PS. I’m glad to have found your blog – I’m a poli sci student and have cited quite a few of your papers – my favorite one is your study of the relationship between the welfare state and aboslute poverty in developed countries.

This isn’t the 1930s, whereby FDR could create a movement that dominated politics for a few generations. Things move too fast nowadays.

As a proud member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I am plotting our comeback right now.

The enormous good from the New Deal allowed for 45 years of very strong Democratic dominance. By contrast, most of the policies of the conservative Republicans, by and large, did great harm over the medium and long run to the vast majority; they were discredited, and as a result, the Republicans’ dominance was only about 25 years and much less strong. And staying in power even that long was due largely to deception, distraction, appeals to racism, and big money from the rich and special interests.

The most important thing for Obama will be to pass Universal Healthcare. This would be like the New Deal and Medicare; once it was passed, and people saw how false the Republican claims against it were, and how much better it made people’s lives, and the country, the Republicans could never get rid of it. The whole party would be forced to move far to the left and accept it, or be heavily voted out and become a minor party.

Passing Universal Healthcare is crucial to lasting Democratic dominance and doing lasting good. I have a post on this at: http://richardhserlin.blogspot.com/2008/11/theres-nothing-more-important-for-obama.html.

With regard to people tending to stick with their first party, this is also true in marketing. I remember in my MBA days learning how hard companies try to get college students first out on their own to use their toothpaste and beer, knowing the likelihood that it would create loyalty that would last a lifetime.

One of the unfortunate weaknesses of academia is the reluctance of fields to learn from and work with each other; unfortunately the reward/penalty system fosters this, but it would be valuable for political science and sociology professors researching this to look at the marketing literature.