The Great Unalignment

This time last winter, Democratic Washington was crackling with confident talk of a progressive re-awakening in the land and an enduring Congressional majority. "Realignment" was the word of the moment, as in the kind of demographic and ideological shift that shaped the nation's politics for some 60 years after the election of Franklin Roosevelt. Now Democrats are trying to figure out how they lost what was presumed to be the safest Senate seat in the country — it belonged to Ted Kennedy for ...