Back to the Future - The re-emergence of the emerging Democratic majority.

As conservative Republicans tell the tale, the 2006 election was merely a referendum on the Bush administration's incompetence in Iraq and New Orleans and on the Republican congressional scandals. The contest, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, "was an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other." Others insist that demographic trends continue to favor the Republicans. Seeing 2006 as an anomaly, political analyst Michael Barone argued that population growth patterns favor Republican-leaning areas in the interior of the country rather than Democratic-leaning areas on the coasts.

We take a different view: that this election signals the end of a fleeting Republican revival, prompted by the Bush administration's response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the return to political and demographic trends that were leading to a Democratic and center-left majority in the United States. In 2006 the turn to the Democrats went well beyond those offices directly concerned with the war in Iraq or affected by congressional scandals. While Democrats picked up 30 House seats and six Senate seats, they also won six governorships, netted 321 state legislative seats, and recaptured legislative chambers in eight states. That's the kind of sweep that Republicans enjoyed in 1994, which led to Republican control of Congress and of the nation's statehouses for the remainder of the decade.

Just as important as these victories is who voted for Democrats in 2006. With few exceptions, the groups were exactly those that had begun trending Democratic in the 1990s and had contributed to Al Gore's popular-vote victory over George W. Bush in 2000. These groups, which we described in our 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, included women, professionals, and minorities. But in 2006 they also included two groups our book slighted or ignored altogether: younger voters (those born after 1977) and independents. These voters can generally be expected to continue backing Democrats.

Finally, the 2006 election represented a shift in American politics, away from the right and toward the center-left, on a range of issues that go well beyond the Iraq war, corruption, and competence. Voters in 2006 returned to viewpoints on the economy and society that inclined them, even leaving aside the war, to favor Democrats over conservative Republicans. To understand how this could happen, and happen so suddenly, one has to appreciate the peculiar impact that September 11 had on what had been an emerging Democratic majority, and how, once the impact of that event dissipated, the earlier trends reasserted themselves with a vengeance.

In the 1990s the Democrats displayed the outlines of a new majority that would be different from the older, New Deal majority. The older majority had been based on the "Solid South," blue-collar workers, ethnics, and rural voters; the new would combine women voters, professionals, and minorities, primarily in the North, Midwest, and far West, with close to an even split of the traditional white working-class vote in those regions. Some of the groups making up the new majority were recent converts; others had gone from the edges to the center of the coalition.

WOMEN: Throughout the 1960s, women voters had been disproportionately Republican; but in 1980 (partly in reaction to the Republican identification with the religious right) single, working, and college-educated women began voting disproportionately Democratic. In the 2000 congressional elections, for instance, single women backed Democrats by 63 percent to 35 percent. PROFESSIONALS: Professionals, who are, roughly speaking, college-educated producers of services and ideas, used to be the most staunchly Republican of all occupational groups. In the 1960 presidential election, they backed Richard Nixon by 61 percent to 38 percent. But in the 1980s these voters -- now chiefly working for large corporations and bureaucracies rather than on their own, and heavily influenced by the environmental, civil-rights, and feminist movements -- began to vote Democratic. In the four elections from 1988 to 2000, they backed Democrats by an average of 52 percent to 40 percent. MINORITIES: Latinos had been voting Democratic since the New Deal, and blacks since the 1960s; but in the 1990s they were joined by Asian-American voters. In the congressional race in 2000, minorities, who now made up about 19 percent of electorate, backed Democrats by 75 percent to 23 percent. These groups have different, and sometimes conflicting, political outlooks. Professionals, for instance, are generally skeptical of large government spending programs, which minorities are inclined to support. They also are leery of tax increases, even those aimed at the wealthy. College-educated and single women often fervently back abortion rights and gay rights, both of which many black and Hispanic voters oppose. But in national elections, and in state elections in the Northeast and far West, the socially liberal and fiscally moderate views of the professionals have generally taken precedence. These "new Democratic" or "moderate" politics were at the heart of Democratic victories in the 1990s.

In states like California and New Jersey, these three overlapping and burgeoning groups, rather than the white working class, dominate the electorate. In California, for example, the white working class constitutes only 38 percent of voters. But in many Midwestern and Southern states, white working-class (non-college-educated) voters still dominate. In those states, the Democratic coalition is a sometimes-combustible mixture of old and new, including adherents of social liberalism and of New Deal and fair-trade economics. As long-term economic trends toward a post-industrial economy grow stronger, the white working class, in these states, and nationally, will shrink at the expense of professionals and minorities. But the Democrats have needed and will continue to need significant levels of white working-class support to supplement the newer parts of their coalition. Right now, Democrats need to win between 45 percent and 48 percent of the white working-class vote to carry states like Missouri, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, a little higher for Iowa, and higher still for West Virginia or Kentucky. (In presidential elections, a 43 percent to 44 percent share of the white working-class vote is adequate to win a national majority.) Democrats seemed to be moving in this direction during the late 1990s.

Bush's initial success in waging the war on terror disrupted these trends toward the Democratic majority. American politics became dominated by concerns over national security, an issue on which Republicans had enjoyed voters' confidence since 1980. Some voters who might have supported Democrats were distracted from economic or social concerns that had favored Democrats. They ignored Republicans' religious intolerance and indifference to environmental pollution, rewarding Republicans instead for their presumed success in the war on terror. In 2004 George W. Bush won victories in swing states like Ohio, Iowa, and Florida largely because of these voters' defection. Chief among the defectors were white working-class women voters. In 2000 Bush had won these voters by 7 percent. In 2004 he won them by 18 percent. That year a plurality of these voters identified terrorism and security over the economy and jobs or the war in Iraq as their most important issue.

