WP, E.J. Dionne: Democratic Tide Rising; GOP risks becoming "minority debating society"

[DeepModem Mom]

Democratic Tide on The Rise
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, June 13, 2008

At the moment, Barack Obama is winning a smaller share of Democrats than John Kerry did on Election Day four years ago. Yet Obama is beating John McCain by six points in the latest Gallup Poll. How can this be? For all the talk this year about bipartisanship, a sharp shift in partisan loyalties toward the Democrats, visible in a series of polls this week, could prove the defining fact in November.

In a report released yesterday, Gallup found that where McCain was winning 85 percent of self-identified Republicans, Obama was winning only 78 percent of Democrats. Yet Obama led McCain 48 percent to 42 percent in the survey, which was conducted June 5-10. Obama enjoyed a seven-point advantage among independents, but Gallup noted that even when independents were excluded, Obama still had a five-point lead because Democrats now outnumber Republicans 37 to 28 percent. When independents were asked their partisan leanings, the Democratic advantage reached 13 points....

***

The good news for McCain is that this year he has consistently run ahead of his party. The bad news is that the GOP is in such a deep hole McCain may not be able to climb out....

Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign, sees evidence of a realignment in a steady move of middle-income voters. "Identification with the Democrats has crept up among voters in the $50,000- to $75,000-a-year range and is now moving up beyond that," partly in response to "the pain of the Bush economy."

The paradox is that sharp shifts in partisan identification often presage periods of bipartisanship. If Obama were to win because of the country's Democratic tilt, moderate Republicans in Congress could move toward him to protect themselves against a Democratic tide. A comparable shift of worried Democrats helped Ronald Reagan build bipartisan majorities for his tax and budget programs in 1981. "There really is the potential for Barack Obama to build coalitions with Republicans in the middle -- if there are Republicans left in the middle," said Garin....

The realigning mood took concrete form in Virginia this week when two prominent Republicans, Vincent Callahan, former chairman of the state House Appropriations Committee, and John Chichester, former state Senate president, endorsed Democrat Mark Warner for the U.S. Senate. Callahan said he was "extremely distressed" by the condition of Virginia's GOP, adding that it risked becoming "a minority debating society."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061203471_pf.html

[AllentownJake]

1. It may take them 20-30 years to recover from Bush

But they are like cockroaches. It only took them 6 to recover from Nixon.

[calimary]

2. Superb! Let's hope the trend continues and accellerates!

:thumbsup:

This may well be the Great Political Realignment that kkkarl rove dreamed about. Only - he got the party wrong. And how delightful is it that his ham-handed, scorched-earth tactics made it all possible!