Continuing in the vein of my last post, the trends are emerging in this election: Democrats are strong on the West Coast and the Northeast. The Democrats are also strong in the Midwest. These things aren't new. What is new is that the Democrats are stronger in the Southwest, and you better believe that this is what keeps Karl Rove awake at nights. The Latino vote in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado is going for Obama, and he'll probably win all three states. He probably would be competitive in Arizona, were it not for the presence of John McCain on the ticket. And Texas might well be a swing state a few election cycles out from now.
What's more is that the GOP lacks the ability to conduct outreach to these voters. Culture war pablum doesn't work--it's too specific to white folk. Bush had a promising approach by appealing to hard work and social conservatism, but that ended with the xenophobia that the right evinced during the immigration debacle.
I think we are seeing the beginning of the trends mentioned in the titular book by Teixera and Judis. And if the party goes into even more of an anti-immigrant fervor (as I think is likely) it's going to be a while before they recover. Right now, between the West, the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Southwest, Obama has a path to 270 electoral votes that doesn't require winning GOP-leaning states like Ohio and Florida. Make no mistake about it: these are historic times.
