And this is how the Democratic party gets pulled ever further rightward.

[thucythucy]

84. How much of this is the culmination of another

great trans-party migration, that of the mid-'60s to mid-'70s?

At that time, segregationist southern Democrats, "Dixiecrats" and their supporters, people like Strom Thurmond, Jessie Helms and (to a lesser extent) John Connally left the Democratic Party in response to the national party supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This moved the GOP rightward, and the Democratic Party leftward to such an extent that George McGovern became the candidate in 1972. The national Democratic Party quickly returned to the center with Jimmy Carter in 1976, but by 1980 the GOP had gone far to the right of where it was in 1968, '72, and '76, and that rightward drift has continued ever since.

I have no idea how all this will play out in the long run, but in the short term it would seem to give Democrats room to move to the left and reinvigorate the New Deal and the Great Society by, for instance, raising the cap on Social Security payroll taxes (which FDR kept low as a compromise to get SS passed in the first place) and adding a public option to the HCAA. And maybe, just maybe, with all this talk of a "fiscal cliff" and "budget crisis," we can FINALLY begin scaling back on military spending.

Don't know if that will happen though, but it sure would be nice.