Gee, if I were as loyal a supporter of Obama and the congressional Dems as Taplin, I might be concerned about a graph showing a steeper decline in the last five months for the Democrats than Republicans. But then again Taplin "gets" Obama as the brilliant analyst Rosenberg puts it. Triumphalism before results IMHO.

I figure those independents have a hunch that neither party is thinking very hard about them. A party that can make a convincing case that it is passionate about the future of the American middleclass, formerly known as the American Dream, has a future.

Considering how willfully ignorant the electorate was for 8 years of Bush, I don't like for anyone to take a victory lap regarding things "not working out so well" for the Republicans. In a country in which the Republicans continue to do all they can to bash unions and hurt workers, the rising numbers of people self-identifying as independents is just weird.

Four years ago Rove crowed about the coming "permanent Republican ruling majority."

I guess that didn't work out so well.

We Democrats would be well advised to remember that. Our current dominance may be seen as the beginning of a new era, or as the peak and beginning of decline. What we do in the next dew months and years will determine which of those becomes the story.

I'm (reasonably) happy at the current triumph, but let's not go nuts. There is lots of work to do; there are still substantial risks to the affection enjoyed by Obama and the Democrats; our work has really only begun.

I am not sure everything needs 60 votes. Long version at this post.
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2009/04/specter-blue-dogs-and-filibusters.html

The loss of the White House actually means 17 votes lost for a filibuster. When you take in the dynamics.

Republicans in the last Congress used the filibuster as a stand-in for the veto with the argument running as follows:
"If you can't get 60 votes to bust a filibuster you certainly can't get 67 to override a veto, so drop the political posturing and make a deal on our terms"

Which worked. And this whether you consider it to be simple pragmatism or cowardice. Because it was broadly speaking true, any 34 Senators could sustain a veto, meaning Reid needed to bust 16 R's out of 49. That wasn't going to happen.

Now the veto pen is lost, meaning that instead of having an ultimate 16 vote cushion they have 0. There is a hell of lot of difference between McConnell saying "Me and the President can guarantee you I won't lose more than 16 defectors" to "Me, myself, and I can guarantee you I won't lose any defector, any time". Where the veto threat gave Senate moderates cover in that even if they defected en masse there still would not be enough votes to override, now they are exposed. Instead of being just a theoretical one in a theoretical gang of sixteen, they are an actual one in a gang of one preventing legislation going forward.

I see this as a total different kind of pressure on the moderates, they no longer have the political cover supplied by the mouth-breathers. Is Olympia Snowe really willing to be the key vote blocking a public option? For the sake of a Party whose antics cost the Northeastern/Rockefeller branch just about everything?

VLaszlo,
“Steeper decline” ? What graph are you looking at?

If I were making fun of one side of the GOPer-Dem graph above, I’d be sure I got my facts right first. For example, I’d make sure that I understood that on the 6-year graph, Dems gained 1.18% per annum whereas GOPers lost 5.18% a year.
And, on the six-month graph, I’d be very careful to note that each party lost exactly the same: 3.29% a month.

(Of course, the GOPers started from a much smaller base, so losing points is much more significant.)

.

When GOPers are ready to play the role of a loyal opposition – when the voters ask them to – then they will be welcomed back into the community of fair-minded political parties.

Both parties are as dead as was the Soviet Constitution in the 20th Century. They merely serve as a means to fool their participants that they actually have much say at all, then once their man or woman is elected, the real agenda begins at the top. Parties also serve to keep the people at odds, divided over what they could easily solve but for foolish partisan consistency across contradictory platform ideologies, so that elites may rule with less trouble. That's reality.

Oh, and if one's party helps push someone onto One Penn Ave, once that person is there, everyone's giddy for a season. Then reality sets in, and everyone starts morphing from starry eyed party faithful into musing realist. Having shifted from activist moralism to executive realism, the entire theater of the absurd continues unabated and what was once a immoral injustice foisted on the people by the other side becomes an indispensable asset one does not want to lose for their side once they're in power (lest they get egg on their executive facial side expression).

This is the last post on TPM that I am going to make. Josh has the best blog on the Web but the comment sections are brim full of trolls. It is always a group of trolls rather than a troll. Trolls always work to together have fake fights and fake lovefests. Fake debating points and fake debates are rife. People are spending basically hours each day day in and day out waiting to blindside someone, that is 'dialogue' today. As has been said all the Republican Party has is belligerence.

The GOP has come back from the political wilderness before: 1952, 1968, 1980, 1994.

But each time, it happened because the Dems were perceived by the public as having totally screwed up: Korea, Vietnam, stagflation, the failure of HillaryCare respectively. And that gave the GOP an opening to rally around.

There are plenty of ways that Obama could fail: His spending could ignite stagflation, Iran could test-fire a nuclear bomb, a combination of Repubs and Blue Dog Dems could eviscerate his health care reform package, etc.

Right now, waiting for Obama to slip is the only hope the GOP has. Otherwise, they'll just have to wait till 2012, when the public may be tired of 8 years of Dem rule and want a change for the sake of changing.