I posted this earlier in the week on a site I discovered through Prof. Juan Cole: on-message.net, a venue with minimum "noise" and maximum discourse.  No offense to TPM, which is still light-years ahead of the degenerated DailyKos, but what on-message lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality as a nice TPM supplement. 

As my comment pulled together so much of what I've believed about current politics for some time now, I thought it was worth a re-posting here, with an addendum at the end.  It's a comment to a very intelligent piece about how President Obama's real intent is to achieve, essentially, a tectonic shift in American governance and that, despite a few stubbed toes, he's pretty much succeeding - at least at this early stage. 

Obama is playing the highest-stakes-possible political game, but playing on a board that he and his team are aware tilts increasingly toward his worldview.

For example, like the Republicans did in the 70s, the Democrats are grooming a "farm team" of very impressive future leaders, like Denver Mayor Hickenlooper who put on a showcase 2008 Democratic National Convention to launch the new President. Mayor Hickenlooper could easily replace Gov. Ritter, who is term-limited after 2010 or step up sooner and run for the Senate if appointed Senator Bennett falters. Another example is Florida's CFO (Treasurer) Alex Sink, now running aggressively for the Governor's office that Charlie Christ will vacate when he is likely elected to be the state's next Republican senator. While the odds are against Sink, she will put on a credible race that will make her a force in the future, either in Florida or as a potential cabinet nominee in 2012, to be formidable on her return.

The Republicans, on the other hand, have a leadership void, as long as the likes of Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin are projected as the party's "faces of the future." The GOP itself is silencing most of its own voices of reason, or we're seeing once-perceived reasonable office holders, like Sen. John McCain, join in the belligerence while others, like Sen. Lugar, are increasingly disagreeing with their own party. Sen. Specter's defection is the prime example.

President Obama is helping this leadership deficit along and showing his political acumen by bringing Republicans into the federal space through key appointments. Sending a credible 2012 GOP challenger, Gov. John Huntsman, halfway around the world to be U.S. Ambassador to China, elevating one of the "endangered" Upstate New York congressional representatives to Army Secretary, and coming very close to lifting New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg out of his seat to run Commerce should not be mistaken for bipartisanship. Meanwhile, the Democrats he nominated to senior posts came from Democratic "safe havens" like New York, emerging Democratic "leaners" like Colorado, or states that had powerful Democrats only as a fluke, like Arizona. All of this is contributing to the regionalization of the Republicans in the Deep South, the High Rockies or the Plains and Prairies.

 

Lots of demographic factors are going to weigh down the Republicans, too, like an electorate more driven by the young who are "owned" by Obama, and the Internet which is "owned" by the young, unions that will rebound with EFCA or without EFCA simply by stronger enforcement of existing unionization laws and regulations, a census that will be more inclusive (fairly or unfairly, depending on your party), Democratic-dominated redistricting, and, finally, delayed but inevitable immigration reform that will in all likelihood add millions of Democratic votes, placing California forever out of the national GOP's reach and seriously altering the electoral equation in Florida and Texas.

Amazingly, as much as the banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may complain about "re-regulation" Obama has managed to make serious in-roads there, too. Trying to identify the new Democratic coalition he is assembling is a waste of time; counting the remaining reliably Republican noses is much easier.

This is a President who will "out-Clinton" Bill Clinton. He has the tools, the time, the battlefield is tilted in his favor and the dynamics both within and outside of his control are tilting it even more so. I think he's going to win the long-term game. If he does, the pendulum will inevitably swing back to the right, but not for a long, long time.

I received a reply from an astute observer who added that "unexpected events may derail this train, or ... an economic, foreign relations or domestic event might weaken the foundation upon which Obama plans to build this Democratic future."  This, of course, is absolutely correct, as is the fact that even strategies that look good and are well intended can disastrously fail (cf. "Operation Market Garden").  And, as the reply comment noted, failures on "minor issues of symbolic importance" can also have a disproportionate impact on perceptions. 

It is doubtful that North Korea is actually a threat to Hawaii, but given this is the President's birthplace and the site of the Pearl Harbor attack, the "symbolic importance" of the issue and the leverage that a misstep would provide Republicans is very high.  So is the symbolism of Iran important, as the country that humiliated America, humbled U.S. intelligence, and launched the modern era of institutionalized radical Islam.  No real missteps are evident thus far, however, and with great uncertainty of the future of the neo-revolution in Iran and what it might produce as well as the risk of "Americanizing" the movement, vocal support for a people's right of self-determination is probably as far as Obama should go - for now. 

While there will be tactical errors and sub-strategies that inevitably backfire or just don't pan out, President Obama has already achieved a singularly remarkable result: through policy decisions, political maneuvers, and an amazing amount of wit, charm and steely intellect, he has seized upon the national rejection of neoconservativism and theocratic policies to marginalize the most radical American political elements.  This is why the Republicans are in such disarray; the engine that drove them for the last 30 years has blown like an overextended NASCAR racer. 

This disarray is also seen in the increasing resort to or subornation of violent means by the American right's extremist wing.  Violence by the right is inversely proportional to political influence.  Now that the GOP can't deliver on Gods, guns and gays, the bomb-throwers (or church-shooters, home-invaders, and museum-attackers) are not liberals but bedfellows of the right (as an aside, this will be a growing challenge to law enforcement).  More Americans still believe in the efficacy of torture than reasonably should, but there are some things that might never change, or at least not in my era.

The bottom line for America is, for the first time in my adult life, I like the looks of the country shaping up that my children are inheriting and that my grandchildren will inherit.  I intend to do what I can to keep it that way.