The Great Realignment

Karl Rove's wish for a permanent Republican majority seems to have gone up in smoke, hasn't it? Rove's former boss, so incompetent and divisive, handed his successor and the opposition party a greater chance for political realignment than Rove could have ever wished for his Republican Party.

Damon Link takes a look at the turning point the last election gave the Democrats, and how the Republicans look to spend some serious time in the political wilderness.

Key take-away:

...the party's embrace of the insufferable Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is such a perfect expression of what the anti-government impulse that led to Reagan's victory in 1980 has become after 28 years in power. Having badly bungled a war, shown gross incompetence in responding to a natural disaster, and presided over the near-total collapse of the nation's (and the world's) financial system, the leadership of the Republican Party thinks it's a good idea to follow the advice (or rather, to pretend to follow the advice) of some guy who (to put it delicately) has no fucking idea what he's talking about. [The current Republican Party] has no business getting within a stone's throw of the White House any time soon.

For the moment, a majority of Americans seem to agree.

The main problem with Bill Clinton's first two years as president is that he mistook his anemic 43% victory as a mandate to lurch left. Sure, he won the popular vote against the first Bush (37%) and Ross Perot (19%), and he won a strong Electoral College victory (370 to 168 to 0), but still...57% of Americans voted against him. While he eventually respected the result, Mr. Clinton's popularity during his first two years in the White House sank quickly as he attempted to push liberal policies through the congress that most Americans disagreed with at the time.

President Obama doesn't have that problem. The mess the second Bush leaves behind is mountainous compared to the minor recession his father left Clinton, and the current mess includes two mismanaged wars and a crippling national debt. Most Americans are done with right-wing governance.

No one knows for sure if the ambitious Obama agenda will put America back on firm footing. But with a strong 53% share of the vote last November, an Electoral College tally that was far and above either of Bush's anemic totals, and a robust 71% approval rating, the President has the wind of American support at his back as he moves ahead on an agenda that could very well shift the course of American government to the left.