TW: Stu Rothenburg opines on the results of the election. Net net, the Dems picking up 12+ Senate seats, 50+ House seats and the Presidency between '06 and '08 is highly unusual and potentially. But not surprisingly voters, as they always have been are fickle, and once the sour memories of Bush are gone and the economy improves things could change. He does point to the youth vote and minority voters as voting blocs which are moving rapidly away from the Republicans in such numbers to cause the Republicans serious pause.
Nate Silver wrote on his blog that true "re-alignments" such as FDR and Reagan have less to do with the initial elections whereby a party takes control and more to do with how effective the Party governs. While an intuitive point, it is one the Dems should brand into their collective minds.
From Rothenburg:
"The election results in 2006 and 2008 constitute the kind of one-two punch that is rare in modern American political history...Moreover, in the past two elections, Democrats gained at least a dozen Senate seats and at least 50 House seats, taking total control of Congress. At the state level, they now have 4,090 state legislators to the GOP’s 3,221...
Polls show that the Republican advantages on foreign policy and pocketbook issues have either shrunk or disappeared. While there remains a stark contrast on cultural matters between the parties, Democrats have sought to mute that difference on both guns and values, and those issues clearly were not what the 2008 elections were about.
If demographics are indeed destiny, then the 2008 national exit poll at the very least raises questions about where the GOP goes from here. For the first time ever, whites constituted less than 75 percent of the electorate, a considerable problem for the Republican Party given its historical problems attracting minorities. While the highly anticipated surge in younger voters never materialized, those voters younger than 30 who did participate went overwhelmingly for Obama, 66 percent to 32 percent. That 34-point margin was almost four times the 9-point margin that Kerry had with voters younger than 30.
...voters may be more willing to accept a more activist government that regulates business and seeks to affect outcomes, rather than merely ensures a neutral playing field...
Democrats and liberals would prefer the story to end here, but it doesn’t. Other data paint a different picture...the lack of any statistically significant shift in self-described ideology of voters also argues against a fundamental realignment...far more Democrats turned out than Republicans.
While this change could reflect a fundamental shift in self-identified partisanship, it could merely be a dip in GOP turnout caused by any number of factors At this point, it is far too premature to claim that 2008 was anything more than a dramatic reaction to an unpopular president and to a party hurt by its own ineptness. Obama will have a chance to change the nation’s political landscape. But his election, by itself, isn’t necessarily a sign of a new partisan alignment."
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/54_55/rothenberg/29988-1.html
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