But there was also evidence of another psychological process, which might be called "de-arrangement." The focus on the war on terror not only distracted erstwhile Democrats and independents but appeared to transform, or de-arrange, their political worldview. They temporarily became more sympathetic to a whole range of conservative assumptions and approaches. In the past, voters had trusted Democrats to manage the economy, and in 2002 that preference should have been strongly reinforced by a recession that occurred on Bush's watch. Instead, voters in that election believed by 41 percent to 37 percent that Republicans were "more likely to make sure the country is prosperous." Recessions could also be expected to reinforce populist perceptions of the economy, but in 2002 the percentage of voters who believed that "the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer" hit its lowest level in 15 years. Most interestingly, opposition to abortion also followed the same curve. The percentage of voters who believed that abortion should be "illegal in all circumstances" (based on Gallup Poll annual averages) rose from 17 percent, in 2000, to 20 percent, in 2002, and was still at 19 percent in 2004.

In 2002 Republican strategists had an easy time making the case for their superiority as the party of national security and putting this issue at the forefront of voters' concerns. In 2004 it was more difficult. Voters had to be convinced that the war in Iraq was part of the war on terror and that whatever setbacks the United States had encountered there should be viewed in the context of overall Republican success in keeping al-Qaeda at bay. Those voters who bought this argument tended to vote Republican; those who had become convinced that the war in Iraq was itself a distraction from the war on terror -- and a costly blunder -- primarily voted Democratic. These tended to be more-educated voters. In 2004, for instance, college-educated women, who had favored Republicans by 50 percent to 48 percent in the 2002 congressional elections, favored Democrats by 54 percent to 44 percent. Postgraduate voters supported Republicans by a margin of 51 percent to 45 percent in 2002; they backed Democrats by a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent in 2004.

By the 2006 election, many more voters had become disillusioned with the Republicans as the party of national security. They now drew a distinction between the war in Iraq and the war on terror, and they saw the disaster in Iraq overshadowing any success in the war on terror. Others came to doubt the administration's overall ability to protect Americans' national security -- either from terrorists or natural disasters. As this change in perception took place, the foundations for the Republican majorities in 2002 and 2004 crumbled. What one sees in the 2006 election is not simply a revolt against the administration's conduct of the war but a return to the political perceptions of the two parties that was inclining the electorate before September 2001 toward a Democratic majority. Voters didn't simply reject the administration for its conduct of the war; angered by its conduct of the war, they reembraced a center-left worldview on a whole range of issues. The electorate of 2006 was like the electorate of 2000 -- only more so.

Voters returned to a more traditionally liberal view of the economy. Even though the economy is in better shape now than it was in 2002, proportionately more voters now believe that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The gap between those who believe this and those who don't has widened by 16 percentage points. More of today's voters believe it is the responsibility of government to take care of those who can't take of themselves. That gap has widened by 15 points.

The same results have showed up even in opinions about social issues. The average annual percentage of those believing abortion should be illegal dropped from 19 percent in 2004 to 15 percent in 2006, and the percentage believing it should be legal in "all circumstances" rose from 24 percent to 30 percent. Indeed, the outburst of religiosity that began a decade ago and sustained the Republican Party in the South and the prairie states seems to be abating. A 2007 study from the Pew Research Center reports "a reversal of the increased religiosity observed in the mid-1990s," along with greater tolerance among white evangelical Protestants toward homosexuals and working women. The Pew study finds, for instance, that among white evangelical Protestants, the percentage of those who completely disagree that "women should return to their traditional roles" has risen from 28 percent in 1997 to 42 percent today. That spells trouble for a conservative Republicanism rooted in religious conservatism.

As might be expected, the shift in worldview is reflected in identification with the parties themselves. In Pew surveys conducted in 2002, Republicans and Democrats each commanded the allegiance of 43 percent of the public. But five years later, 50 percent identified with or leaned toward the Democrats, and only 35 percent identified with or leaned toward the Republicans. A 15-percentage-point gap has opened up between the parties. The change is equally dramatic when one looks at specific groups in the electorate.

In the 2006 election, all the groups that had been part of the emerging Democratic majority in the late 1990s came roaring back into the fold. College-educated women backed Democrats by 57 percent to 42 percent. Single women backed Democrats by 66 percent to 33 percent. And the key swing group among women voters shifted. White working-class women, who had voted Republican by 57 percent to 42 percent in 2004, backed them by only 52 percent to 47 percent in 2006 -- a 10-point shift. This movement away from the GOP included a stunning 26-point shift by white working-class women with annual household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, who went from pro-Republican (60 percent to 39 percent) in 2004 to pro-Democratic (52 percent to 47 percent) in 2006. Postgraduate voters, who are typically professionals, also moved decisively into the Democratic column. In 2002 these voters had backed Republican congressional candidates by 51 percent to 45 percent. In 2006 they backed Democrats by 58 percent to 41 percent.

Minority voters also increased their support for Democratic candidates, largely due to a shift among Hispanics. Hispanics had backed congressional Democrats in 2004 by 59 percent to 40 percent, but in 2006 they supported them by 69 percent to 30 percent. This partly represented a reaction to Republican anti-immigration politics, but it also reflected a shift back to the kind of support that Democrats had enjoyed among Hispanics in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Moreover, each of these groups will likely increase its share of the electorate over the years. Minorities made up 15 percent of the electorate in 1990; they are 21 percent today and are expected to be 25 percent in 2015. Their weight will be much higher in key states like California, Florida, and Texas. In 1970 single women made up 38 percent of adult women; today they are a majority. College-educated women have more than tripled as a percentage of women 25 and older since then, going from 8 percent to 27 percent. Professionals were 7 percent of the workforce in the 1950s; they are 17 percent today and are expected to be 19 percent in 2015. Insofar as they vote at the highest rate of any occupational group, they likely make up a quarter or so of the electorate in many Northeast and far West states.

In 2006 Democrats were able to supplement these votes with sufficient support from the white working class. Democrats had gotten only 39 percent of this vote in the 2004 congressional elections; in 2006 Democrats got 44 percent of the vote, which was enough to give them a solid majority in Congress. Democrats' success among these voters helped the party to pick up three house seats in Indiana (where the white working class makes up 66 percent of the voting electorate); two seats in Iowa (where it makes up 72 percent); a Senate seat in Montana (which is 68 percent white working-class); and a Senate seat, a House seat, and the governorship in Ohio (which is 62 percent white working-class). By 2015 the white working class is expected to fall from 52 percent to 47 percent of the U.S. electorate, but it will remain a critically important group nationally and in many elections in the Midwest and South.

