How to achieve a lasting Democratic majority

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 11:06:19 AM MST

HANNITY: ...I think these bloggers have really gotten to them. I think they're really positioning themselves that they're going to have a very difficult time moving center. Do you see that?

RUSSERT: Absolutely, because what has happened -- the Democrats will acknowledge -- for example, on the war. The major candidates were very reluctant to consider voting and cutting off funding. Now, they will -- a year ago. Now, they will say that the circumstances on the ground have changed so much they want to make that vote. It was interesting to me that three senators elected this year, Democrats, Webb of Virginia, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Jon Tester of Montana, all voted for the funding, different than Obama and Clinton.

If it is true that "liberal bloggers" are pulling the Democratic Party left, that's a good thing. Not just because it happens to align with my own personal political opinions, but because it also aligns with the beliefs of a majority of Americans.

We take a different view: that [the 2006] election signals the end of a fleeting Republican revival, prompted by the Bush administration's response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the return to political and demographic trends that were leading to a Democratic and center-left majority in the United States.

According to the report, women, professionals, independents, minorities, and the young are all trending Democratic -- and had been since the early 1990s. It was only the reaction to 9/11 and the historic trust Americans put into the GOP for national security that enabled the Bush administration and GOP Congress to dominate. The Iraq War has changed that perception markedly, and Democrats are back on their upward trend.

So why the trend?

--Economic issues. Voters are growing more concerned that the "rich are getting richer," and more voters agree that it is "the responsibility of the government to take care of those that can't take care of themselves."

--Social issues. Those believing abortion should be illegal has dropped from "19 to 15 percent," and those believing it should legal "in all circumstances" has risen from 24 to 30 percent. According to the report, this reflects a general trend in the "softening" of the recent American religious revival and a growing tolerance for working women and gays among Evangelical Christians.

In other words, the Republicans have done themselves in. The administration's glaring foreign policy failures cracked GOP dominance on national security. Bush administration tax cuts and massive subsidies for multinational corporations and the wealthiest among us have resulted in a kind of government income redistribution scheme -- and those getting squeezed out of the American Dream are more frequently found in the middle class. The dominance of conservative Christians in the government have threatened women's health and workplace security -- evidenced by the SCOTUS' recent legalization of gender discrimination and an abortion decision that didn't take the mother's health into consideration. Health care skyrockets, and the government ignores health care reform, even as a plurality of Americans cry out for a single-payer system.

The future political structure of the country, though, depends on how the Democrats handle their majority. Judis and Teixeira:

One way that the new Democratic majority could be sustained, and even grow, over the next decade is for Democrats to enact popular, landmark legislation. The passage of Social Security legislation helped keep New Deal Democrats in power for decades. The creation of an effective national health-insurance program, despite Republican opposition, might do the same for today's Democrats. But there are major obstacles facing the Democrats in getting major reforms like these through Congress.... [T]he Democratic coalition itself is not a left-wing coalition but a center-left one, in which the views of independents and professionals have considerable weight. Democrats will have difficulty agreeing among themselves on new, large government programs that may require higher taxes....

[snip]

If the Democrats are limited to incremental reform, what we foresee is a realignment similar to the Republican realignment of the 1980s but different from the massive, dramatic realignment that occurred in the crisis of the 1930s. Democrats will hold Congress and the White House for most, but not all, of this period, and they'll suffer intraparty recriminations (as the Democrats of the 1990s did) from their failure to do better. But if they are able to anchor their majority in landmark legislation, they could achieve the kind of historic realignment that Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats enjoyed. At minimum, that would require Democratic politicians to put aside their own differences and mobilize pressure from below. The past record on this is not encouraging, but there's always the chance that today's Democrats will rise to the occasion.