In '04, anyway. As I feared, it looks like Bush lucked out and will catch the right phase of the business cycle (with a little help from massive tax cuts and deficit spending) just in time to coast to reelection. Democrats are in a sense reaping what they have sown: they have run hard on "the economy, stupid"--blaming Bush for tough economic times. Unfortunately, the flip side of this logic means that Bush should get credit when the cycle inevitably heads back up. This is a ridiculous way to contest elections. It makes them into crapshoots: if an economic downturn happens to hit toward the end of an incumbent's first term, the challenger wins; otherwise the incumbent is reelected. Never mind the environment, health care, civil liberties and civil rights, education, judicial nominations, minimum wage, or all the other areas where the president actually does make a difference. Urggghhhh...
However: though I'm getting pessimistic about this election cycle to be sure (if the momentum continues in this direction, I may have to stop following the news or reading Kos, for the sake of my own mental health), I'm fairly sanguine about the long term prospects for Democrats. The demographic changes Judis and Texeira wrote about in The Emerging Democratic Majority are still inexorably at work; and even Dick Morris admits that Republicans are "running up a down escalator" because they are "running out of white people". Karl Rove's dream of making serious inroads among minorities is more like a pipe dream. They just can't pull it off, not when on the one hand the GOP primary-voting base is still dominated by racist, xenophobic Southern whites, and on the other hand minority voters see people like themselves elected almost exclusively on the Democratic side of the aisle. Meanwhile, in another good structural sign for our side, Kerry is smashing fundraising records.
Sure, it's hard to swallow another four years of Bush. But '08 is not so far away, and the GOP has no bench. Do they actually think Bill Frist is the answer? I pity the fools if they do. Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hegel (handsome, well spoken Vietnam vet) could be a threat in a general election, but I don't see him getting through the primaries. Like his good friend John McCain, he is a "maverick" who has frequently criticised Bush. And I've never seen him throw around right wing red meat or a lot of God talk. The base won't go for that. So we'll get some right wing chump to beat up on, and it will be fun.