In most of these states, white working-class voters returned to the Democratic fold because of disillusionment with Bush's foreign policy -- and because of a stagnant economy. While Democrats enjoyed significant gains among noncollege whites earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually, they made their most dramatic gains among white working-class voters making between $30,000 to $50,000. In the 2004 congressional elections, these voters had favored Republicans by 60 percent to 38 percent; in 2006 they divided their vote equally between Democrats and Republicans. That's a 22-point shift.

The Democratic majority in 2006 was also bolstered by support from voters ages 18 to 29. Almost all of these voters fall into the category that pollsters call "millennials" or "Generation Y" (those born after 1977). In contrast to the previous generation, dubbed "Generation X" (those born between 1965 and 1977), they prefer Democrats over Republicans and the center-left over the center-right. According to a 2006 Pew survey, 48 percent of 18- to 25-year-old millennials identify themselves as Democrats, and only 35 percent identify themselves as Republicans. In 2006, 18- to-29-year-olds voted for Democratic congressional candidates by 60 percent to 38 percent. By contrast, 55 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Generation Xers had identified themselves as Republicans in the early 1990s. Political generations don't often change their allegiance. The New Deal generation sustained a Democratic majority for decades; Generation X has remained a bulwark of the Republican vote; and the millennials can be expected to bolster a new Democratic majority.

Clearly, different political experiences have shaped these two generations. Generation X grew up during the Carter and Reagan years, which were marked by Democratic failure and Republican success. The millennials grew up in years of the Clinton boom and Bush's disastrous failure in Iraq. Their political outlook most clearly resembles that of postindustrial professionals: socially liberal, in favor of government regulation of business, more secular, and less inclined than any other generation to accept the Republican identification with the religious right. In a 2006 Pew survey, 20 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds reported they had no religion or were atheist or agnostic, compared with just 11 percent among those over 25.

The other group that has come to make up the Democratic majority is political independents. These voters, who identify themselves to pollsters and public opinion surveys as "independents," represent an ideology rather than a social group, but they overlap with some Democratic constituencies and also set limits on the politics of a Democratic majority. According to the American National Election Studies, they make up about 38 percent of the potential electorate and 33 percent of actual voters. States with the highest proportions of independents are concentrated in the Northeast, upper Midwest, and far West (including Alaska and Hawaii), plus several mountain states (Colorado, Idaho, Montana) and North Dakota. Interestingly, there is considerable overlap between these states and states where Ross Perot polled more than 20 percent in 1992.

Many independents are professionals, and there are striking similarities between independents' and professionals' attitudes, especially their respect for science and their support for social liberalism. In New Jersey, for example, independent voters support gay marriage at about the same level as Democrats do, while Republicans are solidly opposed. But independents tend to be moderate on economic policy, more skeptical than Democrats that large government programs can be effective, and resistant to tax increases. They are particularly wary of "special interests" in Washington (including the parties themselves) and often favor reforms in lobbying and campaign finance. In the Mountain States, they have a pronounced libertarian streak, both on social and economic issues. Many of them favor the right to an abortion and a handgun.

In the 1990s, independents began to lean Democratic in presidential elections. They moved back into the Republican column temporarily in 2000 -- perhaps because of the Clinton scandals. In 2002 they also backed Republicans in the congressional elections, but they have now scurried back to the Democratic Party. In 2006 they favored Democratic congressional candidates by 57 percent to 39 percent, far and away the largest margin that independents have given Democrats since the inception of exit polls.

In the 2006 congressional election, libertarian-leaning independents played a decisive role in Democratic victories in prairie and non-Pacific western states. In the Montana Senate race, independents voted 59 percent to 35 percent for Democrat Jon Tester against incumbent Conrad Burns, who had been linked to the Jack Abramoff scandal. In Arizona they strongly backed Gov. Janet Napolitano and even Democratic Senate challenger Jim Pederson, who lost to incumbent Jon Kyl. In Minnesota, where onetime Perot backer Jesse Ventura was elected governor in 1998 on the Reform Party ticket, independents backed Democratic Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar over conservative Republican Mark Kennedy by 63 percent to 28 percent. Independents also played a role in Democratic House pickups in Colorado, Kansas, Connecticut, and New Hampshire (where 44 percent of voters identify themselves as independents).

But it would be a mistake to identify independents as part of the Democratic base. The new Democratic coalition is center-left; independents are more toward the center, especially on fiscal and economic issues, than Democratic identifiers are. In California, independents backed moderate Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in November 2006 by virtually the same margin they had given John Kerry over George W. Bush in 2004. Democrats will continue to attract independents -- and independents will make up a significant ideological segment of the Democratic majority -- so long as Democrats don't forget the "center" part of center-left and so long as Republicans remain on the right, especially on social issues.

Politics in America is organized around states, and the new Democratic majority can also be seen as a bloc of states and regions that regularly vote Democratic or are, at least, open to Democratic candidates. In 2006 Democrats consolidated their hold on the Northeast, strengthened their position in the Midwest, and made inroads in Southern border states (including Florida) and in the prairies and the non–Pacific West. In the Northeast, Democrats picked up three governorships, two Senate seats, 11 House seats, and 156 state legislative seats. In the Midwest, Democrats picked up one governorship, two Senate seats, nine House seats, and 106 state legislative seats (which translated into a gain of six state legislative chambers). In the non–Pacific West, where Democrats had done poorly in the past, they won a Senate seat in Montana, a governorship and a House seat in Colorado, and two House seats in Arizona.

