James Carville - 40 More Years. How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation

Every four years, Americans hold a presidential election. Somebody wins, and somebody loses. Thats life. But 2008 was an anomaly. The election of Senator Barack Obama is part of something far bigger than four or even eight years in the White House. Since 2004, Americans have been witnessingand participating inthe emergence of a Democratic majority that will last not four but forty years.

American presidential politics is generally not a back-and-forth enterprise. There are eras in which one party dominates. Today, a Democratic majority is emerging, and its my hypothesis, one I share with a great many others, that this majority will guarantee the Democrats remain in power for the next forty years.

That sounds like a radical proposition. In reality, it is a proposition borne out by history. Stock pickers look at stock trends. Bettors check the horses. Here were going to look at the history books. Time for some basic civics. Look at the years from 1896 to 1932, then 1932 to 1968, Eisenhower, then 1968 to 2008. (Okay, that includes Clinton and half a Carter term.) So now were at 2008, and were two years into a congressional sea change and just embarking on the first term of an Obama-Biden administration.

The waning Republican majority grew out of a reaction to the 1960s, and race played a big part of it. (I dont want to hear otherwise, it didtake it from a boy who grew up in Louisiana.) Go back and read Kevin Phillipss The Emerging Republican Majority if you need to do so.

Now the reaction to the 1960s is in its last throes. The Republican majority has always been based upon whites and, in particular, white males. They have to shift. The bulwark of Republican electoral strength is disappearing. Republicans are now a regional party heavily dependent upon disappearing demographics. Nearly half of all Republican-held seats in Congress are in the South. Not to open old wounds, Zell Miller had the right title and the wrong party: A National Party No More.

Republicans feel the importance of the white male vote slipping away. Just listen to Pat Buchanan. Theyre absolutely offended at the attack on the white male and his decline in society. Theyve got a point. Ive been a white man for some years and cant tell you what its like just walking down the street. Not to be shrill about it, but Im sick of never seeing white men in any positions of power.

The Democratic majority started to emerge in 2004. That was the thirty-six-year point. Now its 2008, and its time for the beginning of a forty-year period of Democratic dominance. The definitive victory of President Obama this yearwhich included Indiana, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, and a variety of previously purple statesand the sheer tide of electoral votes and congressional seats Democrats won this year should silence even the most reality-averse of critics. From the sheer incompetence of the Bush administration to the poisoning of the Republican Party brand among Americans to the demographic disadvantage conservatives face, all signs suggest that 2008 will be the first of many victories for the Democrats. This isnt to say Democrats will win every election for the next forty years. In eras of party dominance, parties will still lose elections, both congressional and a periodic presidential.

I keep a running list of the moments that toppled the Republican majority. Its quite possible the point at which this age ended was when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court seemed on the verge of tears when he had to make Exxon pay. Another contender, an event that happened that spring, was the day that Bushs liaison to religious groups resigned from the administration for multiple acts of egregious plagiarism. Id also nominate the February 2008

Not even John McCain could save the GOP. The Republicans nominated John McCain despite themselves. Lets give John McCain his due. McCain really is a patriot. Watch the footage of him from the POW camp in Hanoi. I cried. McCain had a chance to leave the prison camp early, and he refused to do it. McCain is a man of remarkable courage, and I have no reason to think hes not deeply patriotic. (Sarah Palin is another story.)

Of the contenders for the Republican nomination, McCain may have been the furthest from being a Bush Republican per se, if not the maverick he claimed. But McCains campaign was doomed from the start. The obvious is sometimes the real answer. Someone asked Ray Charles, Whats the worst part about being blind? He somewhat famously responded, Not being able to see.

In 2008, candidates for the Republican presidential nomination faced two truisms. The first was that no one could get the Republican nomination by being anti-Bush. The second was that no candidate who was close to George W. Bush could win the general election. McCain got caught in between. McCain didnt help matters by his Hail Marys to the far right, the most memorable of which was a previously little-known first-term governor from the state of Alaska.

The question McCain repeatedly failed to answer was this: Does he understand whats going on in the world around him? In a newly diverse, newly Democratic political landscape, McCain was violently out of touch, clinging to a set of policies and ideas that, not unlike the senator, are well past their prime. Republicans never let go of their low-wage, no-regulation economic platform, even floating as a possible secretary of the Treasury Phil Gramm, architect of the deregulation of the banking and lending industry, as the politics Gramm put into place set the stock markets tumbling around Americans ears.

Its a new world. For example, the economic crisis last summer and the bailout marked the end of unregulated markets. Everyone in the world knows that the little boys and girls in Wall Street here at home and the brokers and traders around the world cant stick to playing in their own sandboxes. Theyre too greedy. Itd be fine if these racketeers just lost their money, but there are others involved. Im all for intervening where Wall Streets right to make or lose money begins to infringe on the publics right to surviveand, news flash, so is everyone else.

If the traders and bankers want to go invest in Pets.com, I dont care. If they want to buy IPO Microsoft, thats fine. If its Pets.com, you lose all your money; if its Microsoft, youre a gazillionaire. Thats not really the publics business. But when you interject yourself in, lets say, the subprime market, you send a bunch of people out to sell toto put it mildlya bunch of uninformed people, a product that you know full well they cant pay for in the end. That causes bank failures and a real estate bust, because, remember, when the house is foreclosed on, it affects everyone elses mortgage in the neighborhood.