Solution: Get your own voters

Nate Silver has a pretty awesome piece up about how Obama won the West. Essentially, he just went out and registered an army of new voters, and those voters came out and voted overwhelmingly for him on election day. He also points out that McCain did about as well as Bush in the West, but lost big there anyway. The moral of this story? Barring some major scandal, etc. (of course) that turns all those new voters off- and it doesn't seem as if McCain's epic comedy of errors actually hurt him among Bush voters- Obama can expect to win all those states again in four years, and his heir may as well in 8.

What's the answer for the GOP? At first blush, I'd say they should find a brilliant conservative Hispanic (perhaps even a woman) to nominate in 2016. Nominating a Latino/a would cover a lot of bases for the GOP, the most important being that they'd actually be appealing to a growing section of the population instead of under-replacing southern suburban whites.

I also like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, but he better be even more charismatic and strategically brilliant than Obama, since it's unlikely that Indian-American voters are a huge demographic that can be counted on to turn out in massive numbers. But until the Republicans can find a candidate to rally a massive new registration drive around, the Obama Dems are going to hammer them every four years.