If you go to 270towin.com, you can use their Electoral College calculator to play around with the results. What I want you to do is to load up the 2016 map and then try changing different states from blue to red until you find a combination of states that Romney lost that some future Republican presidential candidate might win that would be sufficient to win them the election. I’ll give you a straightforward example. If a Republican were to hold all the states that Romney won and add Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and New Hampshire, they would get exactly 270 electoral votes, the minimum required to win the presidential election.
But here is my wrinkle. Try getting to 270 for the Republicans without giving them Virginia.
There are a couple of possibilities, but they aren’t too promising. Simply replacing Virginia with Colorado and Nevada would do it, but those states’ demographics are moving rapidly out of reach for the Republicans. Maybe Colorado and Iowa would be a slightly more plausible bet. Neither of those combinations would work, however, if the Republicans could not win New Hampshire. If you take New Hampshire out of the picture, either the Republicans would have to win Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, or they’d have to flip a big industrial state in the Midwest that hasn’t voted for a Republican since 1992.
All these scenarios presuppose that the Republicans can carry North Carolina, which John McCain could not do in 2008 and Mitt Romney barely accomplished in 2012. As I said, too, these scenarios presuppose that the Republicans can carry Florida and Ohio, which neither McCain nor Romney were able to do.
Simply put, if Virginia becomes a blue state, any GOP candidate is going to be completely behind the eight ball. And that is why it is completely mystifying that the Republicans just decided to shut down the government and destroy their image and brand in Virginia. To see the kind of damage they did to themselves, go to Real Clear Politics and look at the graph that tracks the gubernatorial polls over time. Look at what happened to the polls as soon as the shutdown started. It isn’t entirely unpredictable, but the visual is nonetheless astounding.
The government shutdown was a suicidal maneuver on the national level. When you pair it with the House Republicans’ refusal to have even a vote on immigration reform, which will cripple them in Colorado and Nevada, they have almost handed the 2016 presidential contest to the Democrats before the candidates have even announced themselves.
I truly believe that if we could sit every Republican member of Congress down and explain exactly how badly they have fucked the party on the national level, that it might actually result in the kind of moderation that no amount of cajoling and rhetoric could achieve.
This is true. However a few things to keep in mind. This is because NOVA is full of government workers, the military, CIA, and Hampton is as well.
To sum up, the income is high enough that slashing entitlements is OK (it’s blue but it’s centrist style), but slashing spending on other things is not. Plus the sequester really hit defense and the area is pretty socially liberal.
However it’s possible for the Democrats to fuck up as well. Slowing down the drone programs, gutting intelligence services, not removing the defense parts of the sequester even if it costs massive slashes in domestic spending are all ways to have blue NOVA turn crimson read.
The sequester and shutdown killed them here because it’s all contractors and feds. People need their jobs. However slashing defense spending, cutting the CIA, and also sure fire ways to cost people their jobs.
Virginia can and should flip permanently blue, but that’s going to require gagging and stripping power out of the parts of the left that would strip down the DOD.
I don’t see the military-industrial complex taking any huge hits any time soon, certainly not without the Repubs at least partly owning it. No, I think Cucch & Company should pretty much wrap up Virginia for the Dems for at least a couple of election cycles.
Dude, do you have any idea how huge the 2014 sequester cuts are for defense?
And it’s the Democrats who are willing to put that money (most of it, anyway) back in the budget, if only the Republicans will agree to give us relief on the rest of the budget. When the government shuts down again, it will because the Republicans won’t make a deal to save Virginia.
It’s a nightmare for any future GOP nominee.
Yawn. You’re a one trick pony. NOVA is not going red any time soon. It’s like you think people look at what’s going on at a particular time I determine who they will vote for. Despite your fucking bubble, NOVA Democrats could declare the DoD defunct and obsolete and still command huge majorities. Plenty of contractors don’t even live up here. They’re already voting Republican and commuting from Eric Cantor’s district in the suburbs.
I would imagine that Boehner and others have tried sitting them down and talking sense. Frothers gotta froth.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaa…
wipes away tears of laughter
No. Really, Boo. It’s the Teahadists who believe things in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Not you. Please not you.
Sit them down and explain the math til it and you are blue in the face and it won’t matter to the True Believers. It never does. The polls are skewed, Real Americans will see the light, once we stop the vote fraud it’ll be different, God would never allow that…I’m not even a bagger and I know the scripts. Mere facts are worthless against pure denial.
They’d rather rail against Archimedes (a foreigner, obviously a non-Christian since he lived three centuries too early, and aren’t Greeks commies?) than acknowledge the Electoral College math or its implications.
Hell, that message didn’t even fly with Romney’s people, and they were astrophysicists compared to some of these House yahoos.
Right you are Geov; these are the people that signed onto the TeaBagger manifesto, and are now looking to double-down on the stupid.
’cause if that first lobotomy doesn’t do the job, maybe they should have another one.
I just can’t see Nevada going red at a presidential level in 2016. Colorado and Iowa. Of the midwest states, Wisconsin was the closest (6.94% win) though MN was second (7.69% win).
Personally I’d rather you didn’t sit them down. They clearly are more comfortable in the minority so LET’S PUT THEM THERE.
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ Serious Question
Would Christie not also improve the GOP’s chances in Virginia and the North East more generally? And if Romney could beat all the Teabaggers for the GOP nomination, how much more easily could Christie? Not all Democrats, and particularly working class Democrats, are happy with the browning of America. And would Hilary not be painted as an “elitest” by comparison? Christie’s figure might be a factor weighing against him, but would they not also use Hilary’s age against her?
Presidential elections aren’t all about demographics. Personalities and campaign messages matter, and Christie played no part in the shutdown fiasco.
Yes. Scott Walker too, if he can keep in office and/or out of jail…
Crab-bucket politics are the way forward for the GOP.
“I truly believe that if we could sit every Republican member of Congress down and explain exactly how badly they have fucked the party on the national level, that it might actually result in the kind of moderation that no amount of cajoling and rhetoric could achieve.”
Please remember what reality are you living in. It’s not the same one that half of GOP is living in. This is not happening. Count on the Republicans to keep stepping on their dicks.
Excuse my grammar. What I get for posting before coffee. And no edit function!
If they could step on their own dicks then I have to believe that they’d be a trifle liberal in their sentiments…
The only way to account for it is that Republicans simply must have very short legs.
Have you ever sat down and tried to reason with a con artist?
I disagree with you.
Barack Obama showed the way.
Barack Obama won the Presidency not once, but twice,
WITHOUT NEEDING ONE SOUTHERN STATE.
it was nice that he won the ones that he did
but he would be President BOTH TIMES
WITHOUT NEEDING ONE SOUTHERN STATE.
Barack Obama rendered the South ..
ELECTORALLY IRRELEVANT.
No wonder they’re so pissed at him.
Simply replacing Virginia with Colorado and Nevada would do it, but those states’ demographics are moving rapidly out of reach for the Republicans. Maybe Colorado and Iowa would be a slightly more plausible bet.
Colorado won’t go Democrat until the GOP first wins both state houses and the governorship – once they have that they’ll pass anti-voting measures like in other states and then the GOP will have a fighting chance.
Having the SOS office is not enough the GOP has had that for a while and despite the usual partisan voter purges, etc., Obama still won by over 5% in 2012.
One advantage we have as a state is that we have enough crazy wingnuts in and out of office that a) the minorities are always motivated to come out in force, and b) the centrists aren’t likely to find GOP candidates attractive.