Interesting from Brownstein

Ron Brownstein plays electoral demographics.

From all indications, the face of the electorate will look very different in 2010 from the way it did in 2008. That prospect presents an immediate danger for Democrats. But it also represents a more subtle, long-term threat for Republicans.....

In midterm elections, the electorate tends to be whiter and older than in presidential elections....

But that dynamic also means that Republicans could do very well in 2010 without solving their fundamental demographic challenges. In the 2012 presidential election, the young and minority voters central to Obama's coalition are likely to return in large numbers. The risk to the GOP is that a strong 2010 showing based on a conservative appeal to apprehensive older whites will discourage it from reconsidering whether its message is too narrow to attract those rapidly growing groups. "It can't be the same formula in 2012," Ayres warns.

Also, if you wonder why they're playing race victimhood so hard,

Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz says that although minorities next year probably won't equal the one-quarter share of the vote they represented in 2008, they are still likely to account for more than one-fifth of the ballots cast. That figure dwarfs their one-seventh share in 1994. To retake the House, he calculates, Republicans would probably need to win three-fifths of the white vote, slightly more than they did even in 1994.

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