Here's the story:
The Democrats have a lock on the White House
By
DarrellDelamaide
Politics columnist
The ‘Blue Wall’ virtually guarantees an Electoral College win in 2016
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama has probably long since abandoned the hope he expressed in the stirring 2004 convention speech that catapulted him to national prominence: This country is not divided into red states and blue states.
But he might be comforted by the controversial analysis from a Republican analyst that there is now a “Blue Wall” block of states that virtually guarantees a Democrat will win the presidential contest in 2016 and for the foreseeable future.
Chris Ladd, a moderate conservative who blogs for the Houston Chronicle, has mounted a compelling argument that the seemingly smashing victory of the Republicans in the midterm elections is merely the prelude to a “spectacular, catastrophic failure” in 2016.
“It became apparent from the numbers last week that no Republican candidate has a credible shot at the White House in 2016,” Ladd concludes, “and the chance of the GOP holding the Senate for longer than two years is precisely zero.”
Ladd argues that Republican support grew deeper, but not broader, in the 2014 midterms as the party swept the traditional red states but made no inroads in blue states, which now include New Hampshire and Virginia.
In his initial post-election analysis, Ladd was not firmly decided about Virginia, but concluded in a subsequent blog that if Republicans could not oust a Democratic incumbent like Mark Warner even in a midterm year with everything going for them, then the state belongs behind the Blue Wall.
This means that these firmly blue states, the Blue Wall that Ladd is describing, account for 270 electoral votes — the number needed to be elected president. Firmly red states, by contrast, add up to only 149.
In short, a Republican candidate can win only by capturing all nine swing states and flipping a dyed-in-the-wool blue state, which Ladd considers virtually impossible.
“This means that the next presidential election, and all subsequent ones until a future party realignment, will be decided in the Democratic primary,” Ladd writes.
This analyst sees the midterm elections confirming a trend that has been growing over the past two decades.
“Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level across the most heavily populated sections of the country,” he says, “while intensifying their hold on a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters.”
Ladd buttresses his argument with several other observations. Democrats have consolidated their support in those parts of the country that generate most of the country’s wealth outside the energy sector, he notes.
Almost half the Republican congressional delegation comes from the former Confederacy. (“Total coincidence,” Ladd adds tongue in cheek. “Just pointing that out.”)
Every major Democratic ballot initiative, like minimum wage increases, won, even in red states, while every personhood amendment failed.
Ladd treats as an anomaly that some new governor candidates won in states that vote blue for president. “Their success was very specific and did not translate down the ballot at all,” he says. These candidates, such as Bruce Rauner in Illinois, did not run on social issues, Obama or opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
There has been, needless to say, considerable pushback on Ladd’s view of the Blue Wall, including from leftist commentators. These critics attribute greater significance to governors like Republican Scott Walker in blue Wisconsin, and are not willing to accept the blueness of Virginia, for instance, as anything like permanent.
They want to average out red and blue in the four presidential elections since 2000, whereas Ladd perceives a trend going in one direction. They don’t believe, as Martin Longman put it in the Washington Monthly, that things are as “static” as Ladd maintains, and argue that “the Blue Wall is not as impenetrable as it may seem.”
Whether or not there is a Blue Wall, it is the reason that Ladd gives for this shrinking Republican base that is perhaps more telling.
In an age of disruptive technologies and “staggering challenges” that is “built for Republican solutions” given the party’s “traditional leadership on commercial issues,” the GOP is missing the target, he says.
“What are we getting from Republicans?” Ladd asks rhetorically. “Climate denial, theocracy, thinly veiled racism, paranoia, and Benghazi hearings.”
Despite efforts new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to be conciliatory, he will not be able to hinder what Ladd predicts will be “intense, horrifying stupidity” in the next two years.
Perhaps there is a new Ronald Reagan out there transformative enough to break down that Blue Wall, though Reagan was hardly an overnight success and there is no sign of anyone even close to his charisma at this point.
Until then, the notion of a Blue Wall may indeed be as predictive as this Republican analyst believes.
But he might be comforted by the controversial analysis from a Republican analyst that there is now a “Blue Wall” block of states that virtually guarantees a Democrat will win the presidential contest in 2016 and for the foreseeable future.
Chris Ladd, a moderate conservative who blogs for the Houston Chronicle, has mounted a compelling argument that the seemingly smashing victory of the Republicans in the midterm elections is merely the prelude to a “spectacular, catastrophic failure” in 2016.
“It became apparent from the numbers last week that no Republican candidate has a credible shot at the White House in 2016,” Ladd concludes, “and the chance of the GOP holding the Senate for longer than two years is precisely zero.”
Ladd argues that Republican support grew deeper, but not broader, in the 2014 midterms as the party swept the traditional red states but made no inroads in blue states, which now include New Hampshire and Virginia.
