Ross Douthat: The Obama Realignment
Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times.
When you do it once, it’s just a victory. When you do it twice, it’s a realignment.
The coalition that Barack Obama put together to win the presidency handily in 2008 looked a lot like the emerging Democratic majority that optimistic liberals had been discerning on the political horizon since the 1990s. It was the late George McGovern’s losing coalition from 1972 finally come of age: Young voters, the unmarried, African-Americans, Hispanics, the liberal professional class – and then more than enough of the party’s old blue collar base to hold the Rust Belt for the Democrats....
In this sense, just as Reagan Republicanism dominated the 1980s even though the Democrats controlled the House, our own era now clearly belongs to the Obama Democrats even though John Boehner is still speaker of the House....
But getting there requires that conservatives face reality: The age of Reagan is officially over, and the Obama majority is the only majority we have.
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