If you're a Democrat, you're probably dreading the November 2 Election as the Morning-After Hangover to the Obama Sweep of 2008. But now, just when you needed it most, comes a longer -- and highly optimistic view of the Democratic future, Dylan Loewe's "Permanently Blue". Marc Haefele has a review.

Marc's Script:

If you're a Democrat, you're probably dreading the November 2 Election as the Morning-After Hangover to the Obama Sweep of 2008. It's something you wish that you could sleep through. But now, just when you needed it most, comes a longer view of the Democratic Future. And a far brighter one.

Permanently Blue offers a seasoned but basically optimistic take on the Democrats' national future … their long-term future.

As Loewe puts it, "The Democrats are about to lose a ton of seats..." and "If you were to look at (their) chances of their building a long term majority ... it would be hard to argue that things are going to go well soon."

But after that, it's another story. Loewe, like others of the Obama generation, argues that further down the road, you're going to see a rising strength in the Democratic Party that will ultimately either force the Republican Party to roll over and die or change itself unrecognizably. Over the next 24 years, he argues, the 2010 elections, however disastrous, will prove to be the least consequential in decades.

That's because, Loewe insists, the future is all about voter population growth that will change representation patterns in the next decade.

Democrats will prevail because Demographics are Destiny. "Everywhere America is growing, it is liberalizing," says Loewe. And when the 2010 census is implemented, those growth areas are where the new, likely-Democratic, seats will be. Loewe similarly argues that Republican-represented populations are shrinking -- all of which probably explains the recent and unusual ferocity of inter-party strife on census issues.

This change will come even in the gun-toting GOP-gerrymandered bastion of Texas, says Loewe, where Latino populations are growing and white ones are diminishing. Due to the GOP's unfailing propensity to alienate Hispanics on immigration, Republicans have failed to recruit Hispanics on any scale outside the Cuban-dominated Miami area, and even there, the younger generation mostly voted for Obama, who took nearly 70-percent of the national Latino vote. Looking beyond 2010, Loewe foresees the 2020 census with its great increase of minorities and decrease of whites as giving Democrats what he calls "a permanent majority". Hence the title, Permanently Blue.

It's an appealing thesis, but as the old saying goes, "many things can't be imagined, but anything can happen." His thesis almost ignores the economic realities behind the current Republican surge. And the Republican party changed to survive in the middle of the last century, and, for a generation, supported moderate national candidates who appealed and won across party lines. For a long time after that, the Democrats were better at losing elections than winning them. Loewe remembers this, and his most entertaining chapter is his bravura-wicked takedown on the campaign-losing rhetoric of Al Gore and John Kerry.

His message to his party: Don't do dumb stuff like that again. And there'll be calm waters past the rapids of next month.

For Off-Ramp, this is Marc Haefele.