2 (Probably 4) More Years -- The emerging Democratic majority and the enduring Republican one.

[Ubiquitous]

How did _that_ happen? Americans just re-elected Barack Obama but also
gave Republicans an only minimally diminished House majority, thereby
ratifying a status quo that hardly anyone finds satisfactory. The answer
is that as almost all of the big swing states--North Carolina is the
lone exception, with Florida still too close to call--went Democratic in
the presidential race, they sent GOP majorities to Congress.

Here's how the new House delegation breaks down for each swing state
with 9 or more electoral votes, with Republicans counted first: Colorado
4-3, Florida 17-9 (with 1 yet uncalled), Michigan 9-5, North Carolina
9-3 (1 uncalled), Ohio 12-4, Pennsylvania 13-5, Virginia 8-3, Wisconsin
5-3.

Add it up, assuming Democrats hold their leads in the uncalled races
(including for Florida's 29 electoral votes), and Obama beat Romney in
these eight states 115-15, while Republican House candidates beat
Democratic ones 77-37. That's enough to account for both Obama's margin
of victory and, in all likelihood, the Republican margin in the House.

In explaining Obama's victory, liberal pundits are giving the "emerging
Democratic majority" thesis a good workout. To take a random example,
the Puffington Host's Howard Fineman:

His victorious coalition spoke for and about him: a good share
of the white vote (about 45 percent in Ohio, for example); 70
percent or so of the Latino vote across the country, according
to experts; 96 percent of the African-American vote; and large
proportions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

The Republican Party, by contrast, has been reduced to a rump
parliament of Caucasian traditionalism: white, married,
church-going--to oversimplify only slightly.

Also often included in the "emerging majority" thesis are young voters
and unmarried women. Of course there is considerable overlap among these
categories.

One problem with the "emerging majority" idea is that it seems less
compelling in 2012 than it did in 2008. Obama's share of the vote
declined by about three percentage points, from just under 53% to around
50%. (RealClearPolitics's latest count has it at 50.4%, so it appears he
will eke out a majority.)

More pertinently, whereas in 2008 the Democrats expanded their House
majority, this year they barely dented the Republicans'. How does one
reconcile Obama's emerging Democratic majority with Speaker John
Boehner's enduring Republican one?

Part of the answer is that 2010 and 2012 saw some formerly Democratic or
contested states realign as Republican ones. A notable example is
Arkansas, where in 2010 a 3-1 Democratic U.S. House majority became a
3-1 Republican one. This year voters made it 4-0 and gave Republicans
majorities in both houses of the state Legislature to boot.

Another part is redistricting. The 2010 election left Republicans in
control of drawing of district lines in most of those swing states. In
North Carolina, where an ugly Democratic gerrymander had left the donks
with their only U.S. House majority in the South after 2010 (7-6), an
ugly Republican one allowed the GOP to pick up at least three seats.

But if you look at the maps of the other swing states, most of the
districts look reasonably drawn. What you see is similar to those old
maps showing the 2000 presidential results by county: little islands of
blue in vast seas of red. Which is to say that most swing-state House
Democrats come from big cities, while most suburban and rural
swing-state districts elect Republicans.

Cities, of course, tend to have very concentrated populations of blacks,
Hispanics, unmarried women and other components of the "emerging
Democratic majority." Suburban and rural districts are more politically
diverse, meaning they are not as Republican as the urban districts are
Democratic. They're Republican enough to elect GOP House members, but
not enough, at least this year, to outnumber the Democrats statewide.

Obama's victory obviously vindicates his strategy, about which we were
skeptical in July, of making calculated appeals to the fear or
self-interest of these population subgroups, from the "war on women"
nonsense to the overhyped quasi-amnesty for certain illegal aliens.
Similar themes helped Democrats in the Senate as well, where they
incredibly gained seats for this class's third consecutive election
cycle.

"Obama clearly has a something of a whip hand now," argues Politico's
Ben White:

Obama is likely to take his arguments to the public first
and attempt to forge coalitions with Republicans beyond the
House and Senate leadership. He may find willing partners.
The risks to the GOP of continuing to aggressively oppose
the president's approach are now significantly higher. NBC's
David Gregory put it this way after Obama's acceptance speech:
"This is a president with some muscle."

This strikes us as a misreading of the situation. If the Democratic
approach couldn't produce a Democratic House majority in 2012, it's hard
to see how it can in two years, especially since the weakest incumbents
of both parties were weeded out this year. What Republican in either
house of Congress is both ideologically flexible enough to consider
cutting a deal on the president's terms and potentially vulnerable to a
challenge in 2014? With the possible exception of Maine's Sen. Susan
Collins, we can't think of any.

This piece by Matt Yglesias of Slate would have made a good entry in our
"Unenthusiastic Endorsement Watch," if it had been published a few days
ago instead of this morning. He warns Democrats of the danger of
"failure--the precedent for which is easily found in the state of
California, whose state Republican Party slipped beneath a veil of
demographic and ideological irrelevance some time ago":

Looking at California since Proposition 187 one sees neither
a burgeoning progressive utopia nor technocratic feats of good
governance. A pleasant climate and its status as the
longstanding hub of America's high tech industry gives the
state enduring strengths that other areas lack. One shudders
to think of California public policy mixed with the objective
conditions that exist elsewhere. . . .

In California, Democrats have neither delivered great policy
reforms within the existing framework nor managed to reform
the institutional scheme. Something we saw both in the Golden
State and in the 111th Congress is simply that it's difficult
in America to make sound policy without some level of bipartisan
cooperation. Barack Obama clearly has the soul of an intelligent
reformer (see Race to the Top) but when ideas come into contact
with the need to grind out congressional wins you get sordid
deals (see provider side-bargains in the Affordable Care Act)
and ugly kludges (see Waxman-Markey) and schemes that go out
of their way to avoid unduly disturbing the status quo
(Dodd-Frank).

It's imaginable that Obama, freed from the re-election need to pander to
his leftist base, will either tame the House Republicans or learn to
work with them the way Bill Clinton did. But there is little in his
first term to suggest he has the skill to do the former or the
inclination to do the latter. And the history of presidential second
terms is not a terribly promising one.

On the other hand, here's an optimistic take from reader Mark Swanson:
"The most powerful man in the country is now Speaker Boehner. He can
tell Obama, 'Meet us halfway, both of us giving up some of what we want
and accepting some of what we don't want. Or face four years of
gridlock.' Boehner holds all the cards because he can live with either
outcome, while Obama wants neither. Obama's desired outcome (also his
idea of compromise) is, 'Give me everything I want, but I'll accept a
slightly slower timetable.' But he doesn't want his second term to be
four years of nothing, so Boehner has the stronger hand."

--
"Re-electing Obama is like backing The Titanic up and hitting the
iceberg a second time."