Election 2012 in historical perspective, maybe

I wonder what The Detective thinks of this piece from Naked Capitalism, which attempts to read the election against the currents of US political history. The money quote, or one of a few:

The 2012 Election was a demonstrably party line affair. ...[I]t was a canvas with a deeper meaning in US history than the results for individual candidates and parties: this is the first time in American history that all of the rural vote was committed to a single party. That seems a non-earthshaking statement, but is non-trivial looking at the socio-political landscape in the USA previously, and has implications for the future.

Some of the comments complain about the author's shortsighted view of the relevant histories, but I'm not a practicing historian and so can't evaluate. So the ball's in your court, Detective.

That aside, here's a good line developing the author's claim that the election was less about the candidates (and what I've and others have referred to as the electoral spectacle) than about deeper forces:

Obama simply had to convince his side of the electorate that ‘he cares about people like us,’ while Romney had to convince his that he was a nativist bigot. Both succeeded in misrepresenting themselves successfully...