It wasn’t Hurricane Sandy that propelled President Obama to victory on Tuesday, but the votes of millions of real life women from across the country who found the national GOP social agenda out of touch and offensive. They were joined by an overwhelming percentage of minority and younger voters, who find Republicans either indifferent or downright hostile to their concerns and priorities. This new coalition, formed in 2008 and hardened during this election cycle, is bad news for the currently configured GOP nationally, but is even worse for Republicans in New England and Massachusetts. By January there will be only two Republican U.S. senators and two voter-elected statewide officials in New England. By comparison, in January 2003 we had one more than that total in New England governors alone.

Mitt Romney is the most direct victim of the current GOP national platform ... though he is not an ideologue, Romney was forced to play one on TV due to the extreme views of the party base.

It’s astonishing to realize it’s been 10 years since a Republican has won a November election for a congressional or statewide seat in the commonwealth (Scott Brown’s Senate victory came in a January 2010 special election). In fact, things have gotten so dire that unless the demographic trends change, a Massachusetts Republican will never win a major seat again during a presidential election year because of the high pro-Democrat turnout. Brown and Richard Tisei were strong, popular candidates who both have long records of governing in a bipartisan manner. They raised a lot of money and ran smart campaigns against either unproven or politically vulnerable opponents. Yet they lost, dragged down in large part by the failure of national Republican leaders to soundly dismiss the most polarizing views regarding rape and immigration from GOP primary-nominated candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. Brown and Tisei are, in fact, the post-partisans we’ve been waiting for. Throughout his entire campaign Brown touted his independence and Democratic endorsements. He distanced himself from the national GOP agenda. While Elizabeth Warren was Bill Clinton’s warm-up act at the Democratic National Convention, Brown had a brief, low-profile visit a week earlier when the Republicans gathered in Tampa. In fact, the die may have been cast for Brown’s loss back in mid-August when reports of Akin's comments on “legitimate rape” started attracting national attention. On Aug. 19, the GOP had a better than 60 percent chance of retaking the Senate, according to New York Times blogger Nate Silver. Going into Election Day the odds had plunged to 4.7 percent. Akin, Mourdock and other co-conspirators gave Warren and other Democrats the opportunity to remind female voters of the extreme elements of the GOP’s social agenda. In his humble and uplifting acceptance speech, the president pledged to work with Republicans. Unfortunately — for all of us — when President Obama extends his hand across the aisle in January, Scott Brown and Richard Tisei won’t be there to accept it. The aging of the GOP base is another concern. Pundits have long claimed that the youth vote is unreliable, but they once again came out for Obama in droves. The GOP has essentially lost a generation of voters, even recent college graduates with few job prospects.

Unfortunately, when President Obama extends his hand across the aisle in January, Scott Brown and Richard Tisei won’t be there to accept it.