A Liberal Resurgence in America?

WASHINGTON: These are balmy days on the American left — genuine, uncharacteristic sunniness unpolluted by some fluky political climate change. There is even talk of a — stutter, clear-throat, perish- thought — liberal resurgence.

Or, treading gingerly, a "liberal moment."

"Hell, ya, this is a liberal moment," exults Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?" — and yes, he even calls himself a "liberal" writer, eschewing the sleeker "progressive" stage name that many lefties are preferring these days. He declares this "liberal moment" loud and proud. Until the inevitable qualifier comes.

"A potentially liberal moment," Mr. Frank says, "assuming that liberal politicians can seize the moment and get beyond their usual plague of incompetence."

Oh, snap. Liberal optimism, thy name is caution and caveat.

But it is optimism nonetheless, and well-founded, too, say Mr. Frank and a broad spectrum of political thinkers and leaders. And, they say, the evidence goes beyond the obvious indicators — the ascendance of Democrats in the House and Senate, President Bush's second-term belly-flop and poll numbers showing the Democratic Party trending left and the nation's political center trending Democratic.

The chicken-egg riddle is how much this alleged "liberal moment" bespeaks genuine momentum for the left and how much stems from anti-Bush, antiwar, anti-Republican fervor.

In other words, liberal moment or conservative slump?

The Bush administration has shown the world the ugly face of American Conservatism (neo-conservatism, in particular), with its hellish imperial visions and corporte greed. Goldwater conservatism is all but a memory; like conservatives with a conscious. The conservative movement in America is a movement of authoritarian, fasism, and more and more people are seeing it.

Both, presumably, for reasons that could be explained in part by the "mommy party/daddy party" cliché — that is, that voters typically favor Democrats ("mommy party") on social issues and Republicans ("daddy party") on national security.

"At the moment, daddy seems to have messed up the war in Iraq," says Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review magazine, "so people are much more willing to listen to mommy, which helps Democrats."

Or, could it be, as we independents hope, that Americans have grown up and no longer need an over-protective, smothering mommy or a bully-on-the-block, sociopathic daddy?

But beyond the time-worn parental paradigm, it's clear that issues once largely walled off to the liberal hinterlands have suddenly gained mainstream acceptance and urgency. "There does seem to be momentum around a set of issues that have traditionally been the property of the left," says David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian.

Presidential candidates, for instance, can now safely utter "universal health care" without being tarred as supporters of "socialized medicine." Polls show increasing support for raising the minimum wage, stem-cell research, gay and lesbian civil unions, alternative-energy initiatives and increased financial aid to offset the escalating cost of college.

Could be that the usual Rethug scare tactics just aren't working anymore. A gang of thugs can only use fear for so long, then the people will turn on them with a vengeance.

Republicans can no longer blockade the cause of global warming to the wild- haired left. Once derided as "Ozone Man" by the former President Bush, Al Gore is now up for a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar (while California's non- Oscar-nominated Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been hailed as an environmental action hero for introducing stringent emissions standards).

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, posits that President Bush's abortive attempt in 2005 to privatize the New Deal totem of Social Security helped usher in what he agrees is "a liberal moment."

After the 2004 election, "there was reason to think we were in the midst of a conservative moment," said Mr. Frank (no relation to Thomas Frank). He recalls that there was concern, at first, that Mr. Bush — stout from his re-election — would win the support of young voters and prevail easily on Social Security.

But the foray "flopped totally," Mr. Frank said, and it became a "powerful affirmation of the public sector."

A few months later, Mr. Frank says, the Terri Schiavo case repudiated what he calls "the Republican moral agenda" and became a seminal event in the dawning of a "liberal moment."

"Republicans thought this was a great issue for them," Mr. Frank remembers. But then, all of a sudden, he said, "people realized that 'Hey, those guys are trying to come into my life.' "

Just goes to show how deluded they became!

A Gallup survey last month found that Democrats led Republicans by 34 percent to 31 percent in party affiliation — the largest Democratic advantage since the Clinton administration (34 percent of respondents identified themselves as independents).

By the same token, voters aged 18 to 25 are far more Democratic than previous generations, according to a 2006 survey by Pew Research. And the ratio of Democratic voters who describe themselves as "liberal Democrats" (32 percent) has risen steadily while the share of "conservative Democrats" has dropped (23 percent). Four years earlier, 27 percent of Democrats identified as conservatives, 26 percent as liberals.

The right is seen as divided, demoralized and possibly saddled with a top duo of Republican presidential candidates — John McCain and Rudy Giuliani — who could be unnervingly palatable to moderates and even liberals on certain issues (climate change and campaign finance for Mr. McCain; abortion and gay rights for Mr. Giuliani). A third, Mitt Romney, was just four years ago elected governor of a state — Massachusetts — that many Republicans regard as the political equivalent of a Superfund site.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.