...'cause I wasn't just stroking his ego over the SWM-thing.
Don’t get cocky.
Hey, I'm Canadian. Alot of the stuff thats being decided in the states is old hat here. Seriously---you out Canada'd Canada last week. Don't think I don't feel a little impressed.
2012′s electoral coalition isn’t automatically permanent.
No, but its durable. The Republican party, simply put, has no clue on Earth how to engage black, gay or Hispanic voters. They have not played a significant part in the American political process until very recently. Heck, the Republicans lost blacks quite a while ago: check how many black people support the Republican party today. How many did Bush win? Now how many did Clinton win?
Yeah, there are conservative-leaning factions within those groups, but how many votes can the Republicans reasonably expect from them? Romeny got seven percent of the black vote. It took the Republicans, what, fifty years until Reagan to win the white working class over? Sheer inertia is going to keep the Obama coalition together for a decade and more.
Don’t think the GOP is stupid
I'd believe you if the GOP wasn't doing everything in their power to support that. The conservative movement in America has developed an intellectual appartus that will make actual reform if not impossible, than at least exceptionaly difficult, at least for the next two to three electoral cycles. Conservatisim in the United States is going to remain pernicious and unrealistic for some time, and might actually get a heck of a lot worse long before it gets better. If the Republicans do comprimise even slightly with President Obama, the hue and cry that will result will limit their ability to enact further comprimises, or torpedo it. Republicans operate under an iron clad intellectual discipline and a myopic vision of the world. Breaking that habit is not going to be easy.
My prediction is that the president of 2016 will be a Democrat, though 2020 on the Republicans should make a comeback, at least the way Jimmy Carter was able to become president between two Republican presidencies. The resulting president will be competent, but that will depend on how willing Americans will be to ditch the culture war baggage of the past several decades. Since Nixon the Republicans have tarred the Democrats as being incredibly socially permissive and financially reckless, and a new narrative must arise to replace it. The Republicans don't, and until it sinks in won't, get that.
The Republicans are now the party of unnecessary war and bigotry---even the most moderate Republican candidate is going to be tarred with that brush, particularly from his own ostensible side. A problem because they'll be able to shout him down until he (and it will be a he, let's be real here) falls back into line.
Nothing’s been decided but who was elected president
Quite a few things were decided, in point of fact: Washington and Colorado legalized weed, gay marriage passed in three states, an anti-gay marriage amendment passed in another, the first openly gay senator, and the most women in the Senate in American history. In other words, the ball is no in liberal America's court. The wind is under the Democrat's wings. As I've stated, the whole forty-to-fifty political narrative of the United States has changed. Its going to take time for that to change, and I believe I should be optimistic.
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