Those ‘death of the party’ claims have been around since Clinton was impeached.
If X wins, it will be the end of Y’s party. It has been said of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Dems were dead after Clinton. Now, Clinton is more popular than Obama. Dems were dead after Kerry. Pubbies were dead after Bush.
Ironically, the majority party seems to be so bad that other party wins the next time: 2006; 2008; 2010.
The REAL dynamics are such: The people of this country are still mostly conservative, and the media is mostly liberal. So we have a media that talks and shouts over the heads of their listeners, and knowing that so many do not agree with them, the media thinks the great unwashed are stupid.
Now to an extent they are stupid. People too busy to learn the facts, and just fed lies from kindergarten on up so often that they belly-feel the liberal way. And Television, owned and run by the Left mostly keeps them there. But due to the new media and really a remarkable resurgence of conservative thought and pampleteering their Leftist choke-hold is loosing its grip. So they MUST propagandize and spin, tell lies, hide truths, etc, etc, to get us to think they're right and we're wrong. The idea that the Republicans are dead is something I see written a lot about after every even minor democrat victory, and when the Republicans win the media writes the “death of the democrats” stories with sadness and as a way to rally their troops.
Nowadays the media and especially the democrats are not just liberal, but socialist, anti-war, anti-Americans Leftists. The makers and shakers in both camps (or is it truly only one camp?) are right out of the upper-echelons 1960’s Counter-Culture intelligentsia. And the rest of the country, the REAL makers and shakers, are looking at theses past four years thinking, WTF????!!!!???
Where are the Blue Dogs? Where are even the moderates in the democratic party? Where in the media are the REPORTERS of old, the who, what, where, when and how functionalists? Gone. The socialist editorials-in-every-story functionalists have taken over and have become the Journ-O-lists listserv propagandists. If the democrats lose big this year not only do they take the media down with them, but there are no replacements in their ranks to remake their party, and they'll just repeat the same old tired Leftist policies that always fail. Now, that's not to say the Republicans won't screw it up once in charge, but the democrats aren't capable of rebuilding a better cadre with a focus of representing the people.