Movement Interruptus

Movement Interruptus

I've been surrounded by nieces and nephews and unable to write, read, or think like an adult for four days. But with the holidays over the blogger is back at his desk in Bohemian Paradise and reviewing the latest from John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira.



The whole thing's worth a read but the premise is taht the Bush actual win in 2004 is an abberation fron the trend to a Democratic majority:



By winning back a modest share of the white working class and maintaining Democratic support among minorities, Clinton obtained a plurality of votes in ’92 and ’96. He also turned California, Illinois, and New Jersey into Democratic enclaves. And in 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote. On the basis of these trends, we foresaw, in our 2002 book, the emergence of a new Democratic majority by the end of this decade. But the movement toward a Democratic majority was interrupted by the September 11 terrorist attacks.



Bush combined a public campaign as commander in chief and tax cutter with a more targeted campaign aimed at spurring turnout among white evangelicals and winning over observant Catholics (including Hispanics) and Jews who backed Israel’s Ariel Sharon. These were significant tactical successes, but they didn’t add up nationally to a new coalition... Bush failed to capture any of the northeastern or Pacific Coast states that Reagan had won easily in 1980 and ’84, and he failed to make dramatic gains nationally among the voting groups that had moved into the Democratic Party in the 1990s.



Not laurels to rest on, to be sure, but certainly an objective source of some hope.

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The Parental Home never even made it to the marketplace. They told one person - the next door neighbor - that they were selling. The next day the neighbor's daughter made an offer. So the next five months are likely to include several extra pilgramages to the home of my birth...