Unscathed

Though Obama has taken a pounding recently, his numbers have barely budged. This says something about the underlying dynamics of the current political race. Just two years ago pundits were still talking about a political realignment towards the Republicans. No more. Alan Abramowitz makes the case that the opposite is happening and recent talk of the internal damage that Democrats are inflicting on themselves is nonsense.

There's no question that the past few weeks have been rough on Obama. The Clinton campaign has hit him with everything including the kitchen sink in an effort to throw his campaign off stride and yes, he has made some mistakes. Some of this was inevitable, of course. As a relative newcomer to the national political scene, Obama was bound to face increased media scrutiny once he became the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. But all of the hand-wringing on the part of liberal pundits ignores one key fact: Obama has come through this series of controversies relatively unscathed. His favorable ratings have come down to earth, but they're still higher than Hillary Clinton's and, according to some recent polls, John McCain's. And he's still leading Clinton among Democratic voters and running even or slightly ahead of McCain in most recent surveys of general election voters.

As Jonathan Cohn recently pointed out, the fact that Obama is running even or slightly ahead of McCain in the polls after enduring weeks of relentless pounding from Hillary Clinton is itself rather remarkable and speaks to the underlying realities of the 2008 election. And once the Democratic nomination is settled and the party unites behind its nominee, those realities should become readily apparent, even to the Washington pundits.

According to every known leading indicator, 2008 should be a very good year for Democratic candidates at all levels. There are many factors that point to an across-the-board Democratic victory in November, including the extraordinary unpopularity of President Bush, the deteriorating condition of the economy, the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, and the fact that Americans prefer the Democratic position to the Republican position on almost every major national issue. However, the most important Democratic advantage, and one that has received relatively little attention in the media, is the fact that for the past six years the Democratic electoral base has been expanding while the Republican electoral base has been shrinking.

Since 2002, according to annual data compiled by the Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans identifying with or leaning toward the Democratic Party has increased by about seven percentage points while the percentage identifying with or leaning toward the Republican Party has decreased by about six percentage points. Fifty-two percent of Americans now identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party while only 39 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

He also points out that Democrats who are notoriously difficult to organize and get to the polls are far more cohesive this year and have been voting in record numbers.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was very difficult for Democratic presidential candidates to hold their party's diverse electoral coalition together. That was because Democrats were ideologically divided and Republican presidential candidates like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan found it relatively easy to pick off conservative Democratic voters when they were running against liberal Democratic candidates like George McGovern and Walter Mondale. Since the 1970s, however, the American electorate has undergone an ideological realignment with conservative voters strongly loyal to the Republican Party and liberal voters reliably pulling the lever for the Democratic Party.

Today, there are very few conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans left either in the leadership or the electorate of the parties. The result is that national elections are fought between two ideologically cohesive parties. In this type of electorate, the party that does a better job of uniting and turning out its supporters usually wins. In 2002 and 2004, that was the Republicans, but by 2006 it was the Democrats who had the advantage. Their advantage has continued to grow in the past two years.

A big part of the reason for the growing Democratic edge in party identification is the fact that Democrats now enjoy a large advantage among voters under the age of 30, as well as among African American and Hispanic voters. All three of these groups have been turning out in record numbers in the Democratic primaries, and there is no reason to believe that they will not also turn out in large numbers in November. Based on the early indicators of voter interest, the 2008 presidential election could very well witness the highest turnout of eligible voters in the postwar era, and that can only be good news for Democrats. With a unified Democratic Party, a clear message of change, and a strong grass-roots effort at mobilizing the Democratic base, on January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will be taking office as the head of a unified Democratic government. And John McCain will still be a member of the minority party in the United States Senate.

We will see.