Barack Obama has been president-elect for exactly one day and James Carville is already arguing for an inevitable Democratic majority for the next 40 years. Imagine predicting Jim’s claim to fame, the 1992 election, from the vantage of 1952, and you get a sense of the stupendous absurdity of this assessment in the light of history. But he’s not alone of course, Karl Rove and company were quite fond of these sorts of preposterous predictions just four years ago.
One grows weary of the taste such men have for these imperturbable majorities, lasting for decades which will predictably prove impervious to all future events and leaders. It’s not so much the unreality of it which is tiresome, but the very desire for it. Democracy has its own will, events their own timetable, voters change their minds on a dime, and wanting to grind the gears of history to a halt so that your party can rule forever, is a grotesque and contemptible ambition to begin with.
Some time in the wilderness will do the Republicans good, or at least I hope so. The Republican Party is merely broken; the Democrats are a disaster.