The election results should finish off the influence of the neo- conservative movement that was able to hijack the administration after 9/11. It's now doubtful that leaders of either party will listen to the opinions of Commentary, the Weekly Standard or the Wall Street Journal. The last time the Democratic Party was the beneficiary of two straight "wave" elections was the 1929-1936 era when they won four national elections in a row under Franklin Roosevelt.
Two conservative commentators who predicted a Bush bust should also get credit for calling this landmark election: Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune ("rarely has the prize been so dubious") and CNBC's Bill Fleckenstein ("To the losing party, I would say: It's my belief that these next four years will see many dreams shattered and hearts broken in the aftermath of upcoming economic turmoil. If so, the silver lining may indeed belong to the losing party, which may only have to wait four years for a chance to reign supreme for a couple decades.") Both columns were written the week of the 2004 Bush victory -- but, in fairness, both men are now warning Democrats that they must deliver.
The 27 percent of voters who approved of Bush voted 89 percent to 10 percent for McCain, while the 71 percent who were anti-Bush went 67 percent to 31 percent for Obama. To overcome this burden, McCain would have had to get the votes of one-third of all voters who disapproved of Bush's performance. That proved impossible.
Obama was lucky to run in a year when almost any Democrat would have won. Clinton almost certainly would have been able to capitalize on economic issues in 2008. In fact, any scandal-free Democrat like Joe Biden or John Kerry also would have been carried in by the wave. The country is in worse shape than it was eight years ago, and voters took out their anger on the Republicans.
The demographics of the vote also were interesting. During the 1980s, Jesse Jackson sought to build a "Rainbow Coalition" of racial minorities, women and gays. It never worked -- partly because Jackson was unelectable and partly because those groups didn't come close to a majority even in Democratic primaries.
This year, Obama was able to build a broad multiracial coalition based on economic issues that was a lot closer to Franklin Roosevelt's model than Jackson's. Obama improved on Kerry's performance in virtually every demographic group. Obama won 43 percent among white voters, more than Kerry or Gore. He matched Lyndon Johnson's record of getting nearly all the black vote. Obama posted major gains over Kerry with Hispanics (+7 to 10 points) and Asians (+5, no doubt due to his Hawaiian upbringing).
Based on economic appeals, he split the male vote, which almost never happens, while winning women by 13 points. Obama won almost half of married voters and 65 percent to 31 percent among the single set. The two candidates split middle and upper-income voters; Obama's margin came from low-income precincts (60 percent to 38 percent Democratic). Obama even scored 3-point gains among white evangelical Christians and veterans.
Just as the pre-election surveys predicted, Democrats opened a 10- point lead in party identification. Conservatives went 4-to-1 for McCain and liberals 9-to-1 for Obama; in the crucial moderate category, Obama triumphed by 60 percent to 39 percent.
But the biggest dividing line was by age: voters between 30 and 60 split evenly. McCain won only voters over 60. For the first time since the voting age was lowered to 18, the youth finally showed up. Not only was their turnout slightly higher than 2004, voters under 30 delivered an astonishing 66 percent to 32 percent landslide for Obama (of course, the youngest age cohort is also the most racially diverse). If he can keep these new voters reasonably happy, Obama will have the makings of a new Democratic majority.
The geography of the vote also mattered. For the first time since 1964, Democrats carried the new battlegrounds of the South and West in a two-way race. Obama carried every "blue" Kerry state and swung nine Bush states into his column including Virginia and Indiana, which hadn't voted for a Democrat since 1964, and North Carolina, which hadn't since 1976. Obama improved on Kerry's showing in virtually every state, except for a few in the South.
The best news for the Democrats is that Obama won most of the fastest-growing states in the South and West: Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. Obama became the first Democrat to crack 40 percent in Texas since 1996. With Bush and McCain fading, Texas and Arizona could be Obama targets in 2012.
The key to a new national Democratic majority will be holding onto the suburban and new Hispanic voters that Obama won as these battleground states will have even more electoral clout after 2010.
And there was a record vote harvest.
Preliminary returns indicate that the percentage of voter turnout was slightly higher than the 61 percent who came out in 2004, the highest figure since the 1960s. But an enlarged population due to immigration and a new baby boom resulted in more than 5 million extra voters compared to 2004's record of 122 million votes cast. For obvious reasons, black turnout equaled white turnout (more than 60 percent) for the first time ever.