The Deep South remains strongly Republican. In 2006 Democrats made no net gains across the five contiguous states of Louisiana (which, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's depopulation, can be expected to become more Republican), Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. But Democrats picked up one Senate seat, six House seats, one governorship, and 31 state legislative seats in the other Southern states. Democrats are competitive in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida. They have the upper hand in Arkansas and West Virginia, where the latest Gallup party-identification data give them stunning advantages of 26 and 24 points, respectively.

In Florida Democrats picked up two U.S. House seats, six Florida House seats, and the position of state chief financial officer. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson easily won reelection. And opinion polls indicate that Florida's electorate is moving back toward the center. From 2004 to 2006, the percentage of Floridians identifying themselves as "conservative" dropped from 31 percent to 27 percent, while the percentage of those identifying as "middle-of-the-road" or "liberal" rose from 35 percent to 42 percent.

No state or region is as uniformly in one party's camp as the old Solid South used to be. Democrats, for instance, have a 74-to-46 majority in the Mississippi state House, and Maine has two Republican senators. However, the Democrats can generally count on winning a majority of races in the Northeast (from Maine to Maryland), in Pennsylvania and across the upper Midwest (including Illinois), and on the Pacific Coast (except Alaska). That's a total of 248 electoral votes. Republicans can count on the Deep South, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. That's a total of only 154 electoral votes. The parties are more evenly matched in every other state, including formerly Republican states such as Colorado, Arizona, Montana, Virginia, and even Indiana. In these states, Democrats' success will depend on the skill and representativeness of their candidates and on the issues that most concern the electorate at election time.

Democrats also have an important base in large postindustrial metropolitan areas -- what we have called ideopolises. These are large areas that merge suburb and city, and that specialize in producing services and ideas. They often generate a distinctive culture of arty boutiques, restaurants, cafés, and bookstores, and they take their political cues from the professionals who live there. The white working class in places like greater Portland or Seattle doesn't vote dramatically differently from the professionals whose culture dominates these areas. And the culture of the ideopolises is spreading to such smaller cities in the heartland, such as Omaha, which now sports an "Old Market District" (similar to Denver's Lower Downtown) and a Democratic mayor.

During the dot-com bust of 2000–2001, many of the ideopolises lost population, but, according to demographer William Frey, they are bouncing back. "It's a tale of two kinds of cities," Frey told The New York Times in April. "Growing and ‘new economy' metros that have rebounded from early decade woes, and large coastal and Rust Belt metros where high housing costs or diminishing employment prospects propel continued out-migration … Among the former are a series of high-tech-driven centers like Austin, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Boise, Raleigh and Atlanta, where growth slowdowns were reversed or modest growth has accelerated."

The Democratic percentage of the Senate vote in these ideopolises expanded from 52 percent in 2002 to 58 percent in 2006. Democratic House pickups in areas like suburban Denver, suburban Philadelphia, Connecticut, and southern Florida were powered by ideopolis coalitions where professionals and minorities take a leading role. Jim Webb's Senate victory in Virginia was largely due to his margin in Northern Virginia's high-tech suburbs. Democrats also made headway in districts that aren't yet ideopolises but contain significant towns and cities devoted to the production of ideas of services. Democrats now control two House seats in Kansas: one includes the University of Kansas and the high-tech suburbs of Kansas City, and the other includes Kansas State University. In Iowa, Republican Rep. Jim Leach was defeated in a district that includes the University of Iowa. In southern Indiana, the district where Baron Hill defeated a Republican incumbent includes the University of Indiana.

The Democrats also did well in medium-size, older industrial cities in the Midwest, reflecting their increased support among the white working class. In Ohio, Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown picked up 60 percent of the vote in midsize metro areas like Akron, Canton, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown. In Indiana, Democrats carried the House vote 62 percent to 38 percent in the Evansville area -- an area that Bush carried 61 percent to 38 percent in 2004. And in Iowa, Democrats got 54 percent of the House vote and 57 percent of the governorship vote in the Davenport area.

This new Democratic majority should result in Democrats maintaining control of Congress for most of the next 12 to 16 years. But it won't necessarily result in Democrats consistently winning the White House. To win elections, a Democratic candidate for Congress or governor has to maintain the support of the party's base while reaching a sufficient percentage of the swing voters in a given state or district. In Ohio, Iowa, or Indiana, that can mean appealing to white working-class voters in small towns. In Colorado, Arizona, or Montana, that can mean appealing to libertarian independents. In these local and state elections, Democrats can run candidates who reflect the special political mix of their state or congressional district. For example, in Ohio last year, Democrats ran a gubernatorial candidate who opposed gun control and a Senate candidate who campaigned against free trade. In Colorado, Democrats ran a gubernatorial candidate who opposed abortion and gun control. In Pennsylvania, Democrats ran a Senate candidate who was pro-life who appealed to working-class Catholics. And in every one of these cases, the Democratic candidate was elected.

But in presidential elections, parties don't have the luxury of appealing to individual states and regions. A candidate can't favor gun control in New Jersey but oppose it in West Virginia, or be pro-choice in California but pro-life in Indiana or Kentucky. To win national elections, Democrats have to win not only their base in the Northeast, the upper Midwest, and the far West, but also swing states such as Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Missouri, each of which contains large numbers of voters who might be uncomfortable with a platform that would appeal to a voter in Massachusetts or California. That puts a premium on the political skill and background of the presidential candidate.

Since 1964 the only Democrats who have won the presidency are white Protestant males from the South who appeared to be moderates rather than liberals and whom white working-class voters could envision as "one of us." Candidates from the Northeast or upper Midwest have been trounced, in part, because they were unable to bridge the political and cultural divide between the Democratic base and the swing voters in the Midwest and border South. As the Democrats prepare for the 2008 election, their two leading candidates are Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton, who is seen by voters as a Northeastern cultural liberal, will also probably face resistance from some white working-class males because she is a woman. Obama, a black man from Chicago, will also likely be seen as a cultural liberal; in addition, he could be at a disadvantage among many white voters in the South, lower Midwest, and interior West because of his race.

