good news for Democratic Party

Conservative commentators have made much of a recent Pew survey showing that public reaction to Obama has been more polarized than to any previous president: Democrats really like him, and Republicans really dislike him.

But the poll's most striking statistic was how few Americans now self-identify as Republicans. For the past year it has hovered around 24 percent, the lowest in three decades.

It's not so much that the Republican base has shrunk, as Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz points out in a recent essay: the Democratic base has expanded. When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, the Democratic base was 30 percent of the electorate; swing voters were 43 percent and Republicans 27 percent. Last year Democrats made up 41 percent; swing voters dropped to 32 percent and Republicans stayed put at 27 percent

Globalization, immigration, more working women and college graduates—all these have changed America over the past two decades.

In a detailed study for the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin point out that 67 percent of Americans now think favorably of the term "progressive," a 25 point increase in five years