Back in May, we argued against the notion that the 2008 election represented a historical realignment in favor of the Democratic Party.

Today, Charles Krauthammer affirms that view, writing: (emphasis added)

... the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.

In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The '08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.

In May we wrote:

Since 1960, 6 out of 13 candidates won by larger margins than did Obama.
Since WWII, 8 out of 16 candidates won by larger margins than did Obama.
Since 1932, 12 of 20 candidates won by larger margins than did Obama.
Since 1900, 18 of 28 candidates won by larger margins than did Obama.
Since 1860, 21 of 38 candidates won by larger margins than did Obama.

Here is a chart depicting those facts:


In May we asked. "How does Obama's percentage of the popular vote stack up historically?"

Well, in 2008 Barack Obama became just the fifth Democratic Party presidential candidate since the Civil War to win a majority of the popular vote.

(The Dems have won majorities eight times in the 38 presidential elections since 1860: Samuel Tilden in 1876; FDR in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944; LBJ in 1964; Jimmy Carter in 1976; and Obama in 2008. Conversely, the Repubs have fielded 13 candidates who won popular-vote majorities since 1860 -- they've done it 17 times in 38 elections.)

We noted in May:

Since 1960, 4 out of 13 candidates won with a larger percentage of the popular vote than did Obama.
Since WWII, 6 out of 16 candidates won with a larger percentage of the popular vote than did Obama.
Since 1932, 10 of 20 candidates won with a larger percentage of the popular vote than did Obama.
Since 1900, 14 of 28 candidates won with a larger percentage of the popular vote than did Obama.
Since 1860, 16 of 38 candidates won with a larger percentage of the popular vote than did Obama.

Here is the chart for that set of facts:


Krauthammer continues: (emphasis added)

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of [the skepticism of a Democratic Party realignment in 2008]. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 -- a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus-15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-four in 2009. A 19-point swing. [We too noted this Tuesday night.]
...

In both Virginia and New Jersey [independent went] narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.

White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat? Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.

... the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt -- the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters -- as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.

Some rump. Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the "rump" rebelled. It's the natural reaction of a center-right country to a governing party seeking to rush through a left-wing agenda using temporary majorities created by the one-shot election of 2008. The misreading of that election -- and of the mandate it allegedly bestowed -- is the fundamental cause of the Democratic debacle of 2009.

Are the Democrats willing to accept this reality -- and adjust -- or will they continue to misread the 2008 election with wishful thinking?