The Republicans never reached 60 senators. The Democrats were always able to prevent the passing of anything in the Senate that they did not apporve of.

The Democrats will reach 60 senators in either 2008 or 2010. They will mean that the Democrats will be able to pass in legislation that they want. Then federal politics will function at the same level that politics currently functions in states like Maryland, Mass, and DC.

I have one for ya.

In 1904 Teddy Roosevelt said “Shucks” They though he said Ducks and everyone went hunting. Thats how it become known as spring Break.

In 1918 President Grover Cleveland said Your Truck? They thought he said You suck and thats how we ended up with polarized Politics.

In 1932 President Kennedy Said “ASk not what your country can do for you because we havent finished ransacking it yet and so that began the New Deal.

In 1948 President John Wayne said Those Ruskies have exploded a bomb. And so to show them who was boss we began grooming Bonzo….I mean Ronald Reagan for his next starring performance.

The moral of this story is that anyone can make a list. The question is how reliable are the facts.

1) Intractable war in Iraq. Conversion of a bottled up dictatorship into a future terrorist sponsoring theocracy. Only question is will they be Sunni or Shiite?

2) Blown federal budget allowing one of our real threats on the world scene, China, to own ~$1 Trillion of our money.

3) Legalization and implementation of torture on prisoners. Combined with suspsension of trials that are the backbone of any modern gov’t, one of the most shameful things about succumbing to terror.

4) Infestation of Lobbyists into every leaf of the executive branch with regards to overseeing corporations abilities to screw the public. Appointing the very people the Dept of Interior is supposed to protect us from to its top posts.

5) In an era of rapid globalization, where our competitors are learning to catch up to us and we are increasingly doing business with other nations, botching relations with foreign nations as if somehow we won’t need any goodwill in the coming years.

6) Letting FEMA become so filled with incompetent people appointed for party loyalty that after the Katrina screw up Congress was actually toying with the idea of getting rid of it altogether. This after decades of proper management and providing one of the most important national services.

7) Poor education focus. This country has a dire need of engineers and scientists to keep pace in the coming decades. Kennedy gave us the goal to get to the moon and focused the energy of the greatest bumper crop of scientists this nation has ever seen. Bush backs Intelligent Design and the entire right seems to be in utter contempt of anyone with a college degree should they also have a political opinion.

Another 8 years of this neocon BS and this country is going to be truly falling apart with all the know-it-all Bush fans wondering how the libruls screwed up the nation.

7)

I think the number of voters who, in a national election, would vote for the Democratic candidate no matter the candidate is somewhere between 42 adn 45%. The number for a Republican candidate is somewhere between 30 and 35%. That leaves about 15% of the voters (the swing voters) who determine the national elections.

Thus, in any national election the Democrats only need to get about 1/3 of the swing voters to win.

another way to look at presidential politics is the Democratic candidate will almost certainly carry every state that Kerry won in 2004 (251 electorial votes). The Republicans probably have about 200 electorial votes that are certain for the. The fight will be voter Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, and Arizona.

As the demographics of the U.S. change, the Republicans will become non-competative in Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, and possibly Florida and Ohio.

Even the general election for president will become irrelevent since the Democrats will have more than 270 locked up before the election starts.

It’s the Democrats that hold certain voter groups firmly in their hand — blacks vote 90+ per cent Democratic, for example.

The Republicans are merely seen as the lesser of two evils most of the time.

The 30% who are supporting Bush even now seem as solidly GOP as it’s possible to be. Are you contending that the Dems have 30% who will keep voting for them no matter what (as superdestroyer is saying)?

Truman and Carter demonstrate that it’s possible for Dems to go lower when they become unpopular. While this seems counterintuitive to me, it also seems like pretty hard evidence that the GOP has a larger hard core base.

One of the odd parts of that is that the total number of blacks in California is going down.

I’m not surprised. First of all, if they’re in the middle class and up (not in the news, ordinarily), they’re leaving California as many of us did years earlier.

I don’t know if they’re heading elsewhere in the West as most whites are, or if they’re heading back to the South the way blacks in the East are doing as well as whites in the East are doing (moving back if from the South originally, or going there now for retirement). Complicating this is that while a few whites from the West went east years ago, others are doing so now.

