no return, where those who demand more government become so dependent upon the state that independence is no longer an option. We have seen on our television screens what such a societal future leads to, in the streets of Madrid, Athens & London.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Conservative Politics
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