None of this suggests that the Democrats can't win the White House. Indeed, they will enter presidential elections with a slight advantage because of the tilt in the country toward the political center. But whether they can win will depend on how well they can maintain the Democratic base while reaching out to swing voters, and on the strength of the opposition. Republicans, obviously, will face problems of their own in placating their conservative Christian and pro-business base while reaching out to suburban professionals and the white working class in the North and West.

One way that the new Democratic majority could be sustained, and even grow, over the next decade is for Democrats to enact popular, landmark legislation. The passage of Social Security legislation helped keep New Deal Democrats in power for decades. The creation of an effective national health-insurance program, despite Republican opposition, might do the same for today's Democrats. But there are major obstacles facing the Democrats in getting major reforms like these through Congress. First, the Democratic coalition itself is not a left-wing coalition but a center-left one, in which the views of independents and professionals have considerable weight. Democrats will have difficulty agreeing among themselves on new, large government programs that may require higher taxes. In 1971 and 1979, disagreements among Democrats played a role as central as Republican opposition in blocking new health-care legislation. That could happen again.

Second, Congress, and particularly the Senate, is structured to prevent the passage of dramatic reform measures, which can be stopped through filibuster or even bottled up in conference. Labor-law reform, which is vital to reviving unions, faces a stiff test in having to overcome a filibuster. Third, given these structural obstacles, adopting major reforms has been easiest during periods of crisis and popular upsurge, such as the Progressive Era, the 1930s, and the 1960s. But we are not presently in such a period.

Lacking such favorable social conditions, Democrats have found it difficult to pass major legislation even when they have controlled the White House and Congress. Jimmy Carter failed in 1977–1978, and Bill Clinton failed in 1993–1994, to pass any major social legislation, even though they had that control. A more tractable alternative in the short run is to do what the Clinton administration attempted (not often successfully) during its second term: to introduce incremental reforms that are not just cosmetic but put in motion a process that can eventually lead to dramatic reforms. For instance, extending eligibility for Medicare to everyone under 21, or to adults 55 and over, could lead toward national health insurance. But incremental reform, by definition, has a smaller effect on voters' lives and will do less to weld the Democrats' coalition firmly to the party.

If the Democrats are limited to incremental reform, what we foresee is a realignment similar to the Republican realignment of the 1980s but different from the massive, dramatic realignment that occurred in the crisis of the 1930s. Democrats will hold Congress and the White House for most, but not all, of this period, and they'll suffer intraparty recriminations (as the Democrats of the 1990s did) from their failure to do better. But if they are able to anchor their majority in landmark legislation, they could achieve the kind of historic realignment that Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats enjoyed. At minimum, that would require Democratic politicians to put aside their own differences and mobilize pressure from below. The past record on this is not encouraging, but there's always the chance that today's Democrats will rise to the occasion.

I published the following immediately after the election which anticipates much of what these authors have to say:

WHY WE LOST

We have three important questions to answer: 1) What happened? 2) Why did it happen? 3) What do we do now?

1) What happened?

The Republican Party in general and George W. Bush in particular sustained a stinging rebuke from the American electorate. The Republicans lost control of the house and of the Senate. The agenda moves to the Democrats. The power of the purse moves to the Democrats. The power of the subpoena moves to the Democrats. The power to impeach moves to the Democrats. The power to affect foreign policy by, for example, defunding the war moves to the Democrats. The power to appoint conservative judges has been greatly compromised as has been the power to confirm appointments such as ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Defense.

The Republican Party has ruptured the bond that held it to the majority of the people of the United States since 1994. When the polls say that the people trust the Democrats more than Republicans on taxes, it means, as Newt Gingrich has said, they fired us because they don't trust us. It is as simple as that, the party has lost the trust of the people.

The Democrats have ideally positioned themselves to strike for the presidency in 08. It has extended its governorships, Senate seats and control, House seats and control, and other levers of power. The Democrats have enhanced their ability to raise campaign funds and compromised the Republicans' ability to do so. Perhaps worse, the Democrats have turned the tables on the Republicans. It is Republicans now who are without a platform, without an identifying philosophy and without an articulate spokesman to advance their cause.

The Democrat party is extending its tentacles into the red states and the Republican Party is in grave danger of becoming a sectional party with an ever declining census and a bunker mentality.

2) Why did it happen?

America has repudiated the war in Iraq.

The American people have spoken respecting the war in Iraq: they do not tolerate the war in which they see no plan for victory but where they do see blood and treasure being spilled to no purpose with no end in sight.

The repudiation of the Republican mandate is broad although perhaps not equally deep and evidently focused on three issues: (1) the war in Iraq. (2) corruption, the so-called, "culture of corruption" (Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Foley) and which Republicans like us probably think of in terms of spending. (3) incompetence. (Katrina, Iraq) Of the three, Iraq was obviously the dominant factor.

In fact, growing restiveness with the war in Iraq, predictable at least since the Bush reelection by such a narrow margin in Ohio in 04, is the overwhelming reason for the Republican debacle. The Democrats nationalized the election by converting it into a referendum on the war. In the process they managed successfully to demonize George Bush as an incompetent bumbler. They defeated candidates by morphing them into George Bush.

The essential reason for the defeat was that it was anti-Iraq war and anti-Bush.

85 percent of Americans said the “major reason” was disapproval of the administration’s handling of the war in Iraq, 71 percent said disapproval of Bush’s overall job performance, 67 percent cited dissatisfaction with how Republicans have handled government spending and the deficit, 63 percent said disapproval of the overall performance of Republicans in Congress, 61 percent said Democrats’ ideas and proposals for changing course in Iraq. Tellingly, just 27 percent said a major reason the Democrats won was because they had better candidates. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15667442/site/newsweek/

There are many subordinate reasons why this calamity happened and it is necessary to identify them and assign weight to them so that the important ones can be addressed and corrected.

