[classicman]

Rethinking the Notion of Political Dominance

In 2004, after President Bush won re-election with expanded Republican majorities in Congress, academics, journalists and party strategists wondered whether his blend of free-market economics, cultural conservatism and hawkishness on national security might create long-lasting Republican rule.

“Something fundamental and significant happened,” said Ken Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. On the eve of a second Bush term, he said, the Republican Party was “in a stronger position than at any time since the Great Depression.”

Today that Republican dream appears in shambles. The twin burdens of an economic crisis and an unpopular war have left Mr. Bush with, at 71 percent, the highest level of public disapproval for a president in the history of the Gallup Poll. Democrats see the chance on Nov. 4 to elect not just Senator Barack Obama but also House and Senate majorities large enough to enact his ambitious agenda.

A Changing Electorate

How did such a turnabout happen so fast?

In part, the answer stems from developments so rare that, as the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said of the financial crisis, they occur “once in a century.” Hurricane Katrina shattered the administration’s reputation for competence in domestic affairs, just as problems in Iraq eroded its credibility on national security issues. Not even partisan critics of Republican policies anticipated how a burst housing bubble would devastate Wall Street and damage the entire economy.

But another part of the explanation may lie in an underappreciated reality of 21st-century politics. Despite the nation’s polarization along partisan and ideological lines, the number of swing voters remains large enough to rapidly undercut any Democratic or Republican coalition in reaction to shifting events.

“The map of 2004 was a delusion,” said Bernadette Budde, a political strategist for the Republican-friendly Business Industry Political Action Committee in Washington.

A new generation of voters, consuming political information in different ways than their forebears, is “very action-oriented, very issue-driven, very solutions-oriented,” Ms. Budde said. “It would be very foolhardy for either political party to think they could dominate the age politically.”

Indeed, young voters have moved toward the Democrats. Those under 30, after backing Senator John Kerry by nine percentage points over Mr. Bush in 2004, now favor Mr. Obama by a 36-point margin in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Yet their more tradition-minded elders have also moved that way, if in smaller numbers, reflecting the breadth of discontent with the country’s direction and Washington’s inability to act on persistent problems like health care and immigration policy. As long as these problems persist, any governing coalition remains at risk.

A little long, but a good, insightful read.