Barring a cataclysmic development, Obama and the Dems will have the Party's best year since 1964. Oh how sweet that was. The Dems even captured control of both houses of the NYS legislature. I think that lasted exactly one year.

And 1964 was followed by 1968 which was really the unveiling the cultural and social divides that led to the Reagan era.

I don't think that 2012 will be an echo of 1968, however. The country is changing whether for better or worse I'll not judge right now. In 1968, it was the Democratic base that fractured. What we are seeing now is a fracturing of the Republican base between the well educated, suburban voters and the less-educated Evangelicals.

I suppose some might think that a slur, but one of the disappointing aspects of the right-wing Evangelicals was growth of heir own "higher" education system. I was truly shocked to learn during the Gonzalez mess, that young graduates from formally unheard of law schools were getting plumb jobs at the Justice Department. The kind that graduates of the best schools used to die for.

It is one of the not so odd coincidences if Obama wins, is that both he and Chief Judge Roberts were Presidents of the Harvard Law Review., the top law student position in the country (eat you heart out Yale). I write that as a Syracuse grad.

My feeling is that the kind of Republican culture that produced a Roberts is simply not compatible with the kind of culture that produced a Palin and will not be able to find common ground.

Also, since there is a significant portion of the radical right community which values New Testament ideals of love of neighbor over Old Testament ideas of Patriarchal domination through fire and brimstone, that part may ultimately drift left too.

The fact is hat there was always an America First streak to populism that conflicted with social equality principles.

What we may be actually witnessing is the end of he two party system as it has existed since the dawn of the Republic.

In the pre-civil war 1800's, there were several third parties that flashed across the horizon, and then vanished (like the Whigs). But one them, was reborn when it supplanted the Whigs After a poor showing in the 1856 election, it won its election in 1860 with a guy named Lincoln.

While pre-Civil War politics was dominated by the issue of slavery and it was on that rock that the political structure fractured, the right wing now is dominated by social issues and it is because the Republican Party had banked so heavily on those issues that it is beginning to fracture now.

Obama is trying to build a centrist coalition with a moderate core. He is progressive enough that only the most iconoclastic left could fracture from the Dems and indeed, the measure of that futility is the three Nader campaigns of increasing irrelevance.

The issue is whether the Republicans can meld together their cultural split.

I don't think the social reactionaries will accept a middle candidate and a social reactionary will not be accepted by the middle.

So the probable scenario's are two. First Obama builds a true center coalition which begins to permanently weld former Republican suburbanites to the Democratic Party while the Republican base nominates a inevitable loser like Palin or (2) the Republican's nominate a moderate "fiscal conservative" to save us from the excesses of the Obama years (note irony) and the cultural right splits off to a new larger, but not nearly large enough Party.

But the facture may be more complex. Libertarian's like Ron Paul or Barr could never be at home in a far right Party (or with each other).

I don't think that this election will match the LBJ sweep in 1964, but it will be impressive. Then again, I don't think that 2012 will echo 1968, at least on the Democratic side.

I only hope I live that long,

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com