They say Romney is shell-shocked; well, so am I.

As what passes for post-election conventional wisdom crescendoes in choruses of "Republicans can win again if they become Democrats," some counter-conventional wisdom lies deep in the exit polls. Bottom line: Don't accept the isolating, poisonous, drip-drip demonization of white men. Yes, they voted for Romney 62 to 35 percent (for which the Left is cranking up re-education camps to put them through intensive rigors of shaming and peer pressure until they are fit to join brave new Obamaworld), but polling tells us they are not alone.

The first and most seismic poll result blows up the GOP's so-called "gender gap." Yes, a majority of women voted for Obama (55 to 44 percent), and a majority of men voted for Romney (52 to 45 percent). However, a majority of white women voted for Romney, too. Fifty-six percent of white women voted for Romney; 42 percent voted for Obama. End of gender gap. We're back to a racial divide.

I first read this amazing and heretofore unknown poll number in a New Yorker piece as perplexed as it was patronizing:

To be sure, these voters weren’t, in the main, the sort of women who write for the Times, or even read it. Among white female college graduates, Obama voters may have been in the majority. (In the versions of the national exit poll that I have seen, that category isn’t broken down.) But the fact remains that white females, taken as a whole, went solidly Republican. While the overall gender gap played a significant role in ensuring Obama’s reëlection, it didn’t have very much to do with white women, who remain one of the bulwarks of the Republican Party.

How do you spell S-N-O-B? (O-B-T-U-S-E). Meanwhile, given that Romney won a slim majority among college graduates, it's no sure thing to say a majority of white women with college degrees went for Obama.

Wait. Did I just write that "Romney won a slim majority among college grads"? That's what the poll break-down of education levels says: 51 percent of college graduates went for Romney, 47 percent went for Obama. It was the post-college crowd that went strongly for Obama, 55-42, along with the no-high-school-diploma group, 64-35. Obama also won slim majorities among voters with some college (49-48) and high school diplomas (51-48). It is in the simplified education categry, college grads and non-college grads, where Obama won 50-48 and 51-47.

The youth votes numbers also smash to smithereens another favorite sledgehammer with which the Left likes to beat white men, particularly older (if not dead) white men. Yes, 18-29-year-olds went heavily for Obama, 60 to 37 percent. But when we look at the white youth vote, 18-29-year-olds actually gave a slim majority to Romney, 51-44. Romney's numbers improve as white voters age (grow up): Among whites aged 30-44, Romney won 59 to 38 percent; among whites aged 45-64, R won 61 to 38 percent; and among whites 65 and over, he won 61 to 39 percent.

Onto income. Live in a household making $50,000 and above? According to the exit polling, a majority of these Americans voted for Mitt Romney. It is the $49,999 and below households that re-elected Barack Obama president.

This "income gap" dovetails with the underlying reality -- the American welfare state -- discussed in today's column. In other words, it is not at all the case that (evil) white men, rich to boot, are the sole support of the (evil) GOP. That is a myth. But that myth is a political weapon. The Left is not going to target white women, young white people, middle class families, college graduates etc., directly. By demonizing white men, they undermine the affinity for small-"r" republican governance among all of these other people and anyone else who might want to cross the line to liberty. It is a most nefarious form of social conditioning, not at all unlike the historical treatement of Jews, kulaks and other human beings objectified in contempt inside totalitarian systems.

It is the disgrace of so-called "liberalism": White men remain the whipping boy, the ogre of "hope and change," the object of hate from -- what was it? -- the sort who write for the Times and read it. We've seen them and their minions in action before: the graduate-degreed and the uneducated; the Marxist elites and the wards (masses) of the federal state, the grand old Leninst coalition all over again. And they call their leader Obama.