At about 8:15 Pacific time on Tuesday night I declared that the Democratic candidate was going to win in 2016. By at least five points, too.
Here’s the thing: the economy is already recovering and it’s only going to pick up more. The lost capacity over the past few years doesn’t represent some fundamental collapse of the American economy. It’s all still latent there. And once things pick back up for real, they’re likely to really take off.
If Obama was able to keep his approval right around 50% in the current economic climate, you can only imagine what things will look like in a genuine recovery.
All of which points to a big Democratic win. After all, the demographic advantages possessed by the Democrats right now are substantial. Which is not to say that they’re eternal. But for at least the next few years, the Republicans have built a hole for themselves which is going to be very difficult to get out of.
Over the long term, it’s simply impossible to imagine a major political party isolating itself from an increasing-large share of the electorate. Which means they’re going to have to re-calibrate their relationship with all the non-white, non-male portions of the country. But for the near future, there’s not really any way to successfully do that. The base of the Republican party right now is simply not going to accept the kind of changes that it would take to win over those votes. At least not over the next few years.
Now, there’s always the possibility of strange occurrences which push things out of whack. But if I were Marco Rubio or some of the other potential up-and-comers in the GOP, I would plan on laying low for the next cycle.