It's refreshing during the whirl of a Presidential campaign to take a step back and look at history being made. Win or lose, what we're witnessing is the death of the old "Reagan coalition" of religious conservatives, Southern whites, Catholics, white working-class voters and the (then) young.
You have to look at the "Republican Revolution" to find the roots of the change that's happening now. It's a MAJOR realignment that Obama represents and it's as fundamental as the 1980 governing consensus change!
Before 1964 the New Deal governing coalition included conservative Southern segregationist democrats and liberal northerners. Kennedy's strength for instance was in the deep south, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas -- as well as the northeast, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut. Nixon meanwhile won the Midwest states: Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana.
But with the civil rights movement, white racists in the South broke away and become first independent, then solidly Republican. The Democratic party has been searching for a governing coalition ever since then.
The water-shed election of 1968 shows this. The "solid South" has broken away, and Nixon has gathered support in traditional Democratic strongholds. The "Southern Strategy" will become the GOP governing philosophy for the next 40 years.
Thus we entered the era of Conservative ascendence. The ONLY successful Democrats in the ten elections between 1968 and 2004 were Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, centrist Southern Democrats who barely won election and were bitterly attacked by the right wing for doing so. Neither was able to leave a successor to carry on their policies and Carter couldn't even win a second term. Northern liberals: Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry all failed to win election.
By 1980 conservatives had formed the "Reagan coalition" which created a 26 year governing span for right-wing conservative ideas in government and that general coalition has prevailed right up to 2006.
The 2000 Election only shows the continuation of this trend. The South has become "solid" Republican and former Republican strongholds in the Northeast and upper Midwest have swung Democratic as a result of the increasingly strident conservatism of Reagan-Bush. But, as you can see from the maps, the balance of electoral power has been moving SOUTH along with populations fleeing the rust-belt for the deep South - Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and California all had enormous population gains at the expense of the Blue states.
What's changed is the idea that minorities, women, Latinos, liberal youth, college educated middle-class professionals, and cultural and economic liberals could ever constitute a majority. During this entire period from 1968 to 2004 they couldn't. "White backlash" - the bitter hostility to a Democratic party perceived as dominated by minorities prevented any "coming together" of a "Rainbow Coalition."
But, that is the emerging future of America. It's going to be a majority Black/Brown/Asian country by 2040 or 2050. Conservative White America, the heart of the "Reagan Revolution" is slowly dying off as it's core voters age. 2004 may have been the last gasp of their OLD coalition, like 1964 was the last gasp of the old New Deal coalition that Roosevelt put together.
Even if a future Republican wins election, he's NOT going to be able to govern as a "Reagan Republican" anymore than a Democrat could govern as an "LBJ Democrat" today. He's going to have to take a moderate position that will alienate large segments of the old conservative coalition -- just as McCain is alienating them today.
You see McCain trying to "thread the needle" by holding onto Southern evangelical conservatives without alienating Northern moderates and independents in the West. He can't do it. Conservatives have gotten so used to complete deference from Republican politicians that they can't stand McCain, whom then sense (rightly) as caring NOTHING about their phobias about illegal immigrants or putting Jesus "back" in schools or prohibiting abortion or any other of their laundry list of "family values." He's not opposed to these things of course. He'll pander till the cows come home.
But, he's decidedly NOT a true believer -- which they sense (again rightly) means that he'll totally betray them once elected and faced with a Democratic Congress.
Here's the emerging electoral map of the future. Notice the upper Mid-West, West, and Far West have joined the Northeast to form a solid governing majority. Other states may well join if Obama can have a successful Presidency.
The real challenge for Obama is going to be bringing in non-unionized working class whites into his coalition (at least those outside the South). He can best do that by making it easier for workers to unionize. Unions will always be strong democratic constituencies. Add this group to the youth vote, women, minorities, college-educated urban and sub-urban voters, and technology workers, and you have a governing majority in any election.
If he can do this, then the Republican party becomes a marginalized regional party based solely in the deep South (minus Florida) and the Great Plains states. That's NOT a governing coalition, anyore than the far West and North-East was a governing coalition for Kerry.