Although I respect TomP's analysis of Ron Brownstein's article White Flight, I believe both Brownstein and TomP to be wrong. This election was no harbinger of future coalitions. As Nate Silver said, this election was more of an aligning election than a realigning one. No losses were out of the ordinary. Sure, we only got 37% of white voters in the last election, but it's not like they went more Republican while everyone else stood still. The racial gap was exactly the same as 2008.
Ronald Brownstein is a smart man. I have met him before. But like all journalists, he usually says he sees things that are not there to make ordinary things sound interesting.
There was no shift in coalitions this last election. Pretty much everyone voted the same in 2008 with a shift of about 6 to 10 points to the GOP. Some were more, some were less, but it's within the margin of error for it to be within that basic range. Whites voted 45% in 2008, but 37% in 2010. Democrats actually lost more Latinos than whites in terms of percentages; I've read no articles saying that Democrats have a "Latino problem".
Democrats shouldn't be worried about the white working class trending away from them. It's been that way since the 1960s. It didn't happen overnight, and the idea that we can reverse it overnight is ignorant.
TomP said that this is happening because of racial hostility. He said that white people voted GOP because Obama is black. But this explanation makes no sense at all. Obama was also black in 2008, and we won big. People who were tolerant enough to vote for a black man did not become racist overnight. And if they did, it likely wasn't because of Obama. You can't blame constant factors on a change.
Also, Democrats lost a lot of white voters in 1994, when the President was a fat, white, charming southerner from Arkansas who some liked to call "Bubba". So the sole explanation being racism makes no sense.
The front picture of the Brownstein article shows a bunch of white voters in Florida who voted for Obama now voting for Rubio. Well, that's what happens in elections; some voters who vote for one side in one election now vote for the other in another election. There's nothing newsworthy about that. In fact, if that didn't happen, that would mean that every single voter is predetermined, and there would be no need to have two parties, since one will always win.
We need no discussions of the role of government or some ideological moderation. We need to have the economy improve. That's all we need. Once it improves, many of those voters will come back to us.
And if you are truly worried about the future of white voters, don't worry. White youth is far more Democratic than older whites. Democrats won 46% of white youth this year, which is less than the 51% Congressional Democrats got in 2008 (and the 54% Obama got). Like everyone else, it was only a shift of 5 points to the GOP, and it was a 9-point gap between under-30 whites and over-30 whites in 2010, just like there was a 6-point gap (51% vs. 45%) between under-30 whites and over-30 whites in 2008.
This election was not special, and certainly isn't explained by poor marketing, and especially not racism. Everyone said that 2006 and 2008 was a permanent shift in the electorate, and they were wrong. There is no reason to think that this would be any different. Even redistricting won't change this. Eventually, when the political climate calls for it, Democrats will win back many of the state legislatures and congressional seats they lost in 2010, and maybe even more, because the swing voters voted for Democrats again, and because Democrats have higher turnout in other years than this one.
So chill out. This too shall pass.
(Note: I am using House exit poll numbers, not Obama exit poll numbers.)