Soencer Ackerman asks,
"Remember in 2003 and 2004, when there was all this talk about how the
Democrats were in danger of no longer being a national party?" I do
remember that. I also remember how Democrats had to get religion if
they ever wanted to be competitive again. I also remember how they had
to appeal to the white heartland by nominating candidates more
culturally recognizable to rural voters. Instead, they went in the
opposite direction, running a candidate who was recognizable to the
majority coalition Democrats hoped to have in 10 years. It seems to
have worked out pretty well. It’s almost as if pundits don’t really
know what they’re talking about.
Here is the link.
I know, it’s called the “expert” problem.
LOLZ, well to the extent that Lil Ezra is a pundit I can certainly agree with his last statement!!
This seems to discount the contributions of the Republicans to their own demise.
leaving aside that it’s largely a matter of dumb luck. e.g., kerry runs a somewhat decent campaign, wins ohio and the presidency, and suddenly the democrats would be the ones left holding the bag for the economy. yes, counterfactuals are dumb, because we don’t really know how the alternate universe/history plays out, but to attribute this to anything other than fortune seems a bit odd given how close the past 2 elections were, which would have dramticly changed the landscape if the outcomes had been different.
Can you say ‘fundamental attribution error’? I knew you could!
The chattering classes of all persuasions appeared completely unaware of how America, our beautiful America, changed in the last 3 years, even before the credit crisis. Taking the rare moment to watch TV today I see this is still the case. I don’t know where these people live because what they are describing certainly doesn’t match what I live on the ground. Partisanship will only lead you astray, this much is clear.
The Democrats could have nominated a ham sandwich and won this election.
I don’t think so. If McCain had been as gracious as he was through the campaign as he was in his concession speech tonight then I think the election would have been a different story. And if he hadn’t picked Palin, and if he hadn’t gone as far to the right as he did…etc
In Ezra’s defense, the congress started swinging in 2006 and further gains might solidify from last night. Could Huckabee or Romney have triumphed here? You have to waltz with the losers still at the dance, not with some mythical dreamboat. Reagan and Gingrich are not coming back. The republicans are going to take some time to recharge and find real leadership.
Assuming Klein is right, then the lesson for Republicans is that they don’t have to change at all in their policies, they can just stick their collective heads in the sand for several years and wait for Obama and the Democrats to implode.
Good luck with that.
There’s either going to be some serious buyer’s remorse, or else approximately everybody will become a ward of the state, leaving the slight problem of how to pay for that.
This may be Carter II in more ways than one.
I know a lot of people are down on Kevin Phillips. He’s a little long-winded and sometimes strenuous in his assertions … but I think a good observer nonetheless (or perhaps a good observer before he presses his case a little too far).
“Lapsed Republican” … that’s the Phillips’ term for a conservative and party member put off by the controlling ideologies in the Republican party. So much put off that they’ve lapsed in their support and their voting. That describes me. I was never a Religious Right and I was certainly not a Neo-Con.
A lot of people became Lapsed Republicans in this cycle, and that’s what won Obama his victory.
I plan on de-registering, to independent, to make it official.
I’ll be happy to play coy and let the Republicans win me back … though it would take a bit of Libertarianism on their part.
Yancey, I think (ok, I hope) Obama has internalized the lessons of the Clinton years. Clinton made his personal success by moderate rule, after first stumbling with pushes left. If he’d kept it in his pants he would have ended on that note, with both the far right and the far left mad at him … which is perhaps where a President should be.
(KPFK, our far-left radio out here, was constantly ragging on Clinton for his abandonment of their causes.)
Democrats are only left in comparison to the loons who took over the GOP. I believe Obama will govern largely as he has suggested he would, which would put him not far from Carter or Clinton, or for that matter Eisenhower or GHWB at least on economic issues. There is far less support for stupid protectionism and overregulation among democrats than there was in the 1970s. Fears of socialism are hugely overblown. Dems and Republicans both leave the lion’s share of the welfare state (the part that doesn’t go to the scary poor people) sacrosanct, because that’s the way the American people want it.
We will probably become somewhat less evangelically pro-capitalist in our dealings with the rest of the world, and I’m sure a few bits of nonsense will pass, but we will remain a center-right mixed economy. What we won’t see is a continued push *away* from the general consensus that progressive taxation is reasonable. Sorry flat taxers, but the people just aren’t with you.
What we have in this country today is a centrist party and an wing-nut xenophobe party. The centrists won last night, as in 2006, and they will probably continue to make gains until the Republicans abandon their anti-american stances on immigration, torture, militarism and executive power.
I found it interesting that pundits on MSNBC talked about the Republicans losing because they didn’t go towards the left enough. Fox News pundits, on the other hand, said that the Republicans lost because they didn’t go towards the right enough. Maybe I should have watched CNN.
Obama did not run from church going voters and he did not think in terms of “flyover country.”
Especially if the Pastor speaks of “chickens coming home to roost” and American damnation.
Oh man, did I ever mess that up. I meant to write:
The Democrats did not have great strategy.
Obama had great strategy. He is the one who excited voters. He also made very few errors and learned from each one.
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