Dems get a new face

Now that George W. Bush is firmly president, it might be worthasking why. The paradox of election 2000, as this column has noted,is that a Republican was handed the White House by the bestpresidential result for the left since 1964. In other words, thecombined vote of Al Gore and Ralph Nader came to 52 percent of thepopular vote-compared with Bill Clinton, who never won an actualmajority of voters, and to Jimmy Carter, who managed a technicalknock-out of 50.01 percent.

What explains this leftward swing in the electorate? There seem tobe three possible explanations. The first is that the voters havechanged their values. David Brooks pointed out in the Weekly Standardthat …