One such reason can be addressed and could have been corrected, or at least mitigated: It is quite normal for a political party in the sixth year of the presidency to lose the Senate and House seats. In some respects, it was to be expected that this would occur now. Clinton, however, was able to resist this historical trend but those were rather special circumstances.

Similarly, history shows the political parties, after 12 years in power, tend to become arrogant, cynical, and corrupt and that certainly has happened to the Republicans in spades. The voters have just cured the arrogance dimension of this equation but it remains to be seen if the corruption has been rooted out. The "values voters" will tell us in the next election if the Republicans have abandoned their cynicism.

Other reasons are less easily identifiable and more subjective in nature. One goes to the very essence of the character of George Bush. I've long published that he is not a movement conservative, in fact he is not a conservative at all but rather he is a patrician with loyalties to family, friends, and country. His politics are animated not by conservative ideology but by a noblisse oblige which, as a substitute for political philosophy, move him to act from loyalty and love of country. The result of this is that he does not weigh his words and actions against a coherent standard grounded in conservatism, but instinctively reacts to do what is right for family, friends, and country. Thus we get Harriet Meirs, pandering to the Clintons and Kennedys, prescription drug laws, campaign finance laws, runaway spending, and the war in Iraq. The conservative movement is left muddled and confused and the Republican Party undisciplined and leaderless. In these circumstances all manner of mischief is possible beginning with corruption and indiscipline in the ranks. To be effective, a president must be feared as well is loved. A President is more than just Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the nation, he is the titular head of his party and he must rule it. If Bush was willing to pander to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, what did Senator John McCain have to fear from him? Bush has utterly failed in his role as head wrangler of the Republican Party.

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom.

George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live. One need only cite the bootless efforts to reform Social Security as an example. His inability to tell America why we must fight in Iraq to win the greater worldwide war against terrorism, or how we are even going to win in Iraq, has been fatal to the Republicans' chances in this election. Of course, one can carry this Billy Budd characterization too far and it is easy to overemphasize its importance, but it is part of the general pattern which has led us to this pass. It is a very great pity that the bully pulpit has been squandered in the hands of a man so inarticulate. That the bully pulpit was wasted means that there are no great guiding principles for the country, for the party, for the administration, for Congress to follow, or for the voters to be inspired by. If the voters went into the booth confused about what the Republican Party stands for, the fault is primarily George Bush's.

There are structural problems for the Republicans as well. By the demographic breakdown of the Northeast and the ambitions of senators such as McCain, there was no coherent Republican policy in the Senate. It is in the nature of the Senate that wayward senators are difficult to bring to heel in any circumstance and Bush's inability properly to act as party leader has given Mavericks a green light to commit terrible damage to the Republicans' electoral posture. This demographic trend is destined to get worse and the self survival instincts of what is left of the Republican Party outside of the South will only become more acute and lead to more defections. Other senators, even when not motivated by personal ambition or demographic problems in blue states, felt free to engage in an extravaganza of corrupt spending to benefit their districts and soothe their contributors. There is a regrettable tendency to underemphasize the demographic handicap under which we conservatives struggle. Here is what I posted, before the election:

Perhaps now is not the time but certainly after Santorum is defeated we conservatives must face the reality that the electoral map is shrinking. We are unable to make inroads into the blue states (these New Jersey an anomaly due to parochial corruption) while we remain vulnerable and virtually all of the border states, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (actually a lost cause). Now even the Old Dominion is threatened. Ohio may be as difficult as Pennsylvania after this cycle.

Demographics will soon turn Florida and Texas away from us and, with the loss of either one of them, conservatism has no hope of putting a president in the White House

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1724335/posts?page=17#17

Bush failed to provide leadership on spending. Merely cutting taxes is only one leg of the stool, fiscal discipline must be maintained. Failing to impose party discipline is a grave sin, but Bush magnified it exponentially with the mindless prescription drug entitlement, farm supports, and educational spending. If Bush can have his prescription drug program that nobody wanted, why cannot Senator Stevens in Alaska have his bridge that nobody needed? Bush not only failed to set the proper example in fiscal discipline, he affirmatively set the wrong example of profligacy.

Press bias, says you?. One need only cite the unrelenting hostility of the Washington Post against Senator Allen to demonstrate Republican difficulties in this area. Allen's real opponent was the Washington Post. But this is not new, the Washington Post did the same thing to Ollie North several cycles ago and will do so again whenever it gets the chance. Republicans have been able to overcome this handicap in recent elections, so long as they had an effective affirmative story to tell. In fairness to the Republicans, it is true to say that the hostility of the press has reached even more egregious dimensions as a result of the war in Iraq. The remedy for this is to get a policy and tell your story well. In short, set the agenda, one which the public hears and understands in spite of the media. The classic example of this is Newt Gingrich's brilliant contract with America in 1994 in which he stole the entire agenda right out from under the noses of the drive-by media. I think their visceral hatred of Gingrich has as much to do with this coup as it does with the actual right wing policies contained in the contract with America. If one is not willing to accept the world as it is with all of its media bias then one is ultimately confounded. If one cannot move until press bias is corrected, then one cannot move on until the bias in academia or in immigrant groups is eliminated. The scale will never be balanced and conservatism, too anguished to move, will never find another majority.

While some exit polls say that only 7% of voters regarded immigration as the important issue, I am personally convinced that the percentage is much higher among conservatives and, anyway, the implications for the Republican Party and the conservative cause of unchecked illegal immigration is nothing short of catastrophic. Bush bashing or not, the cold reality is that George Bush has willfully and deliberately failed to to enforce the nation's laws on immigration. Bush has simply got a blind spot here, he wants amnesty and, by God, now he is going to get it because the Democrats are going to give it to him. The only hope for sanity in controlling immigration has died with Republican control of the House. Bush's duty was to enforce existing law against employers who seek unfair competitive advantage by hiring illegals at substandard wages. Now we have upwards of 30 million illegals in America and there is no conservative branch of government that can stop these people getting the vote eventually and, believe me, they will not vote conservative in my lifetime. Bush's stealth legacy to the Republican Party will become apparent as he exits the White House and Republicans remain in minority status for as long as the eye can see. Bush's dereliction in this regard justifies every conservative in turning his face from Bush and many did on election Day.

