Beyond the sheer mendacity of the 'center-right nation' meme, there lies serious discussion of whether the election we just had is, indeed a realigning election. The mendacious meme and the serious discussion are clearly related: if this was a realignment, then we can say, "Well, maybe it was a center-right nation, but it isn't anymore." There's just one problem: no one can quite agree on what a realigning election is. I can sympathize with this confusion, have struggled with it myself, but I've come to a embrace the view that realigning elections can only be understood by their place in the periodic cycles of American party systems-as I'll briefly recap on the flip.
On Tuesday, at DKos, DemFromCT called attention to two similarly-themed pieces that stopped short of calling 2008 a realignment-but did so on what I regard as dubious grounds:
Stu Rothenberg and Jay Cost have interesting pieces up about the realignment idea. Based on Obama's historic win, they both see this as more than a usual election, and less than a realignment.
Rothenberg's approach is to look at the good news for the Dems, say, "that's a lot," and then look at the not-so-good news, and say, "but there should be more if it's a realignment." Cost's approach eschews the term "realignment." Instead, he compares this election with 1860, 1896 and 1932, and concludes that it doesn't compare. While both writers make some good points, they miss both the complexity and the simplicity of a realignment. The complexity is that they are messy things, they don't always look the same. The simplicity is that one thing is certain: you can never go back again.
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