Jonathan Alter has a great piece up looking at the progressive resurgence through which our country is going.
I obviously am particularly favorably inclined toward this passage:
The Schlesinger theory of the cycles of history still makes the most sense. Over the past century, we've moved in roughly 30-year cycles, from the Progressive Era to the laissez-faire 1920s to the New Deal to the Reagan years. As it happened, Arthur Schlesinger's timing was a bit off. He dated the last burst of liberalism to the mid-1960s and thus expected a revival in the 1990s. But the conservative era arguably began in 1978 when Rep. William Steiger won approval of a bill that cut the capital-gains tax from 50 percent to 25 percent. We're now exactly 30 years down the road from that.
I touched on the cycles theory the other day over at Thomas Jefferson Street:
The 1990s were a funny thing. Bill Clinton's election seemed to signal a turn of the cycle, right on target, but the GOP congressional triumph in 1994, Clinton's subsequent centrist turn, and Bush's 2000 victory (or "victory," depending on how you want to count Florida ballots) gave pause. Ultimately, though, Clinton's was a left-of-center presidency, the congressional Republicans retreated from their revolutionary rhetoric and became big spenders, and Bush will be remembered as leading an activist (if incompetent) administration that expanded Medicare and partially nationalized the country's biggest banks. Perhaps the cycle turned after all--a shift that may well be confirmed on November 4.
Of course a progressive mood doesn't guarantee either that Barack Obama will be elected or re-elected. Individual elections are still decided by things like actual candidates, as well as atmospherics. If Obama wins but is inept you can be sure a Republican will win next time, even if the national mood dictates that they be more pro-big government in policy than they would like (or at least than they talk).