Obama strategists will now be asked to bury their grievances and put Clinton on the ticket. They will be told it's the smart thing to do. It's not, and here's why.

A few days ago, I opened the newspaper here in Cincinnati to see an astounding thing. There, standing on the steps of City Hall, was an amalgamation of groups that not too long ago would have been unthinkable -- the NAACP stood side-by-side with the Young Republicans, the Libertarians, the Greens and the radical anti-tax group called COAST in opposition to red-light cameras in the city.

The same groups first joined forces last year to oppose a tax levy to raise funds for a (desperately needed) new jail.

Leaving aside the politics of these positions, this display does point up an interesting possibility -- that the hardened positions that have defined our political boundaries, that the traditionalists depend on to define their views of the landscape, are at this point in time in a historic state of flux.

There has been a lot of talk today about Travis Childers' victory in MS-01 and the Democratic party's current streak of turning Republican seats blue. Though most people seem aware of the current 3-race streak of special election victories, many people probably aren't aware of a much larger trend. After mentioning this in another thread, I was encouraged to write a diary in order to reach a wider audience.

On the face of it, the Primary campaign is all about personality and not about substance. The stated positions of the two candidates, the wisdom goes, are so close that the argument is over who can make the better against Sen. McCain. Then why is there such a heated prolonged battle between the Clinton and Obama camps?

In fact what we are seeing is a historic realignment in the Democratic Party. The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan that held such sway over the Nation ( even through the Clinton years) has collapsed. Eight years  of incompetence and malfeasance, and a longer period of successes, have drained it of energy. This is not to say that the Right Wing in the country is finished. The Clinton wing of the Democratic party is moving in to fill that role. In effect they are aligning themselves with what is left of the Republicans to defeat the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The Liberal Wing is in effect, the continuation of the Hubert Humphrey-McGovern tradition. It was revived fiour years ago by Dean and is now led by Obama. It is the

Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.

I want to buy Karl Rove a great big thank you card with puppies and kittens on it.

It seems too small a gesture for the way he has transformed our country.

Yes, there's the terrible, twisted, sick things he made possible. I am not discounting them. At all.

But in the classic, evil sows the seeds of its own destruction kind of way, he has been responsible for two sea changes.

One is the rise of the worst government policies ever, that have brought us to the brink of annihilation.

But he also paved the way for us to rise from these ashes.

What the heck do I mean?

To the Flipmobile!

Democratic Presidential candidates face a situation much like stepping in as a pinch hitter with two strikes against you; unless Ross Perot commits a catcher’s balk, things don’t look good.  The problems, similar to those I faced in elementary school, are geography and math.  A Democrat must nearly sweep the Northeast, the West Coast, and win major states in the Midwest.  After defending their "home turf," our nominee must win two of the three large swing states: Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Simply put, as things stand every four years we play a dangerous game of chicken with Rev. Ronald Podhoretz-Falwell; and the odds are stacked against us.

This is the second installment of a three part series addressing the issue of national voting patterns. The first analyzed experiments and data underlying major theories of voting behavior.  This diary will analyze media effects.  The final episode will examine the political landscape of 2008 and comment on the Obama campaign with regards to the possibility of a Western realignment.

I encourage everyone to look at Part I; it's a fine read and you'll need it for Part III (and the end is the good part!)

For the last few decades Democratic presidential candidates have faced a situation much like stepping in as a pinch hitter with two strikes against you; unless Ross Perot commits a catcher’s balk, things don’t look good.  The problems, similar to those I faced in elementary school, are geography and math.  Realistically, a Democrat must nearly sweep the Northeast, the West Coast, and win major states in the Midwest.  After defending their "home turf," our nominee must win two of the three large swing states: Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  Simply put, as things stand every four years we play a dangerous game of chicken with Rev. Ronald Podhoretz-Falwell; and the odds are stacked against us.

This is the first installment of a three part series addressing the issue of national voting patterns.  It will overview experiments and data underlying major theories of voting behavior.  The second episode will examine media effects and media markets.  The final (and least theoretical)diary will examine the political landscape of 2008 and comment on the Obama campaign with regards to the possibility of a...

There've been a couple of diaries about realignment lately.  There is one happening.  And it is going to be bigger and stranger than any of us can envision right now.

Dig it:

In Iowa, both party primaries were won by the most dovish and anti-establishment of the viable candidates.  
In NH, both party primaries were won by the most hawkish and establishment of the viable candidates.  

Deep rumblings are taking place in the Heartland that we on the coasts can only begin to guess at.

What's shaking up is not the mere realignment of a few purple states into the blue column.  It will result, as it unfolds, in a redrawing of our electoral and ideological map.  (more below the fold).

I need a long shower right now. I just attended a Mike Huckabee rally at the Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland. I lasted about 40 minutes, before I finally left in disgust. The basic gist of my observation is this: Huckabee is the real deal. Even though McCain is the obvious Republican nominee, Huckabee is not going away anytime soon this year and will be back in 2012 or 2016. Although Rep. Paul's supporters like to call themselves "The Paul Revolution," the real revolution in the GOP is being waged by Huckabee.

