And this “focus on the middle class and families” consists of, well, what? Nothing the party has actually stood for recently, you may note.
And it works disproportionately well on whites because, why? They are more likely to be middle class and have families, or what?
Yes, there’s a reason the Republicans have collected more white support in recent years, but that ain’t it.
Cite? Let’s see what your definition of a “trend” is, since the numbers I’ve seen have shown the white vote for Republicans peaking in '84 and jumping around, down and up, since then.
I would think “keep on pushing” would imply that Republicans have been already focusing on the middle class and families, and I’ve seen no evidence of this. But I’d love to see them try – big spending on infrastructure for jobs, helping families with college loans, helping families pay for health care… bring it on!
This doesn’t include the 2014 elections, but it does illustrate a longer-term trend.
Literal LOL!
Indeed. Outside the South (which Hillary doesn’t need), the voters most susceptible to those appeals are dying every day and being replaced by a younger electorate that is not so into it.
I love BTW the pretzels **adaher **has to twist into to advance the notion that white voters are going to vote Republican on a level not seen in more than three decades (since master race baiter Reagan left the political stage), but it’s not going to have anything to do with any kind of racial appeals! Pffffft. If this ever comes to pass (which I very much doubt), I can guarantee you it will be for a very race-conscious reason of whites essentially not wanting to let nonwhites be in charge of the government. (I have a sneaking suspicion this is what **adaher **is banking on, but just doesn’t want to admit it.)
Karl Rove, who is evil but an undeniably smart political strategist, says this call by some Republicans to just focus on squeezing more out of the white vote is misguided and won’t work. (He also says Reagan only got 63% of the white vote in '84, not 65%.)
And of course, even if this approach had enough juice in 2016 (which is beyond dubious), it gets more untenable with each cycle. In 2012, whites made up 63% of the population, still outnumbering nonwhites by nearly two-to-one. By 2044 (which may sound far away, but is the same span of time as between Reagan’s '84 sweep and Obama’s 2012 reelection victory), whites will be outnumbered by racial minorities. And of course, this isn’t going to happen all at once that year: it will be an inexorable trend in the intervening cycles.
The other problem with this approach is that the places Romney and McCain got that boost in the white vote compared to Dubya were not helpful in the Electoral College, because they amounted to running up the score in states they were winning already. Thus even in a scenario where the GOP manages to crank up the white vote enough to win the popular vote in 2016 (which, again, I find very unlikely), there’s a good chance that would just lead to one of those awkward elections we’ve had a few times in our history where the candidate who wins the popular vote still loses in the Electoral College.
The other angle is to point out the scenario that was only half gotten to in the linked article - the same fraction as G.W. Bush v Kerry (reasonable) AND a lackluster turnout of the non-White vote. Even assuming 2012 turnout, the Bush v Kerry spread “numbers don’t look as daunting – especially if the party nominates someone like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush”.
But didn’t that section of the piece say this would only chisel away about a third of the margin Obama had over Romney?
Anyway, I’ll acknowledge that the chance of a confluence like you’re talking about, and it being distributed in a way that works in the Electoral College and not just the popular vote, is a nonzero possibility. But a five percent chance seems high: maybe two percent. That’s not nothing, though: you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to take a 1 in 50 chance at Russian roulette for instance.
But if this happens, I would predict that nonwhite sector of the electorate to rise up bigtime in 2020, after being shocked out of their complacency (and being a couple points bigger yet than in 2016). And then moving on into the Twenties, the victory the GOP eked out in 2016 will really look like a last gasp, unless the party moves quite a bit to the left. That’s definitely possible, although it sure looks to me like if they do, they will at a minimum send a lot of their most hard right base into withdrawing from the political process, or perhaps supporting a third party. (I could actually see an outside chance of a split into three relatively even parties, which is the only scenario–and a scary one–I can see a really hardcore right wing presidential candidate ever getting elected again in our lifetimes.)
Romney won white women by 14 points and still lost handily. Hillary is poised to win white women’s votes outright, which is check and mate.
If she’s winning white women, then who is she losing among to be only ahead by 2-5 points? That’s an Obama 2012-level victory if it holds up, but if she’s beating Obama by 17-20 points among white women, who is she losing ground with? Are men going against her 70-30 or something?
I believe they are referencing this poll from the end of April, since that is the most recent NBC/WSJ poll.
However, the link doesn’t have the complete cross tab info that one would need to produce the charts in the linked blog. I assume the blogger has access to the complete information, but as such it looks like cherry picking to tell a good story.
As such, I’m not willing to concede that the linked blog tells us much of anything.
It’s a good question, and your supposition seems highly plausible. She’s not doing quite as well as Obama did among ethnic minorities, and I’d be willing to bet that’s mainly due to male minorities. So she’s flipping a lot of moderate white women, and losing some male chauvinists who supported Obama.
The friend who sent me this link opined that “there’s really no reason from here on out to nominate a white male ever again”, and he may be right. We had a good run. 
This may be the link needed.
There is also this Gallup poll from March which gives her a net favorability of +8 among non-Hispanic White women … and indeed a net of -19 among non-Hispanic White men.
We still haven’t elected either a Jewish or Italian President(at least not one with an Italian surname, don’t know if any had Italian blood or not), so there’s still some white guys left out. And we’ve only had one Catholic still, haven’t we? Given how many Catholics are in this country I think we should have another one of those guys too. An overtly atheist white male would be cool too. Or a gay white male. Or a little person.
So see, still a lot of white guys that need their chance.