The GOP—Grand Old Pulpit

In 2000, for the first time ever, a Republican won the White House while losing the North. Al Gore came within 538 popular votes in Florida of becoming president without winning a single Southern electoral vote. When Bush carried Ohio in 2004—without it, he would not have been re-elected—it was the only large state he won outside the South. When John Kerry carried New Hampshire in 2004 it became one of just three states to change partisan alignment from 2000—the others were New Mexico and Iowa, both of which moved from the Democratic to the Republican column. Kerry's New Hampshire victory gave him a sweep of New England's 34 electoral votes. The 2006 elections gave Democrats 21 of that region's 22 congressional seats. (The only Republican, Christopher Shays of Connecticut, won a 10th term with just 51 percent of the vote.)

African-Americans are the Democratic Party's most loyal voters. Half of all African-Americans live in the South. If the GOP comes to be defined by Southern religiosity, significant numbers of white Southern Republicans might be made uneasy and some Southern electoral votes would be put in play.

When asked if a Democrat could carry Virginia, Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat elected in 2005, answered, "The right Democrat." Kaine endorsed Obama 10 months ago. As this is being written, before New Hampshire makes its contribution to the current confusion, the Democratic Party, which is normally the Republican Party's not-very-secret weapon, seems inclined to avoid nominating the weakest of its top three candidates—the one whose popular-vote ceiling is probably around 51 percent. She began her campaign with the weakest argument for a presidential candidacy—inevitability. It provokes voters by reducing them to mere ratifiers of some law of political physics. She limped into New Hampshire on the crutch of the second-weakest argument—electability. That argument depresses voters by telling them they should confine themselves to considering only narrow calculations of electoral prudence.

These missteps, combined with her husband's ham-handed interventions on her behalf (her rivals should stop picking on her; he, unlike her, opposed the war "from the beginning"), refute the durable myth of the Clintons' political virtuosity. In neither 1992 nor 1996 did he win 50 percent of the popular vote—in 1992 he won with 43 percent of the vote, 2.4 points less than Dukakis had four years earlier. When the Clintons— remember their boast that we got two for the price of one—left the White House there were fewer Democratic senators, representatives, governors and state legislators than when they entered it.

For the first time since 1825, meaning the first time since the party system emerged, America is nearing the end of two consecutive eight-year presidencies. In six of the last seven elections, the name Reagan or Bush has been atop the Republican ticket. The future, it has been said, is a mirror without any glass in it. The outlines of the nation's political future probably cannot be discerned until 24 states are heard from on Feb. 5, but the future is going to be very unlike the past.

© 2008