In his initial post-election analysis, Ladd was not firmly decided about Virginia, but concluded in a subsequent blog that if Republicans could not oust a Democratic incumbent like Mark Warner even in a midterm year with everything going for them, then the state belongs behind the Blue Wall.
This means that these firmly blue states, the Blue Wall that Ladd is describing, account for 270 electoral votes — the number needed to be elected president. Firmly red states, by contrast, add up to only 149.
In short, a Republican candidate can win only by capturing all nine swing states and flipping a dyed-in-the-wool blue state, which Ladd considers virtually impossible.
“This means that the next presidential election, and all subsequent ones until a future party realignment, will be decided in the Democratic primary,” Ladd writes.
This analyst sees the midterm elections confirming a trend that has been growing over the past two decades.
“Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level across the most heavily populated sections of the country,” he says, “while intensifying their hold on a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters.”
Ladd buttresses his argument with several other observations. Democrats have consolidated their support in those parts of the country that generate most of the country’s wealth outside the energy sector, he notes.
Almost half the Republican congressional delegation comes from the former Confederacy. (“Total coincidence,” Ladd adds tongue in cheek. “Just pointing that out.”)
Every major Democratic ballot initiative, like minimum wage increases, won, even in red states, while every personhood amendment failed.
Ladd treats as an anomaly that some new governor candidates won in states that vote blue for president. “Their success was very specific and did not translate down the ballot at all,” he says. These candidates, such as Bruce Rauner in Illinois, did not run on social issues, Obama or opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
There has been, needless to say, considerable pushback on Ladd’s view of the Blue Wall, including from leftist commentators. These critics attribute greater significance to governors like Republican Scott Walker in blue Wisconsin, and are not willing to accept the blueness of Virginia, for instance, as anything like permanent.
They want to average out red and blue in the four presidential elections since 2000, whereas Ladd perceives a trend going in one direction. They don’t believe, as Martin Longman put it in the Washington Monthly, that things are as “static” as Ladd maintains, and argue that “the Blue Wall is not as impenetrable as it may seem.”
Whether or not there is a Blue Wall, it is the reason that Ladd gives for this shrinking Republican base that is perhaps more telling.
In an age of disruptive technologies and “staggering challenges” that is “built for Republican solutions” given the party’s “traditional leadership on commercial issues,” the GOP is missing the target, he says.
“What are we getting from Republicans?” Ladd asks rhetorically. “Climate denial, theocracy, thinly veiled racism, paranoia, and Benghazi hearings.”
Despite efforts new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to be conciliatory, he will not be able to hinder what Ladd predicts will be “intense, horrifying stupidity” in the next two years.
Perhaps there is a new Ronald Reagan out there transformative enough to break down that Blue Wall, though Reagan was hardly an overnight success and there is no sign of anyone even close to his charisma at this point.
Until then, the notion of a Blue Wall may indeed be as predictive as this Republican analyst believes.
Interesting read. I realize these guys gotta make a living somehow, but two years in politics is truly like a century. I don't think anyone can credibly predict out that far. His premise makes sense that the Republicans cannot win a national race with a message that climate change is a hoax and that we STILL don't know the truth about Benghazi.
ReplyDeleteBut I wouldn't put it past the Democrats to lose to a message that is as simple as, "Meh, we don't have any answers but they suck more than we do."
My study of your politics has led me into some odd places; this one is perhaps the most bizarre to date. 2 years out from the next presidential election we have a "reasoned" prediction that the Dems have a stranglehold on the White House.
ReplyDeleteIn Politics, as in life, I always look at the nebulous concept of "what if".
What if your country is dragged into yet another conflict the population do not support, or economically China flexes her muscle and together with her financial strength squeezes the almighty dollar, or Ebola or some other deadly disease gains a foothold on continental America? Will the present loyalties remain? I think not and we will see the color changes on the map as the “wall tumbles down.
These are just a few possibilities and although the author probably needs the bread that his scribble generates, it does seem passing strange that the rest of us have it under our noses at breakfast time. I have just read the piece to my wife of 53 years as she sits across the table; her response, “would you pass the marmalade please”. Enough said perhaps.
Cheers from Aussie
King your analysis is right on. Will we get two years of Horrifying stupidity or will we finally see our country governed properly and fairly. Here in my state we are at the two year mark of a switch to Republican leadership and unfortunately the horrifying stupidity is a real possibility based on that . In fact as we barely elected the state house speaker to the US senate in the most expensive senate race in history, on the local level every republican on the Wake County (that's Raleigh NC) commission was defeated as were most of the school board members. You know King my country is the richest on earth. We spend too much money and I don't think anybody disputes that. We also cannot undo 100 years of programs nilly willy overnight. There has to be a method to the madness and the republicans cannot put their finger on it. But there is more to governing then cut cut cut .
Delete