Lest this become a Bush bashing fest, let us note that Congressmen and Senators are for the most part alpha males (and sometimes bitchy females) who quite rightly should be expected to do the right thing without the fear and admonition of the President. But they did not. The single most appropriate word which identifies the Republican Congress before the election is, "arrogance" - although "greed" must run a very close second. Winston Churchill once said of the Socialist Clement Atley, "he is a very modest man, and he has much to be modest about." Running the gamut from sordid affiliations with K street lobbyists and the Abramoffs of the world, to unseemly earmarks, and continuing all the way to outright venality, the Republicans have much to be more than modest about. The voters have just dealt them their comeuppance and it is long overdue. But elections are blunt instruments for weeding out corruption; the voters wrath, like God's rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike. So honest and incorrupt conservative representatives of the people like Rick Santorum fall with the Cunninghams and the Neys and the Foleys while Democrat Menendez enjoys a pass. While it does not discriminate among Republicans, the voters wrath does discriminate between parties and so their wrath fell disproportionately on Republicans because they are the party in power. This also has been remedied by this election. Finally, in a strange way the voters grim unhappiness with the course of the war in Iraq finds expression in this general repugnance of the corruption and venality and directs it almost exclusively against the Republicans, because they are the party associated with the war. It is human nature to react to an irritant disproportionately when the soul is troubled by larger problems. This identification as the party solely responsible for the war is something the Republicans must remedy in the next two years.

All of these factors so far cited are in themselves not party breakers and could have been managed and mitigated but for the elephant in the room: The war in Iraq. Indeed, the superficially inconsistent results of this election cannot be understood unless one accepts the centrality of the issue of the war in Iraq. It was the fulcrum upon which all else turned. Why did the voters overlook the corruption of Democrats and punish disproportionately Republicans? The war in Iraq. Why did the electorate conclude that the administration has been incompetent in handling hurricane Katrina while resolutely declining to consider other explanations? The war in Iraq. The Democrats and the media contrived to make Katrina a metaphor for Iraq and the people largely bought it because they were uneasy about Iraq but patriotic enough to want victory. So they could resolve their ambivalence by reacting to Katrina. The same analysis applies to the issue of the culture of corruption. Why were conservative issues respectfully treated by the electorate when it came to referenda? Because they were not tainted by the war in Iraq. Why was Lincoln Chafee turned out in Rhode Island even though he was adamantly against the war in Iraq? Because his identification as a member of the party responsible for the war overcame his individual posture. The rabidly antiwar voters in Rhode Island knew that Chafee would be casting his votes for control of the Senate with the Republican war party. Why was Senator Lieberman returned in Connecticut as independent despite his support for the war? I have no explanation except to say this anomaly can be explained in terms of Republican defection into his camp and the extraordinarily high personal appeal and integrity of a man who only two cycles ago was his party's vice presidential nominee. Besides, Lieberman made it clear that he would cast his votes for Senate control with the Democrats-the antiwar party in this election. Why do polls show that the administration and the party have lost the confidence of the people in conducting the overall war against terror? Because the people have concluded that the war in Iraq has been conducted incompetently. Katrina or Iraq, chicken or the egg, it all feeds upon itself.

When an uneasy independent voter drew the curtain in the booth he had to choose, statistically speaking, between a Democrat and a Republican. Uneasy about the war, this voter could resolve this dilemma by rationalizing his choice for the Democrats on other grounds like corruption, or incompetence. When a thinking conservative entered the booth, or more likely considers whether to travel to the polling place at all, he could resolve his logical dilemma by staying home where he would not have to choose between his party and his logic because he could justify that decision out of anger over spending and immigration. This conservative voter is like the man who comes home unexpectedly from a business trip, goes upstairs, enters the bedroom where he finds his wife naked in bed, opens the closet door and finds a naked man there with an erection, and hears his wife say, "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Well, the conservative voter, deeply troubled by what he sees concerning the war in Iraq, can avoid the dilemma by not opening the closet door, by not going to the polling place.

3) What do we do now?

The first steps have already been taken with the firing of Rumsfeld. I never thought I would hear myself say that Rumsfeld, a heroic figure to me, had to go, but go he must. Rumsfeld has to take the fall for us so that Bush can go on governing the country for the next two years. There is another dimension to this, in a purely political sense the Republicans must get their own fingerprints off the Iraq war and affix the Democrat's fingerprints on to it. Rumsfeld's departure is the first step in that process. In this move Bush has said to the American people, "I get it, we must change course in Iraq, and I'm going to do it now here is the down payment." With this single stroke much of the exasperation and venom which motivated the electorate will leach away. Moreover, with this stroke he has put the ball in the ‘rats' court and given them a hard choice: either they can obstruct the nomination and leave themselves open to the charge that that's all they are, obstructionists, or they can support the nomination and own part of the responsibility for the conduct of the war under this new Secretary of Defense. Likewise, Bush was right to advance the nomination of Bolton to the United Nations. Here again the Democrats risk the charge of being obstructionist against the man who, in truth, has performed well during his interim appointment.

The president must move the ball and force the Democrats to choose because every time they choose they will lose a portion of the electorate who put them in office. In politics one is either on defense or offense but the only ball carrier we have right now is George Bush. He must learn to take the game to the Democrats. I fear that he will not be up to the task at the level demonstrated by Bill Clinton under similar circumstances in 1995.

