Newsweek writer Andrew Sullivan is thinking beyond 2012.
But one thing that has so far, in my view, been underestimated is the potential impact of a solid Obama win, and perhaps a Democratic retention of the Senate and some progress in the House. This is now a perfectly plausible outcome. It would also be a transformational moment in modern American politics.
He goes on to make another interesting point, that we all hope is true:
Obama has been playing a long, strategic game from the very start—a long game that will only truly pay off if he gets eight full years to see it through. That game is not only changing America. It may also bring his opposition, the GOP, back to the center, just as Reagan indelibly moved the Democrats away from the far left.
I always laugh at what people call the "far left", but that's a topic for somewhere else and I guess a matter of opinion. What is important is that Sullivan is outlining a long-overdue storm that will clean out, for the foreseeable future, the extremists that have hijacked the American dream under the guise of the Republican Party. More riveting insights (to me anyway ;) ) below the orange thingy.
Early in 2012, the fundamentals for an Obama re-election were looking challenging. A Gallup report from January looked at the critical re-election indicators such as presidential approval rating (44%), satisfaction with the direction of the country (18%!!), and numerous economic indicators (GDP, unemployment, % of people listing the economy as their most important issues, etc). Their summary was that, even though these conditions could change and it was too early to name a 2012 president:
Americans' current evaluation of the president's job performance, their satisfaction with the direction of the country, and their ratings of the economy are all on the lower end of what Gallup has found at or near the start of previous years when an incumbent president sought re-election
GDP and unemployment have moved, but not in groundbreaking ways, and yet public perceptions about the Economy and Obama have improved regardless. Remarkably, he is now leading in some more recent polls on handling of the economy. This is the death blow to the Republicans, and it remains to be seen whether or not it will be a wake-up call.
A functional Republican party that really was aligned with the American people could have driven a Maserati through these fundamentals. Even Reagan, who really WAS running against Carter unlike Romney, provided support for things of substance like the Earned Income Tax Credit and an actual economic plan which could track to real impacts for each cross-section of America. I'm no Reagan/trickle down fan - not by a long shot - but comparing the current Republican party to the 1980 version reveals an out-of-touch-with-reality group of fanatics dripping with entitlement. It reveals a group of people who can't, and shouldn't, win elections. It reveals the vacuum of leadership and heart that left the door to defining America's future wide open for Obama and the dems. They had nothing, and America is figuring it out.
It remains to be seen whether our "friends" across the aisle will pivot towards the center and try to win back some of the middle of America with things like fiscally-conservative redistribution and practical policies that engage the pluralistic reality. Or, whether they'll double down on dumb. Without revealing what I'm rooting for, I will be making some popcorn and drinking a couple of beers as I watch the Roves, the fanatical christians, the greedy plutocrats, and the tea partiers battle it out after they lose the Presidency, the Senate, and at least a little of the House this fall.
They may keep the house, but they've lost America, which should make them think a little bit before driving our country off of a fiscal cliff after the elections. Not that the current version of the Republicans is capable of such thought - and that is ultimately their undoing.