Choosing sides. (Politico).

The Sunday morning television shows love to pronounce winners at the end of each week's news cycle. But they ignore the important question of who will win over the next ten or 20 years. Are American politics moving rightward? Or leftward?

There are several possible ways to predict the political future. One can extrapolate from the most recent election. But elections give only a snapshot. After the 1992 elections, hopeful liberals predicted a generation of Democratic control at the federal level; 1994 turned out pretty different.

In between elections, one can look at polling data to see how party affiliations or attitudinal positions on various issues are shifting. Following that course after the 1991 Gulf War, nearly all pollsters expected a second term for President George H. W. Bush. Obviously, answers to pollsters' questions don't fully reflect future voting commitments.

A better measure of what is likely to happen in the political future is to look at decisions people are making in their own lives. For the last seven years, new Republican voter registrants have outnumbered new Democratic registrants for the first time since the 1920s. That is a bedrock shift.

Significant transitions are also taking place among political professionals. When an elected Democrat switches to the GOP, he is wagering that he will be happier and more likely to win elections on the Republican side for the duration of his professional life. He is making a momentous decision that will determine his employability, his ability to earn a living, and the shape of his social calendar.

Since Bill Clinton won in 1992, over 400 elected Democrats have become Republicans. This includes two senators, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, and five members of the House of Representatives: 433 Democrats in all. The number of ...