Let us consider how the Rumsfeld resignation was stage managed as an example of everything that's been wrong with the public face of the Bush administration. First, why in the world was the resignation not done before the election? Who knows how many seats it might have saved. Second, why did Bush expose himself extemporaneously to the country in a setting which plays to his weakness? Predictably, he fell into the media's trap and made a tremendous gaffe to the effect that he lied to the American people about Rumsfeld's impending removal before the election. These kinds of gaffes are the inevitable consequence of playing defense. Tony Snow should be handling these inquiries. George Bush should be reading prepared text. Third, why did not Bush inveigle Speaker Pillosi and majority leader Reed (how I hate writing those words) into expressing approval or even disapproval of his replacement? Had they disapproved, all their talk of bipartisan cooperation would have been exposed on the very first day. If they had approved, Bush gets the credit for a bi-partisan choice. So, the stage management of this affair was mangled but the overall and long-term effect will have its purpose.

The truth is the Republicans now face an agonizing decision which will reveal whether they are entitled to rule or not, they must change course in Iraq,- that has already been decided by the election. It has been virtually acknowledged by Bush in so many words. It has been acknowledged by deed (the firing of Rumsfeld,). The Republicans task must be to implicate the Democrats in the change of course of the war from here on out, but the Republicans must also choose for the country and not for the party. Ideally they can find a solution to the dilemma in Iraq which is also beneficial to the party, but that is by no means assured. We must take a page from Slick Willie's book when he looked into the camera and lied, "the era of big government is over." Clinton then successfully blunted the Gingrich revolution with a series of small triangulations which put him on offense while pretending to have learned his electoral lesson about big government. We must be supple but, we are Republicans -- even conservatives after all, and we are dealing with the actual survival of the Republlic, not school uniforms, so we must do what is right. I think President Bush has to look into the camera and say to the American people:

We are changing course in Iraq. Your sons will not die in vain to establish a democracy which the Iraqi people despise. We give the Iraqi government fair notice, either you provide the constitutional government which your people have risked their lives to vote for, or you descend without America into the chaos which your greed, tribalism, and religious fanaticism otherwise make inevitable. America now recognizes that it must husband its martial resources and deploy them judiciously. We will use our intelligence, our special ops, and our air power to contain any spill over of strife beyond Iraq’s borders and to destroy terrorists and those who succor them and those who covet WMDs inside Iraq. We will bomb our enemies, whether Sunni, Shi'ite, or even Kurd, and supply arms, intelligence, and air power to our friends, so long as they remain our friends.

Our Army is very good at destroying regimes which harbor terrorists or build weapons of mass destruction but it is not equally good at occupying territory against asymmetrical resistance at a cost in lives and treasure which the American people are willing to pay. So I serve a fair warning on rogue nations who wish to flirt with terrorism, we will use the military might of the United States of America to effect regime change without undertaking responsibility for the consequences. America's guiding star in the war against terrorism is the survival of our nation state. Against this transcendent imperative of national survival, we will brook no interference.

In thus abandoning the hope of nation building and the nurturing of democracy, Bush reverts to his pre-9/11 instincts and to the true course of conservative philosophy. As ruthless as this policy might sound, it is the only way that America can hope to ultimately win the war against Islalmic jihad before our cities are nuked. Most important, it satisfies the mandate of the electorate to end the fruitless spilling of blood and treasure to no purpose in Iraq, but preserves the capacity of America to wage war against terrorism-which is daily slipping away from us leaving us more and more vulnerable. The criticism which will cascade upon Bush's shoulders from Europe, and the United Nations, and all the rest of the world, will for a time be thunderous but it must be endured because it will pass and it will have been worth it because America will have embarked on a path toward victory. Of course, much of the criticism can be diverted or blunted with verbiage about international cooperation etc.

Bush will have forced the Democrats to choose. In this case they must choose between world opinion and our national security. Finally, and most important, Bush will have led the way out of Iraq by eliminating the casualties while still staying there. He will have done so without being utterly defanged by the left at home and abroad. America will still be theoretically able to wage war in its national security interest, which as of now is in very serious doubt. Both America and the Republican Party will save their souls.

The " other course" in Iraq, which will no doubt be favored by many posters on this thread, that is to push on to "victory," is an unrealistic dream. Forget if you like the facts on the ground which lead many experts to believe the war is now unwinnable, the election has demonstrated beyond paradventure of doubt that the American people will not pay the costs necessary to achieve such a "victory" even if one were attainable.

Whatever course the administration chooses in Iraq, it must redefine its priorities. The focus of the war against terrorism is not in Iraq, indeed it is not in any single geographical place unless it is in the reactor rooms and the Iranian bomb building factories. It must be the overarching imperative of American foreign policy to prevent Iran getting the bomb. Every day we spend in Iraq squanders our power and diminishes our ability to Intimidate Iran or, if necessary, to invade Iran. Everyday we spend in Iraq under these circumstances moves Iran closer to the bomb. Our terrible dilemma has been that we could not fix Iraq and we could not abandon Iraq. Now Bush can temporize no longer he must find a third way.

We are in a mortal struggle with a fanatical, murderous, and suicidal force which would cheerfully murder masses of Americans to win their jihad for Allah. If they can nuke just two or three of our cities the cries for capitulation and submission as a Muslim land will be irresistible and our democracy will be over. The problem: There are 1.4 billion potential suicidal terrorists in the Muslim world and the terrorists need only a handful to nuke us.

Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices; tomorrow's threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology. MI5 chief: Terror threat growing http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/11/MNGBRMAJC81.DTL

We cannot win this war unless we find a way to turn the sane Muslim world against the crazies. We cannot do that by shoveling flies in Baghdad and trading casualties in an asymmetrical war where we have so far only demonstrated that we are incapable of of coping with tactics of suicide and murder. We must be able to intimidate if we are going to turn Muslim regimes against terrorists. We cannot do that while floundering in Iraq. If Iran gets the bomb we might not be able to do it at all.

By their voting on Tuesday the American people have expressed that they have come to sense all this.

If you want to restore the conservative dream in America, if you want to rehabilitate the Republican Party, if you want sleep without worrying about the fate of your children and grandchildren in a world of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, we must sort out the Iraq war. If we don’t fix Iraq, we cannot address any of the other deficiencies which cumulatively have visited this electoral disaster upon us. No one will hear us. The Republican Party has two years to show that it is up to the challenge.

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