I used Maryland as an example because even though it had a Republican governor, the legislature was so Democratic that it could overide any veto.

I’ve lived in Maryland (and New York) and am familiar with this (as well as when I was in California). Maryland and Virginia are often two different worlds. (My friend in DC, who is very liberal, feels weird going into Virginia because of the history and politics there.)

Rugger said,

June 15, 2007 at 9:42 am:

However, even with that generic preference almost every poll that has been released that actually matches up 2 candidates has the Republican in at a Statistical Tie but trailing by a few points, or even leading in some.

Rugger,

Shush, now! There is an unspoken understanding at TMV that profile articles which highlight actual leading Dem candidates and their newsmaking reported on other blogs and policy positions will not be posted here since this pragmatic electoral conundrum you point out is a bit of a downer.

DWSUWF followed Niskannen in the class of 2003 throwing away the adminsitration kool-aid, in favor of a tall cool glass of divided government. Meanwhile, Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice reports on a new poll that reinforces that the Republican sup…

As to the permanent one-party state, it seems to me that the GOP has most of the voters who are loyal to Party no matter what. 30% of the country still likes Bush.

It’s the Democrats that hold certain voter groups firmly in their hand — blacks vote 90+ per cent Democratic, for example.

The Republicans are merely seen as the lesser of two evils most of the time.

Maybe instead of a two party state with Republicans and Democrats, we’ll have a two party state with Democrats and some new, less bigoted and homicidal party.

You’re lucky, Chris, that mental health is not a qualification for the suffrage in this country.

Perhaps you are correct, jdl, but that realistically can’t happen very significantly until 2012 at the earliest. Therefore, I suggest all Dem-supporting and left-inclined blogger folks just sit back, pop the cork on that bubbling grape and savor the victory.

It really does seem too good to be true for the Dems. That’s despite the disaster the Dims saw in 2000, where Al Gore proceeded to lose to Bush in the debates and then in the election. I consider that a fluke.

What did we see in 2000? Bush was a “brand name” desperation candidate. The GOP is no better this time. Many of the candidates are Dems Lite and the whole party is dull and weak, overall. Voters with an IQ above room temperature F are not impressed.

At least (for better or in reality, mainly for the worse) the Democrats stand for something (holding on to New Deal and Great Society baggage, adding left-wing activism on contemporary issues when it is possible, continuing to enlarge the federal government and have it encroach into even more state and local affairs, corrupt Rust Belt city governments, etc.) What does the GOP stand for? And what does it practice when it is in Washington?
What we see is dull and depressing. Copying France, Canada, or Quebec within Canada and resorting merely to negative defensive identification (“We’re not the Democrats”) is not enough.

Yes, I know about voting with their feet. One of the odd parts of that is that the total number of blacks in California is going down. As California become a state of elite Asians supported by poor mexicans, there is no room in the economy or in the culture for blacks. I found it odd that the biggest trends was for blacks to move from California to Texas and Georgia.

I used Maryland as an example because even though it had a Republican governor, the legislature was so Democratic that it could overide any veto. That left the Republican governor basically powerless and he had to go to court to sue the legislature to keep it from doing unconstitutional things.

The real question is when the U.S. becomes a one party state that makes voting with your feet impossible, I wonder what country will become the hot place for Americans to move.

The states of Mass. and Maryland demonstrate that you[r] idea that parties swing back and forth in control of a state are not correct.

I believe “jdledell” was referring to Washington. In the case of states, a lot of people simply vote with their feet — they have been leaving Cyanide Nation in droves for Hemoglobin Nation. It’s not just pull factors at work (climate, natural amenities, superior economic opportunity and vitality and future growth elsewhere). It’s also push factors at work (Dim Party fiefdoms, bloated government, sclerotic dysfunctionality — Albany, NY being a stellar example, higher taxes and other government costs, lack of new development and maintenance of existing buildings and other things, etc.).

In the case of states, people can and do vote with their feet. (As Robert Bork pointed out, liberal activists want to solve this problem by making as much as possible done by the federal government to make escape impractical.)