Policy Realignment?

There are certain periods of American history when we can observe party realignments. Party realignments are when large groups of people switch political parties and that switch remains in effect for decades. FDR's election is often cited as a realigning election.

Within political science, there are people who get a little too involved with party realignments looking for patterns and methods for predicting future realignments. It's at this point that my eyes get glassy and my head clunks against my desk. This line of scholarship is not my cup of tea.

Henry points to the recent work by Paul Pierson that takes party realignment literature in a much more interesting and sensible direction. Pierson argues that there are periods of time when the policy options switch. When one group of policy decisions that would previously be thought of as unthinkable, suddenly become doable. 

Henry thinks that we may be entering a period of policy realignment.

So the more interesting question over the next number of years is whether or not we are seeing a policy realignment
taking place. My strong prediction, thanks to the current economic
meltdown, is ‘yes.’ We are likely to see a substantial shift in policy
over the next several years, so that forms of state intervention that
were previously unthinkable start to look routine. Not only is the
Obama administration going to be, by any reasonable definition, a
strongly left-leaning administration, but its successor in 2012,
whether Democratic or Republican, is likely to be left-leaning too.

I completely agree.