A brief comment on last night's results, from a purely analytical perspective.
It was interesting to me how the 1992 results re-capitulated the 1860 election, only in reverse. Clinton won where Lincoln had, while Bush won where Douglas or Breckenridge had.
This year's results are a reverse of 1896. Obama has won where McKinley did, while McCain has won where Bryan did. What's most startling about that is it shows Republicans to be a Populist Party, one led (no joke) by Sarah Palin.
The result of these switches was almost a wash. Despite the higher turnout Obama's popular vote win did nothing more than reverse the 2004 result. But it's really significant, and shows the makings of a longer-lasting coalition than Clinton's win did.
That's because Republicans are left with the crazy. Bizarro economic
populists, because Ron Paul is the exact opposite in his attitude
toward money of Bryan. Social populist, all the backwards tub-thumping
religiosity for which Bryan himself became notorious after the Monkey
Trial. And racism.
The South is more divided by race today than it has been at any time since the 1960s. That's the untold story of last night. McCain won 7 of the 10 Voic.Us states I cover, won them handily, and nearly came through in the other three. Republicans lost almost no ground in the Congress. They lost one seat (net) in Florida, but picked up one in Louisiana. They lost some ground in North Carolina but picked up ground in Tennessee. The Senate was a wash.
What this does, in the end, is magnify the Republicans' problems to a greater degree than a landslide loss would have. A landslide loss would have caused them to start fresh. This bakes in their worst impulses. Palin 2012? Don't snicker.
On the other hand this also gives Obama a much stronger hand than even a landslide would have. For every racist or religious-fascism action in the South and Great Plains there is an equal and opposite reaction in the east and the west. Wall Street can't live in the new Republican Party. It has to go with the Democrats. That will cause the Democratic run to last much longer than it would have, had Wall Street been able to pick up the GOP pieces.
Obamaism has a lot of room to grow. The economic policies he plans to put in place will benefit makers. They will benefit manufacturers. They will be of most benefit to places like the Great Plains and the South, which were today's regions of Republican strength.
The Democrats are the new majority party, but it was a closer-run thing than I imagined it would be. That does not make it more precarious. The nature of that closeness makes it more solid. While the Republican Party was discredited last night, it was beaten in such a way so as to assure it won't reform, and will come into future elections even weaker than it was last night.
That's what happened to Democrats under Bryan. They came closest in 1896. After that they faded, slowly, for a generation, electing only one President, Wilson, because the Republicans split. Will this happen again, with Obama choosing as a successor the 21st century equivalent of a William Howard Taft? That's something Democrats need to be on guard against, something they must push hard against. And the race for the 2012 Democratic Vice Presidential nomination is already on. Joe Biden will be 69, and will likely want to cap his career as Secretary of State rather than run for the Presidency at the age of 73. For ambitious Democrats that makes the next four years a try-out, to replace Biden and become the front-runner for 2016.
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