Get Used to This Phrase: “Center-left Nation”
By Daniel Strauss - Jan 26th, 2009 at 10:44 amVia Steve Benen, Gallup found that more Americans are identifying as Democrats these days than at any point since Gallup began asking this question. Including people who say they lean Republican or Democrat, the numbers are 52 percent to 40 percent. According to the poll:
The Democratic Party is currently riding a winning streak in party affiliation, which has manifested itself in the party’s decisive victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Barack Obama’s election and popularity will surely help to advance the Democratic policy agenda — something the party had difficulty doing the last two years with a narrow Senate majority and George W. Bush in the White House.
It is not clear at this point whether the Democratic Party can return to the days when it enjoyed consistent double-digit advantages in party identification from the late 1950s through the early 1980s. The challenge for the party is to keep the positive momentum going while governing with total control of the legislative and executive branches of government. Clearly, much of the Democratic momentum in recent years has been the result of dissatisfaction with the way the Republicans were governing the nation. The Republicans, in turn, will attempt to regroup as the minority party and win back some of the support they have lost in recent years.
I think it’s safe to say that this is as much the Republicans’ fault as it is the Democrats’ gain. The Democrats didn’t earn their current popularity by themselves, so the Obama administration should keep in mind that they don’t have the right to call the country a “liberal nation” yet–but now they have a solid chance to be able to one day.
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