Kobayashi-Maru Lesson May Make Obama The Last Democratic President

I did a little analysis last November on the election we've just been through. I showed it to a friend, who read it over twice, and then made me promise not to mention to anyone. But now that Rachel Maddow used it as her last piece on tonight's show, I thought I'd add my own take.

While in Star Fleet Academy, the future Captain Kirk, as a student, was faced with a tactical problem which had no solution. Instead of failing as other students always did, he solved the problem by changing the rules. The problem is known as the Kobayashi-Maru test.

The GOP is facing its own Kobayashi-Maru. Women hate them, non-whites despise them, the young have no use for them, the 99% voted against them, and then there are the gays. Every growing demographic in America is voting against them, overwhelming the dwindling aging uneducated white male vote. It is an unwinnable test, since the GOP is unable to change who it hates.

But the GOP has learned to change the rules in order to pass the test. They intend to change how we elect our president.
Barack Obama may be the last Democrat in the White House for thirty years.

And you fuckers staying home in the 2010 election cycle, electing the people who would redistrict the nation after the 2010 Census, will be remembered long after Obama is a footnote.

The results of the 2010 elections, and somewhat in 2012, were that Republicans now completely own and operate the governments of several states that vote blue statewide, but vote Republican in the rural areas. So several of these states are now working to pass laws to change how they hand out Electoral votes:

Instead of the winner of the state's popular vote winning the state's electoral votes, the state will give them out by number of Congressional districts a candidate wins in the state. And since Republicants in these states draw the districts, they can tilt the balance.

Can't happen? Nebraska and Maine already do it. Have for years.
But as long as the Republicants are doing this, they might go for broke, and assign the two Electoral votes each state has for its Senators on the basis of which candidate won the most districts, not the most votes statewide.

Doing this in states that are reliably Red, like Utah or Alabama, might actually give a Democrat an Electoral vote for the district that holds their biggest city, where most Dems are. So they won't do it there.

They'll do it in states that they hold, but which usually, or occasionally, go Democratic. They tried in Virginia in 2011, and in Pennsylvania in 2007. And they lost the White House the next year both times. Republicants may always be wrong, but they're always persistent, too.

Here's the math for the Big Five I expect to do this before 2016. They all went for Obama in 2012.

                           Votes      CDs       Rep-Dem split

Wisconsin           10           8             5 - 3      

Florida                29           27           17 - 10  

Ohio                     18           16           12 - 4    

Michigan             16           14           9 - 5      

Pennsylvania     20           18           13 – 5  

(Votes is total Electoral Votes, CDs is Congressional Districts, R-D Split is how many CDs went for each party in 2012.)

And the result of using this new rule, handing out all Electoral votes in these five states by these new rules, if they'd been in place in 2012? 

56 CD-based Electoral Votes + 10 Senate-based Electoral Votes = 66 votes change from Democrats to Republicants, 

and the 332-206 Electoral landslide for Obama

becomes a 272-266 squeaker for President Romney

No shit. And don't think they won't try it. They're already briefing it at the RNC in Washington. And Obama may be the last Democratic president in my lifetime.