Taking on the Zombie Perot-Myth/Smear (With Maddow video)

[ericson00]

18. "most people?"

I don't know where you get that idea because 1968 is commonly cited as one. And even historians aside, Nixon's Southern Strategy was absolutely necessary to get Republicans out there in the first place so that a guy like Reagan could come into play at all. Realigning elections do take time tho to see. In 1982, when Reagan was looking like Clinton in 1994, getting killed in congressional elections and low poll numbers, there was talk of him not seeking re-election. The "Reagan Revolution" didn't built its legacy overnight.

There are policy realignments and electoral college realignments. 1968 and 1992 were electoral realignments. 1980 was a policy realignment, as you do mention some good points. History will bore out whether 2008 is one of those, but it certainly isn't an electoral realignment at all. He just played off Bill Clinton's trove of solid Democratic states and added the swing states Gore and Kerry couldn't, just as Reagan played off Nixon's Southern Strategy. The fact that Ford could even challenge Carter in the South owes to Nixon.

Notice how both Clinton and Nixon catch flak from the ideological wings of their parties for policies which didn't hit the status quo much but fundamentally changed the electoral college calculus permanently. Incidently, both had plurality wins their first election, and while the demographics of the people who voted for the third party in both races looked like those of the formerly winning party, their strong disapproval of the previous party rendered them unlikely to have voted for the previous party in the absence of Wallace and Perot. Nixon and Clinton also had great impacts on the social-issue sentiment more than economic policies: Nixon tapped into white resentment of civil rights, Clinton tapped into a public that was becoming more tolerant than it had been of ethnic minorities and engaging them more than Democratic nominee predecessors. Nixon showed that the GOP wasn't going to get rid of popular things like medicare and SS, Clinton showed the Democrats were going to change welfare and crime policies. Both presidents' actions staved off common concerns about their parties. Nixon took rural blue-collar whites to the GOP, Clinton took suburban soccer moms in counties like Nassau/Westchester in NY, Bucks in PA, Bergen in NJ, Cook in IL, etc.. Both took created a new economic base for their parties that were different from the party's usual appeal. Republicans, the party of the rich, got more poor people. The Democrats, the party for the poor, got more wealthy people. Those economic bases were critical in electing Reagan and Obama, respectively. Nixon ended the Dixiecrat, Clinton ended the Rockefeller Republican.