TR WAS, THANKFULLY, UNIQUE:

'04 Voting: Realignment -- Or a Tilt?: Political Parties Look for Answers (John F. Harris, November 28, 2004, Washington Post)

By any measure, President Bush and his fellow Republicans had a good night on Nov. 2. The question now is whether the election results set the GOP up for a good decade -- or more.

As some partisan operatives and political scientists see it, Bush's reelection victory and simultaneous Republican gains in the House and Senate suggest that an era of divided government and approximate parity between the major parties is giving way to an era of GOP dominance. By this light, the Republican advantage on the most important issues of the day -- the fight against terrorism, most of all -- and the party's uncontested control of the federal government leave it in a position to win long-term loyalty among key voter blocs and craft an enduring majority.

If so, 2004 would qualify as what academics call a "realignment election." [...]

"Something fundamental and significant happened in this election that creates an opportunity for" the Republicans to remake national politics over the long term, said Ken Mehlman, who managed Bush's reelection campaign and was tapped by the president after the election to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. "The Republican Party is in a stronger position today than at any time since the Great Depression." [...]

This election was the first in which exit polls showed equal numbers of self-identified Republicans and Democrats -- both at 37 percent -- erasing what had been a decades-long advantage for Democrats, 4 percent in 2000. In addition to the House and Senate gains, Bush received a higher raw vote total than any candidate in history (Kerry's total was second highest) and was the first presidential candidate to break the 50 percent barrier since 1988. On a percentage basis, he improved on his 2000 performance in 48 states.

Most significantly, in the view of people who suspect realignment, exit polls showed Bush cutting into Democratic advantages with some historically Democratic groups -- especially Hispanics, who gave Bush 42 percent of their votes, compared with 35 percent in 2000. [...]

Yale political scientist David R. Mayhew two years ago wrote a book calling the entire notion of realignments a fiction, at least at the presidential level. In the 15 presidential elections since World War II, he noted, the incumbent party has kept power eight times and lost it seven times. "You can't get any closer to a coin toss than this," he said. "At the presidential level, the traits of the candidates are so important that they blot out party identification."

Mr. Mayhew's argument is the one with which you hear most Democrats consoling themselves, but it entirely misses the point. Suppose that we switch a few hundred thousand votes in OH, as the argument goes, and give the election to John Kerry. We'd then have a Democratic president (though one who carried only twenty states), but still a Senate with 55 GOP seats, a House held by the GOP since '94, and nearly thirty Republican governors. The Kerry presidency would be a mild aberration in what would still be a realigning election.

And consider the presidents who actually interrupted the long phases of one party domination--Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat; Ike and Nixon, liberal Republicans; and, in retrospect perhaps, Bill Clinton, conservative white Southern Democrat. It seems fair to say that Woodrow Wilson was the only president of at least the last hundred and fifty years who truly governed against the prevailing political alignment, and the circumstances of his election were so peculiar as to be unlikely ever to recur.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 28, 2004 12:05 AM