So, just who provided the Democrats with their historic victory yesterday?

One way to get a handle on this issue is to compare the house exit polls from the 2006 and 2004 elections.

To demonstrate how this can be done, consider the gender gap:

Vote by Gender       

2006    D    R
Male (49%)    50%    47%
Female (51%)    55%    43%

2004    D    R
Male (46%)    45%    53%
Female (54%)     52%    46%

In 2004, 46% of voters were men and they broke 45-53 for the Republicans. In 2006, 49% of voters were men and they broke 50-47 for the Democrats.

So how much better did the Democrats do with men in '06 compared to '04? One way to measure this is to estimate how much of the swing in the total vote to the Democrats is accounted for by these male voters compared to women.

The neocons develop an exit strategy -- a political one

We cannot let them get away with this.

So let's make one.

After reading some of the thoughtful comments in my previous diary, "Solving the Democrats' Southern Problem," I'm becoming increasingly convinced that writing off the South is a bad idea for the Democrats. I think there are real steps that we can take to woo Southern (and Western, and Midwestern) moderates without abandoning traditional liberal commitments of equality for women, gays, and other minority groups. Plus, forcing the Republicans to fight in some of these Southern states is just good political strategy.

Ruy Teixeira has a new post up on Donkey Rising where he takes liberals to task for being boring on education:

When faced with this reality, Conservatives will typically argue that in a country like the United States, economic inequality doesn't matter, because economic mobility is high here. People in the United States can more easily move upward in the income distribution compared to other advanced countries.

Well, a report just put out by Britain's Sutton Trust and the London School of Economics effectively punctures this myth of American economic mobility.