Validation?

During the 08 primary campaign, there was an argument about Obama and his new coalition of voters. A lot of Obama supporters pushed this idea that having Obama on the ticket, as opposed to Hillary, would expand the voter pool and allow us to the elections on the backs of new and first timer voters. The new voters, mostly young and minorities, would become reliable Democratic voters and begin a new era in the Democratic Voting Coalition. This was mostly used to cover Obama's weakness with historically Democratic voters; white, blue collar, steel belt states, women, high school educated.

I thought it was a stupid one considering McGovern tried to do the same thing and lost in a landslide to Reagen but things seemed to work out. The Hillary voter ended up coming back home to Obama in the general election, so I might have been wrong. As we approach the 20120 midterm though it seems that I might have been right. Obama is losing the Clinton Democrats and its part of the reason for the overall decline in his approval and the damage to the Democrat Party.

While some are predicting a heavy loss for the Democrats in the midterm, I'm not sure I would go just as high to 80-90 seats. Sean Trende does use some cool stats and interesting take on what is shaping up in the fall.

If Obama really has damaged the Democrat brand and turned off the general public to the party, the assumption of a Democratic Era might have been really stupid.