There's an emerging conventional wisdom narrative that the Republican party is broken and ain't nobody gonna fix it soon. (See also here and here.) The White House is there for the taking by the Dems, and they'll be able to hold it for years to come. The reasoning behind this lies in the polling data from a recent Pew Center Report, which shows that Americans have a negative attitude toward Republicans. Come on. We all know how rock solid and resistant to manipulation American public opinion is. If the Dems are going to let themselves get complacent about American public opinion being in their favor, they haven't learned a thing in the last twenty-five years.
Anybody who believes that this kind of polling is an indicator about how power has shifted from the GOP to the Dems doesn't understand how power works. Power is not grounded in fuzzy, poorly formed majorities who are not particularly interested or very knowledgeable about history and politics. Power lies in the hands of well-funded, well-organized factions who are clear about their agenda, and will do whatever it takes to accomplish it.
Majorities have power only when they are aroused and organized. But mostly politics is driven by smaller groups whose members are aroused and organized. That's how things get done in the political sphere and in life in general--the people who want it the most usually get their way--especially when opposition is amorphous and non-committal. Impassioned minorities, whether they are corporate lobbyists, the NRA, civil rights groups, or whoever, push or game the system until they accomplish their goals, and it doesn't matter what most Americans think in opinion polls.
As mentioned above, public opinion does matter when the broad American public is aroused, but such arousals are temporary phenomena, and the public does not get aroused about most issues in the political sphere. An while positive or neutral public opinion can help these minorities achieve their goals more quickly, it's not determinative. And stealth strategies work even better. Who knew that the Patriot Act would give the Justice Department the right to appoint new US Attorneys without senate approval? Americans want some kind of national policy to remedy out-of-control healthcare costs. Will they ever get it? Only if they become aroused enough to demand it. Until then powerful, well-funded special interest minorities will prevent anything from happening.
Sure, public opinion is against the Republicans for the time being, but it's not because of some fundamental repudiation of the Republicans or its right-wing ideology; it's because the Republicans have been so incompetent, corrupt, and clumsy. The connection between incompetence and political ideology is there to be made, but it's not one that most Americans are likely to make. They just think of all politicians as corrupt and incompetent.
If anybody thinks that the right wing is now experiencing anything more than a temporary setback, he simply doesn't understand our situation.The right is still impassioned, it's still organized, and it's still well funded. Unorganized, amorphous negative public opinion about Republicans is not a potent counterbalance, and it doesn't affect the right's sense of mission about its goals in the least. What is there on the center and the left to counterbalance that? The right will regroup, and it will attack again, and it will succeed if a strong centrist counternarrative doesn't emerge with effective, articulate political leaders with backbone who embrace and promote it. The New Deal was the centrist narrative that emerged to neutralize the influence of the hard left in the thirties. We need a similar narrative to emerge that will have a similar neutralizing impact on the hard right in this decade.
Something like that might emerge in the next couple of years. I hope it does. But until it does, we should not allow ourselves to indulge in wishful thinking about the demise of the right wing in this country. If it does it's more likely to come from someone like Obama than from Clinton. I think Obama, at least from the little I've seen of him, seems to get that in a way that the other candidates don't. We'll see if he has what it takes to deliver the goods.