WASHINGTON -- Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.
In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.
This was all ridiculous from the beginning. 2008 was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.
Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 -- a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus 15 Democratic in 2008 to minus 4 in 2009. A 19-point swing.
What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.
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6 comments:
I was out of town during this weeks elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Sitting around airports, I was listening to MANY people cheering when the results came back on the BIG Republican win in both states. People are starting to have had enough of the Democratic Bull! Those poor people were so disillusioned back in January and hopefully are waking up, however, it may be too late!
Is it any accident that Pelosi is trying to rush through this health care takeover and cap and tax?
They know that the vast majority of Americaqns are strongly opposed to both and that they have only a short time to enact this before they are voted out.
They should be held for treason for what they are doing.
The new congress will have to reverse it all when they are elected.
I'm just hoping that people are realizing the following:
1.Obama is not qualified for president of the U.S..
2.He has screwed-up the economy
3.He is a muslim and a radical
4.He doesn't know anything about military issues and he is the commander and chief of the armed forces.
5.Most of all he is the biggest bull $hitter known to man.
I have never wished anyone ill heath or anything similar, however,
I would jump for joy if Obama
disapeared. Please , make it happen!
8:16,
Your number 3 is just false and I would like you to prove it. If not, shut up. All of the other numbers, it just seems like you were talking about Bush.
7:07,
You never heard anyone cheering around airports. Outside of their states, no one cares. Well, a few people who believe that this is a message care. These elections are about local issues.
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