Grover Norquist's Plan to Stop Hillary...Seriously

Over the last few years there has been a lot of discussion about the Rising American Electorate (unmarried women, millennials and people of color) that Barack Obama tapped into in order to win two presidential elections. Back in November, Stan Greenberg cautioned that these voters weren't being engaged in the 2016 election. But in a more recent poll, he found that things had changed.

The disengagement pall has been lifted. Our focus groups with white unmarried women, millennials and African Americans showed a new consciousness about the stakes in November. In this poll, the percentage of Democrats giving the highest level of engagement has increased 10 points.

The result is that the country might be heading for an earthquake election in November.

Rather than embrace the recommendations of the RNC autopsy report following the 2012 presidential election, the response of Republicans has typically been to drill down on the idea that there are millions of white voters they can tap into who didn't show up to vote for Mitt Romney. But even Sean Trende, whose original article spurred that discussion, says that there aren't enough missing white voters available to swing an election.

Into this breach comes Grover Norquist with...what can I say...a "creative" solution. He has identified six new voting blocs that have developed over the last 30 years that won't want Hillary Clinton in the White House. Between the lines, his contention is that she is just so out of touch with what is happening in the world that she's missed them.

Either this revelation is so ground-breaking that no one in the political world is as in-touch as Norquist, or it's a load of huey put out by someone who is desperately grasping at straws rather than face the fact that his predictions about a "permanent Republican majority" are drowning in a bathtub.

Here are Norquist's six voting blocks that will challenge the Rising American Electorate:

1. Home schoolers
2. Charter school supporters
3. Concealed-carry permit holders
4. Fracking workers
5. Users of e-cigarettes and vapor products
6. Uber drivers

I kid you not! Those are the voting blocs Grover Norquist said the Republicans can tap into in order to stop Clinton in November. We could spend some time deconstructing each one. But that would give this nonsense from Norquist more attention than it deserves. I merely point this out in order to show how vacuous Republican attempts are these days to deal with the fact that they are in the midst of alienating large swaths of the American electorate. If the best they've got to combat that reality is mobilizing people like e-cigarrette users, you know they're in big trouble.