if Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of latinos, blacks, single women and highly educated urban whites...,

esquire | In case you have misplaced you magic pundit decoder ring, the latest one-word euphemism for "Where The White Folk At?" is "demographics." If the president wins, it will be because of "demographics," which increasingly means, in Republican weaselspeak, that, despite the best efforts of our governors and secretaries of state, the wrong people are voting again. Or, as they put it around Casa Romney, The Help are revolting. Your Republican party may be a tribe of a single skin tone, but it is a tribe of many codes.

As is usually the case, Politico whittled the problem right down to the nub, and then hit itself between the eyes repeatedly with the nub.

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That's what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it's possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

A broad mandate this is not.

Bartender, a double Prestone, and make it snappy, my good man.

Apparently, only people who look like John Harris and Jim VandeHei can be said to make up a "mandate." (Remember, by the way, that this is the publication that got rid of Joe Williams for making the unremarkable statement that Willard Romney is more comfortable around white people. It is equally unremarkable to say that this also would seem to be the case with his former employers.) This is now part of the campaign dialogue. The panel with my man Chuck Todd chewed it over this morning, and only a very cynical person would suggest that this is the respectable objective-journalist parallel to the fact that the Republicans have been making things quite plain of late as to their belief that some people deserve the franchise, and that Certain People do not. Why, just yesterday, Romney was talking about how, if you voted for him, you "shouldn't expect" a check from the government. Fist tap Dale.