Sorry I’m late, but here we go,

1. All of this big picture talk about demography and turnout is correct, but we should also focus on the brute fact of Obama’s unpopularity. After Bill Clinton’s brilliant speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Obama’s Real Clear Politics average job approval rating bounced around from 47% to 50%. His disapproval rating never quite hit 50%, and was usually a point or two lower that his approval rating. In the last few months, Obama’s Real Clear Politics average job approval rating bounced around between 41% and 43%, while his disapproval rating bounced around between 52% and 54%.

With all the great demographics, the great GOTV, and the great enthusiasm of the 2012 Barack Obama campaign, they were able to produce an electorate that had a 54% Obama job approval rating. That was 4% higher than Obama’s highest RCP rating in the Fall 2012 RCP averages. If Obama had gone into the 2012 election with his 2014 job approval rating (and more importantly his disapproval rating), all that demography, etc. would likely have produced a cliffhanger of an election.

On the other hand, what does it say that the Republicans would likely have struggled to beat even a clearly unpopular president?

2. There might be something to the idea that the Democratic “coalition of the ascendant” was partly the Obama coalition of the ascendant. In 2012, Obama improved his margins among Latinos and Asian Americans over his 2008 numbers despite facing less favorable circumstances in his reelection campaign. Asian Americans swung sharply to the Republicans in 2014. My sense is that, for some Latinos and Asian Americans, reelecting Obama in 2012 was an assertion of civic equality, and that some of these voters are up for grabs in a post-Obama environment.

3. The Democrats could still consolidate support from Latino and Asian American voters aren’t careful.

4. Republicans still have not managed to win over that 15%-20% of African American voters who have moderately conservative policy preferences on economic and social policy, but who end up voting Democratic. Elbert Guillory talking about food stamps and Kool-Aid isn’t going to get it done.

5. Republicans would do well to adopt an agenda that is pro-first and second generation Americans, but that seeks to restrict future low-skill immigration. Both sides of this equation are equally important. Not being overtly hostile to current immigrants (including unauthorized immigrants) is not good enough. Restricting future low-skill immigration has to be integrated into a positive agenda for improving the work prospects of lower-skill Americans (whether native or foreign-born). Senators Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions and Tom Cotton have a chance to work together to create a constructive and populist approach to immigration policy.

6. That post-election presidential press conference was painful to the ear. It was like President Obama decided to give all (and I do mean all) of the stump speeches he didn’t get to deliver during the campaign because the vulnerable Senate Democrats did not want to be seen with him in public.

7. One of the themes of the press conference was that Obama was the president of real America and he was faced with the somewhat illegitimate Congress of midterm America. He got this across through his passive-aggressive references to the nonvoters in yesterday’s election. This kind of we’re-the-real-America stuff is politically self-destructive in the end.