Still analyzing last week's election

The Democrats banked on their 2008 coalition, and won big, bigger than big. This wasn’t just a narrow survival by a weak incumbent president, it was a nationwide blue wave, a sweep at every level, from the president down to ballot initiatives like redefining marriage and legalizing marijuana. You can’t blame Hurricane Sandy for that. The unfortunate fact is that the millennial generation is the most secular generation in American history, the most socially liberal. Will they be shifting every election to the left from now on?

The Obama campaign — Axelrod, Plouffe, Cutter — look even smarter than they did four years ago, when they got a freshman senator elected president by 7 points over an experienced war hero. This time, they got President Benghazi, President ObamaCare, President Contraception Mandate reelected after a historic midterm loss. And they did it all without actually revealing a second-term agenda, or any evidence that their policies had done any good.

The Democrats now believe they have a mandate to govern, and Republicans are now in an uncomfortable position everywhere. The policies of the last four years have been not only affirmed but, with these ballot initiatives, shown to be moving mainstream. Can the Republicans across the nation gather themselves, find diverse, convincing messengers that look like the changing demographics of America, and finally save our once-great nation? It would be foolish to think that this recent election was a repudiation of American traditional values and strong work ethic; it was only a stern message to Republicans to move outside their bubble and build the party apparatus with a diversity of minorities from the grass roots to the hierarchy of the GOP, and give displaced women, blacks, Hispanics, etc., an alternative to the Democratic stranglehold.

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