Josh Marshall's Big Picture View

Josh Marshall takes a step back to guess what the current moment will look like years from now in Talking Points Memo.

I think we will look back at this moment as the chaotic time that the old order turned to the new. In my opinion, we are seeing the remants of the soon-to-be old power structure see their grip on power slip with the predictable response of ever greater efforts to hold power through cohesion, projections of power, and inflexibility. I would change the term pollsters use here from enthusiasm to desperation or fear. The end is coming. The demographics are clear. Majority minority is marching closer every day. Their team is the long-term loser, the horse and buggy to the Model T. We are now in the Battle of the Bulge phase of this transition. I don't think the transition will be smooth nor do I think that Democrats can't lose elections, but the behavior seems to fit to me. Democrats will compromise because the future is theirs while Republicans have to hold on to every vestige of their order remaining as though their lives depend on it...because it does. Tomorrow is not bright for them.

There may be something to this. A case in point is gay marriage as an issue. The Rove-led GOP was able to use scare tactics to make gay marriage a wedge issue in a hotly contested 2004 election. Meanwhile, more gays and lesbians kept coming out, forming lasting relationships and raising children whom research showed were as well adjusted as their peers from traditional marriages. Locally, two of my daughter's kindergarten classmates have been reared by two mommies--and it has been a complete non-issue to the families of that entire peer group. This year has seen the repeal of DADT, the refusal of the Justic Department to legally defend DOMA and now the state of New York legalizing gay marriage.

The old, white, Christian, heterosexual conservative hegemony is losing to demographic changes and what MLK called "the arc of history." Of course, the Fox News crowd are getting desperate (and crazier) as that becomes harder and harder to deny.

--Ballard Burgher