Based on experience during the past hour, I am now convinced that Huckabee represents the GOP side of the emerging realignment taking place right now. Read on after the jump to find out why.

I recently contacted an old friend from college (old, in the sense of a few years), and I made the mistake of assuming that he would be supporting Obama in the upcoming CT primary.

His response:

All we need is another Jesus/JFKish-inspirational-devotional-televangelical- devoid-of-any-substance-President!

It's natural enough for a committed environmentalist and supporter of gay rights to get behind Clinton, but I found the hostility toward Obama somewhat surprising.  Of course, he didn't expect me to have "bought into the dream" and become an Obama supporter.  Fair enough, given that in the past we related more by our cynicism than our liberalism.

His take on Obama:

You're always going to have 50%+1 electoral strategy in a two-party system. Barack may brand himself as a "uniter," but every wannabe bigwig says that, and every time, within a year of taking office, the government descends into partisanship, pork, and pollsters. I would like to think that somebody could break the pattern, but it's impossible in our system. Sure, politicians can try. They don't get reelected. Those who take their place do so because they practice and perpetuate 50+1. Game theory will tell you that.

This diary is a (hopefully polite) response to the recent diary entitled  "Mike Huckabee and the coming Republican realignment".

I disagree with the diarist's prognostications regarding the supposed coming Democratic realignment towards corporatists, but it got me thinking, what is it that I actually disagree with?

As a Westerner, I firmly believe that most major Democrats' poll driven beliefs about what they have to do to appeal to the Mountain West, if not completely incorrect, lack sufficient resolution and finesse.  

We hear a lot about how Democrats believe that potential Democratic voters in the Mountain West are less liberal and more "libertarian", they trust the marketplace to solve most problems.  

My dad was a Rockefeller Republican. He was disappointed by the turn the party took in the 1980s and 1990s, and though he died before George W. Bush was selected president, I've always felt that he would have definitively made the break from the GOP during this decade.

At the same time, I've felt that the number of disenchanted Rockefeller Republicans (liberal on social issues and supportive of things like progressive taxation and the estate tax) is not big enough to cost the GOP much in the electoral arena.

Tonight I ran into a former colleague of my father's, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. It was an eye-opening conversation to me; the circle of Republicans who are disgusted by their party's standard-bearers is broader than I had realized.

More after the jump.

Until recently, I’d been so focused on writing about original topics that I ended up starting several diaries simultaneously and never finishing a single one. I eventually came to the conclusion that my lot on this site is to mostly sit back, accept my "quasi-ADD," and just comment.

That said, some things require an extended discussion.

I’ve yet to see anything on an important recent Pew survey showing that Democrats now hold the widest gap in party identification (50% – 35%) in the 20 year history of the poll. What’s particularly significant is that these trends are reflected in support for progressive priorities and social attitudes across the board. I won’t go into specifics beyond the fact that popular support for an expanded safety net is way up. If you are interested in public opinion at all, these data really are worth either a quick read of the summarized article or a more detailed perusal of the full study. They both contain a trove of information for those wanting to back their analyses with empirical rigor.

Iraq has the potential to be a re-alignment strength issue, one invoking so much passion and soul searching that people end up on the other side of the political fence than where they started out, often to their complete surprise.

If you want a chuckle, take a look at the following Fred Barnes article from 2003.  Here are some gems:

By gaining governors and state legislators, Republicans are now in the entrenchment phase.

"Texas[mid-decade redistricting] means there's no battle for the House" until after the 2010 census, says Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Democrats may wind up with fewer than 200 seats for the first time since 1946, says Burnham.

Democrats have theorized that the voting patterns of Hispanics, women, and urban professionals were producing what analysts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira called an "emerging Democratic majority." But in 2002 and the recall, the theory faltered. The midterm elections saw the demise of the old gender gap--women voting more Democratic than men--that had endured for over two decades. The intervening event was the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. That "really did change things permanently," says Burnham.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

Since my last diary, some have asked to see more maps and a further analysis of voting trends in New York State. The first will begin with the area I am most familiar with, the Northeastern region of the state.

Analyzing voting trends, Northeastern New York, long a rock-ribbed Republican bastion since the Civil War, is trending Democratic in federal elections faster than any other region of the state.

This diary details Democratic gains in traditionally Republican counties in rural areas of Upstate New York, as well as the continuing realignment towards the Democratic Party in the Northeastern United States since the 1960s.

Includes maps, demographics, and party registration trends.

Today's (11/13/06) NY Times carries a story speculating that the the NY Republican Party is dead, and it makes a compelling case that this is so (although last week's democratic sweep was partially just the political pendulum swinging back after 12 years of Pataki).  

As we saw last week, the Death of the Republican Party is not limited to New York, rather it extends throughout all of New England.  This presents an interesting opportunity for progressives in the Northeast.  While the task in the "Mountain West" will be to continue expanding the party, and in the South to bring it back to life, the task for progressive activists in the Northeast needs to be taking over the party from the inside, and to move it in a more progressive direction.  

This will include running agressive races against corrupt and centrist incumbants at every level.