For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

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Anyone who doubts that we’ve had a major political realignment should look at what’s happened to Congress. After the 2004 election, there were many declarations that we’d entered a long-term, perhaps permanent era of Republican dominance. Since then, Democrats have won back-to-back victories, picking up at least 12 Senate seats and more than 50 House seats. They now have bigger majorities in both houses than the G.O.P. ever achieved in its 12-year reign.

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McCain is learning the hard way, even if he won’t yet admit it, that the Reagan playbook’s time has come and gone. The old Republican trick was to lie about taxes: Democrats would raise everybody’s and Republicans would cut everybody’s. (In reality, Republican largesse meant the millionaire reaped a windfall while the waitress got pennies and the public debt soared.) McCain has resuscitated that canard, making the case against Obama’s progressive tax policy. But he’ll lose the argument—and the Presidency—because the Republican era of wholesale deregulation and the redistribution of wealth, upward, is over.

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Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America.

Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders. It is not merely that none of the 2008 Republican front-runners come close to measuring up to President Bush in the eyes of the evangelical faithful, although it would be hard to find a cast of characters more ill fit for those shoes: a lapsed-Catholic big-city mayor; a Massachusetts Mormon; a church-skipping Hollywood character actor; and a political renegade known for crossing swords with the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Nor is the problem simply that the Democratic presidential front-runners — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards — sound like a bunch of tent-revival Bible thumpers compared with the Republicans.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the vote “a step forward” even though it fell short of the majority needed to override a veto.

Once again defying a veto threat from President Bush, the House on Thursday passed a bill to provide health insurance for 10 million children. But supporters did not have enough votes to override the promised veto.

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We must all become aware of the growing bigoted religious influence in American politics

Were Ann Coulter’s recent remarks on a recent TV show about Jews anti-Semitic? Coulter said “We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws.” No matter how she may explain this away as a Jew I find this statement offensive and disturbingly telling.

But you may ask and who is Ann Coulter to offend us? She is but a shallow political pundit who is not taken seriously by anyone? Right? No, wrong. She is a bestselling author who is quoted by people on the conservative Right as if she is the author of the Bible. Her words have influence and they reflect the thinking of many of her political and religious ilk. 

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As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, “Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge,” and, “$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report.”

Mrs. Clinton’s aides declined to discuss how the Drudge Report got access to her latest fund-raising figures nearly 20 minutes before the official announcement went to supporters. But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Mrs. Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it.

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According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, in the current election cycle every one of the top 10 industries making political donations is giving more money to Democrats. Even industries that have in the past been overwhelmingly Republican, like insurance and pharmaceuticals, are now splitting their donations more or less evenly. Oil and gas is the only major industry that Republicans can still call its own.

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