STOP PICKING ON TOM. Of all the folks here, allow me step in to defend Tom Edsall for a moment, and I don't mean merely in the way Mark has done below and more so in private email communication -- i.e., that Edsall is a dexterous mind and a person with a long, impressive career. Rather, let me actually defend Edsall's thesis a bit -- even if I generally agree with Ben, Ezra, and Garance that Edsall's book would have been far more timely in, say, 1999, on the eve of the Bush-led GOP grabbing the full reins of power nationally in 2000, despite a rather thin plurality of popular support, and less than that in the presidential contest.
Having appeared on both a panel and on national radio with Edsall in the past month or so, and having read his book, I think it's fair to say that he has diagnosed the problem correctly but the prescribed antidote (mostly) wrong. On the former, it is true that the Republicans are the "party of the dominant" (even if that dominant class casts too few votes to actually carry much of anything beyond a corporate board of directors' motion); it is true that Republicans have many, many institutional advantages, particularly in terms of infrastructure (including the national media, which is one point with which I'd take issue with him); and it is certainly true that the Republicans have squeezed, cajoled and otherwise maximized every last ounce of power from the support they do enjoy among the broader public (the GOP senate "majority" right now represents a minority of American citizens, e.g.). In the giddiness of the past month, however, I must agree that it would be dangerous for Democrats to ignore the realities of these built-in advantages. A good quarter does not a football victory or annual earnings report make.
Having said that, one might very well cast Edsall's assessment, as I do, as a tipping point-style argument. Such an analysis proceeds as follows: If the GOP in the first half of this decade enjoyed every possible advantage -- controlling the entire apparatus of the federal government and majorities of governors and state legislatures/legislators, plus their various strategic, tactical, financial, institutional, rhetorical, and media advantages -- and still could not effect a realignment despite having the most powerful realigning moment since the 1929 stock market crash (broadcast live on television, no less), then one of two major conclusions are available for our consideration. One, the demographics are an undercurrent pulling against them. Or two, the GOP's ideological disposition and policy agenda is simply unsatisfactory to a significant portion of the public.
I happen to think both are true.
-- Tom Schaller
