Grist for the mill at Hullabaloo today on the long-term prospects of the emerging Democratic majority:
Perhaps Barack Obama will not realize the desires and natural policy outcomes that derive from such a coalition. Indeed, he almost certainly will not and can not, any more than Nixon could have implemented the fully formed Reagan agenda back in 1971. But he has done much. And the next president elected by this coalition will do more, and the next one after that will do even more than the one that came before, until in 25 years, even a Republican president will be significantly more liberal than any Democrat in 2008.
I wish I could be so sanguine, having watched the GOP drift progressively more insane since my college days; I turned 21 the year before Proposition 13 was passed in California, so the Mighty Wurlitzer has provided the soundtrack to my entire adult life. I do agree that their days as a dominant national party are numbered---save a radical ideological shift on their part---but I also think they can delay their day of reckoning for a great while longer, possibly decades, for all of the following reasons:
1. Redistricting. They can take all the lumps they want on the national level, but as long as they control a majority of statehouses, they'll likely control the majority of Congressional seats. Their triumphs on the state level---not the emergence of the Teabilly militia in Washington---is what made the 2010 midterms a ten-year clusterfuck for Democrats. And let's not forget disproportional (e.g., Senate) representation, where the Cheney State and its 600,000 residents have as much political clout as my home state of 35 million.
2. Money. They are going to have as much as they want, for as long as they want, absent a Constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. And I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
3. Media. They have a propaganda network that would have been the envy of the Soviet empire, and unless some Democratic leader proposes reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, their swill will dominate the public discourse for years to come. Not to mention the assistance they receive from a complaisant Washington political press that has grown obsessed with objectivity as the expense of accuracy. And last but not least,
4. Guns. They have a lot more of them than we lefties do, and they are stockpiling them as you read this. Obviously they haven't reached the phase in their Glorious Bagger Rebellion where they've felt the need to take up arms against the Liberal Terrorist Empire, but I'm not putting it past them either, and neither should anyone else.
But I do agree with David Atkins that our political landscape is going to grow darker before we enter the brightness of a new era of governance. I just happen to think that America's long night of the soul is going to last a whole lot longer, and be a lot more savage, than most of us care to contemplate. Would be happy to be proven wrong, though.
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