Moving Left? Bush’s Decline and American Liberalism

Is America moving left? Such a question would have seemed odd before last November’s election. Now it no longer seems so strange. Indeed, not only does the question not seem strange, but an affirmative answer can be given to it. I want to look at what happened last November, discuss what these voter shifts mean in terms of policy preferences, and assess what these developments mean for American liberalism as we look toward 2008 and beyond.

In the November 2006 election, Democrats gained thirty House seats and six Senate seats, so they now control both chambers, 233-202 and 51 to 49, respectively. They also gained six governors’ houses, so they now have the majority of governorships, 28-22. And they gained 321 state legislative seats to give them a 3,980-3,329 majority of the nation’s state legislators, a 57 percent to 40 percent majority of the nation’s state legislative bodies, and complete control of 24 state legislatures, compared to just 16 for the GOP.

To whom do Democrats owe this shift in their political fortunes? First, they owe it to substantially increased support among the demographic groups that, as John Judis and I argued in The Emerging Democratic Majority, are laying the basis for a new Democratic majority. Among minority voters as a whole—21 percent of voters in 2006 and likely to rise to a quarter in the next ten years—Democrats received 77 percent support to 22 percent for the Republicans. That included an 89 percent to 10 percent margin among blacks and a very significant 69 percent to 30 percent margin among Hispanics, who moved back toward the Democrats with a vengeance after giving the GOP increased—though far from majority—support in 2002 and 2004.

Democrats also did very well among women voters, especially single women voters, who backed Democratic House candidates by a 66 percent to 32 percent margin. This figure assumes increased significance in light of recent Census data showing that single women are now a majority of all women in the United States.

Another emerging Democratic constituency consists of professionals of all sorts, who in 2004, when most other groups were shifting Republican, gave the Democratic presidential candidate their highest level of support ever (63 percent to 37 percent). The 2006 exit poll data—using postgraduates as a proxy for professionals—suggest that professionals’ support for Democrats was once again at record high levels.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the remarkable levels of support for Democrats among young voters (those eighteen to twenty-nine). In 2006, these voters went Democratic by a twenty-two-point margin, 60 percent to 38 percent, up significantly from the already strong 55 percent to 44 percent Democratic majority among this age group in 2004. These young voters, now largely drawn from what is variously called “Generation Y” or the “Millennial Generation,” show a political profile that puts them...