A few trends:

- The Hispanic vote. It killed the GOP, not just in the southwestern states that turned blue, but in California and Texas. Eight California districts and two Texas districts swung from Bush to Obama, almost all of them because of the Hispanic trend against the Republicans. Only one district in Orange County voted for McCain: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s (R) 46th District. And even there, the Republican vote fell from 57 percent in 2004 to 50 percent in 2008.

- Appalachia. We knew this already, but that’s where the GOP stood tall, and where McCain was saved from an even worse popular vote defeat. The Democratic vote crumbled in much of Tennessee, from 31 percent to 29 percent in the eastern 1st District, from 41 percent to 34 percent in the central 4th District, and from 47 percent to 43 percent in the western 8th District. The latter two are represented by Democrats. Obama was saved from a worse statewide defeat by faring better than Kerry did in the 5th District (Nashville) and the 8th District (Memphis).

- Texas. For much of this decade I heard Republicans salivate about the opportunities when the next round of redistricting comes following the 2010 census, and Texas gets three or four new House seats. It seems, though, that Texas Republicans peaked in 2004 and the state is going to become less like a GOP version of New York and more like, say, Minnesota — run but not totally dominated by one party.

Only two districts (the 23rd and 28th) flipped from red to blue, both of them Hispanic-dominated border districts, but Democrats basically became competitive everywhere except the panhandle and east Texas. The compact 3rd District, which covers Plano and north Dallas, went from 67-33 Republican to 57-42 Republican. The 10th District, which includes the rural and exurban expanse between Austin and Dallas, went from 62-38 to 55-44 Republican. The upscale 24th District, much of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex, went from 65-35 to 55-44 Republican. The 26th District, another part of the DFW plex, went from 65-35 to 57-42 Republican. The 32rd District, the site of Rep. Martin Frost (D)’s 2004 defeat by Rep. Pete Sessions (R), has moved dramatically away from the GOP: the party carried 64 percent of the presidential vote in 2000, 60 percent in 2004, and 53 percent in 2008. Even as Democrats lost former Rep. Tom DeLay’s (R) old 22nd District, the presidential vote there improved from Kerry’s 36 percent in 2004 to 41 percent for Obama in 2008.

Would it be possible to draw up a Texas congressional map that shunts all non-white Democrats into their own districts and creates safe, 65/35 Republican/Democrat seats across the rest of the state? It’s gotten a lot harder. If, for example, the Democrats were to gain one house of the state legislature in 2010, it would be really hard to carve up the DFW metroplex so that it sends only one Democrat to Congress, as it does now.

I see some liberal skepticism about President Obama’s goals, such as his preference that the stimulus bill get 80 votes in the Senate, but it seems misguided. Obama’s interest is in maintaining his high approval ratings. He’s doing that — while the Republicans are getting the Paul Kanes and David Weigels of the world to air their sorrows about Congress’s partisanship, they’re not really laying a glove on Obama. Thus Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who works pretty closely with the president, is able to say things like “if it’s passed with 63 votes or 73 votes, history won’t remember it.”

That’s the point. The stimulus will pass. How much traction are Republicans gaining for the next debate, when they try to stop the president’s momentum on, for example, health care? Not much so far.

From McConnell’s prepared remarks:

Congressional Democrats have talked about sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the states. If we loan these funds, rather than give them away, states will be far less likely to spend it frivolously. And the taxpayer would have greater assurance their money is well spent.

No word on how states, which are furiously cutting services in the face of enormous budget shortfalls, would be expected to pay back these loans afterward (short, of course, of cutting services). In this context, McConnell’s words sound less like a gesture of bipartisanship than they do a warning to Democrats to cave to GOP demands.