The Election of Obama "One of the Great Flukes of American Political History"

Charles Krauthammer tells how liberals and Democrats grossly overestimated the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  They believed it represented an historical realignment, a new political era of liberalism and Democrat rule, wherein the Republican Party would be all but destroyed, relegated to the South as an ineffective, regional party of angry white men.

However, the 2008 elections were nothing but a fluke of history.  Krauthammer argues that Obama was simply in the right place at the right time:  he ran when Americans were weary of war, when the outgoing president was widely unpopular and the new Republican candidate incompetent.  The financial crash in late 2008 and the euphoria of electing the first black president created an unusual political mix wherein Obama was elected ...by just seven points.

The elections of November 2009 merely indicate that things are returning to normal.  No kids, the GOP is far from dead.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are busily shooting themselves in the foot with widely unpopular policies. We'll be back, and sooner than you think.

Krauthammer's piece is called "The Myth of '08, Demolished."  Read it all here.