We are at a turning point in American politics. Wedge issues no longer threaten Democrats. The social issues that destroyed George McGovern in 1972, Michael Dukakis in 1988, John Kerry in 2004 and the Democratic Congress in 1994 -- "God, guns and gays" -- have reversed direction. Republicans are on the defensive. The New America has come to power.
We have, after all, elected and re-elected an African-American President. President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage last year and it did not doom his re-election. Meanwhile, Republicans lost five Senate seats in 2010 and 2012 that they should have won because they nominated candidates who were way outside the mainstream, particularly on the abortion issue.
The immigration issue is likely to split the Republican Party wide open. Mainstream Republicans, terrified by what happened to them in 2012, will support a deal to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Tea Party Republicans, in thrall to "anti-amnesty" activists, will try to sabotage the deal.
Meanwhile, Republicans, led by Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, are under pressure to cave in on the issue of same-sex marriage. If the next Republican platform drops its call for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman, it will open up a split with the religious right.
Conservatives are taking their last stand on the gun issue. But that could become their Alamo. The pressure for new gun laws has been building since the Connecticut tragedy. President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are trying to build a grassroots counterweight to the National Rifle Association.
All those issues -- same-sex marriage, immigration reform, gun control, abortion rights -- have the same political profile. They are all supported by the New America coalition that elected and re-elected President Obama: African-Americans, young voters, working women, single mothers, gays, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Jewish voters, educated professionals and the unchurched (the one fifth of Americans who claim no religious affiliation).
For instance, a National Journal poll conducted in January reported that "the gun control debate in America has split along the same fault lines -- by age group, ethnicity, gender, even region -- that marked the 2012 presidential contest between Obama and Mitt Romney."
What's propelling the shift in public opinion? Two things. One is demographic change. The millennial generation -- born after 1980 -- is moving into the electorate. New minorities are growing in numbers. More Americans have college and graduate degrees. More women are working. The percentage of unchurched Americans has been going up. In every case, groups with a liberal orientation are getting larger.
At the same time, Americans are changing their minds. Opinion change is happening at different rates on different issues, and not always in a liberal direction. The clearest liberal shift is on the issue of same-sex marriage. The New York Times' Nate Silver estimates that "about half of the increase in support for same-sex marriage is attributable to generational turnover, while the other half is because of the net change in opinion among Americans who have remained in the electorate."
The key force driving opinion change on same-sex marriage is cultural, not political. More and more Americans say they have a colleague, close friend or relative who is gay or lesbian (44 percent in 2003 and 61 percent now, according to the New York Times-CBS News poll). That humanizes the issue. Politicians like Sen. Portman and Hillary Clinton are not shaping public opinion on the marriage issue. They are rushing to catch up with it.
On the other hand, politics is propelling the immigration issue forward. Specifically, the 71-percent support Latino voters gave President Obama last year. Latino leaders are demanding that President Obama make good on his failure to deliver immigration reform during his first term. Romney told a private fundraiser last year that if Republicans can't turn the Latino vote around, "It spells doom for us." He didn't, and it did.
Most Americans continue to support gun control measures short of a gun ban. Surprisingly, however, support for gun control has not been growing despite sensational incidents of gun violence. Still, the demographic outlook is looking favorable for liberals. The National Opinion Research Center reports a four-decade decline in the percentage of households with guns, from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 34 percent in 2012.
Each of these issues has its own dynamic, but the underlying demographic trend is clearly moving all of them in a liberal direction. Conservatives are becoming more and more isolated and defensive. In 1972, opponents hung the slogan "acid, amnesty and abortion" on George McGovern's presidential campaign. He was resoundingly defeated. Now the Cold War is over. Americans have become fed up with military interventions. The demographics of the nation have changed. And so, after 40 long years, the McGovern coalition has finally come to power.