WHICH IS WHY DEMOCRATS ARE GOVERNING LIKE REPUBLICANS:

The Lay of the Land: A new report is likely to disappoint those who believe the electorate took a sharp left turn in 2006. (Matthew Continetti, 05/16/2007, Weekly Standard)

[Jim Kessler, Anne Kim, and Mark Donnell, who wrote Looking Red, Voting Blue: An Analysis of the 2006 Election] found that between 2004 and 2006 the Democrats gained 4.7 million votes. If you take a look at the demographic profile of these new Democrats, you see that--all things being equal--they ought to be Republicans. Almost all of them are men. All of them are married. Most are white and live in households making more than $100,000 a year. The Third Way researchers also found that close to 3 million new Democratic votes came from people who attend church at least once a week.

In 2006 all things were not equal, however. The study finds that these new Democratic voters had three things on their minds: Iraq, corruption, and Bush. The share of voters who disapproved of the Iraq war went from 46.2 percent in 2004 to a majority 56.6 percent in 2006. All these new antiwar votes went Democratic. Of the 74 percent of voters in 2006 who said corruption was "extremely" or "very" important in deciding for whom to vote, 56.5 percent voted for Democrats and 43.5 voted for Republicans. And Bush's drag on the GOP is no secret. According to the Third Way study, the number of voters who said they disapproved of the president increased by 8 million between 2004 and 2006.