if you haven’t had your fill of Obama-as-the-next-FDR articles, try George Packer’s freebie at The New Yorker “The New Liberalism: How the economic crisis can help Obama redefine the Democrats.”
Sure, Obama did well in the big cities, as expected. But he also had chops in the ‘burbs, explain Brookings Fellows William Frey and TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira in their article at Brookings web pages,”A Demographic Breakthrough for Democrats.”
Peter Kauffman has an article at The Politico on Dems’ inroads into military veterans as a constituency, noting Obama’s impressive 44 percent share and the thin ranks of GOP poltiical leaders coming up who are vets, in contrast to the Dems bumper crop.
Digby has a sobering reminder that, no matter how much reaching out across the aisle Obama does, bipartisan kumbaya isn’t necessarily a high priority among some Republican leaders.
Not to rain on the parade, but elections also show Dems where we are weak and need some focus. In that regard, do check out this map (click on no.s 2 and 3 ) the graphic wizards at The Grey Lady have put together. It shows a strikingly red band of counties in which McCain actually did better than Bush did in ’04. Note that TN, AR and OK counties are much worse than in other red states.
Conversely, Domenico Montenaro has a MSNBC First Read report on battleground state counties that flipped from red to blue. See also this well-illustrated post by Andrew at Red State, Blue State…, revelaing the Dems’ edge in larger counties.
In his WaPo column today, E.J. Dionne, Jr. urges Obama to emulate Reagan not by turning right, but by acting boldly from the get-go.