In the wake of this year's election results we're seeing all too familiar phenomena: Republican surprise that rigged voting didn't carry key states, lagging provisional and absentee ballot counting still turning elections and a steady widening of Obama's margin of victory in the national popular vote. Before the election, we had months of skewed polls from Rasmussen and Gallup that pushed up the averages of all polls to portray a much closer election than it actually turned out to be, enabling media pundits to play to their favorite "horse race" memes.
All of these could be seen as independent parts, but they're really all part of one key trend: the Republicans have been badgering average white people to vote for them for years, but this year their voodoo started to wear off big time. And what the voodoo had been covering up is that for more than a decade the average white voter had really begun to lose their faith in what the Republican party could deliver them. They had been voting for losers who were not protecting their interests and they knew it, but the Republicans' ability to make them afraid to look out of step with their friends and neighbors kept on working long enough to warrant a few more years of victories.
But time is running out on this scheme. And, I believe, with a strong push into "red states" in 2014 we can break the back of the "power at all costs" party in a big way.
More just south of the Mason-Dixon swirl.