You would sort of expect a movie sexual discovery to advertise itself as being "everything you need to survive the last two years of Bush. However, when even Bob Woodward gets off the bus, then the handwriting is on the wall. Not only don't people approve of the job Bush is doing, they don't like him either.

I know I am writing for a sea of writers and readers who have been composing "15.million.variations.on.I.told.you.so" about Bush mendacity, malfeasance and malice. Which is why the impending sense of fin de l'epoch should be so sweet. Though perhaps it might just be a natural cycle.

Trust me. If it isn't yet. It will be soon. But it has been a long time in coming.

More after the jump.

The roots of this year, and the election years that will follow, go back to the last decade, when the old liberalism was crumbling quickly. There were two responses.

One was the Clintonian response of riding the wave - of taking Reaganism at face value, and learning to play the game. Clinton was a better Reaganite than Reagan, he was rewarded with two terms as President - the first time since Truman, who served virtually the whole of FDR's fourth term - and was punished with a howling mob of Republicans in Congress. They didn't like Reaganism, only the votes it got. The Republicans could talk the talk, but not walk the walk.

The second response was to search for a new idea, or new world of ideas. The birth of what Matt Stoller calls "the forward left". Not ironically, it was the Clintonian response, which sought easy wins in technology, which also created the group of people who are most sceptical of Clintonism - the children of the internet, which while Al Gore didn't invent it, letting it loose to the private sector was his idea, and it produced large wins.

This second response accepted the Clintonian focus on people - making people understand what is to be done, why it is to be done, and how it is to be done. This was really a revival of liberal politics from Wilson, through FDR, to JFK. The Republicans under Reagan had appropriated it, but Clinton took it right back - and rightfully so, the unity of ideas and means is a liberal construct.

It also accepted much of the late 20th century critique of modern liberalism, particularly the unworkability of large top down structures and bureaucracy. This is also both more and less radical than it looks. FDR didn't set out to create a bureaucracy in Washington DC, in fact he abhored what Hoover had done in expanding the Federal government. However, it was the only instrument which would do what he wanted it to do, faced, as he was, with states of varying qualities of competence and cleanliness of governance. And the war ended any thought of a small center for a very long time.

Finally, it accepted the reality that most problems will be solved by identifying bad ideas and bad activities and ending them, rather than pushing new activities on people. People, observed the Clintonians, will flock to a new idea if it does what they need.

However, it rejected three key tenets of Clintonism.

The first tenet it rejected was Clintonian minimalism - do the least, because that is what the public supports. This is, to no small extent, because the forward left saw problems as being larger than merely US problems. The origin of this is in globalization, after being told over and over again that governments aren't big enough to handle global problems, and seeing over and over again that corporations profit from exacerbating global problems rather than solving them, the obvious conclusion was that minimalist government was at minimum, a losing proposition. The forward left concluded that one is half way to hell, as soon as one accepts half measures. Since the DLC/Clintonian/Conservative response to anything is a half measure, this rejection created a fundamental divide.

The second tenet was urgency. The new political world is the world of urgency - whether on the left or the right. While older generations of politicians were satisified to put things vaguely on the right track, and hope that time would erode a problem - in economics, it is the worship of the trendline - the forward left, like the radical right flowering at the same time, rejected what could be called "policy punt and pray" - punt on doing the hard questions of policy, and pray it all works out.

The third tenet came from the above two. It is one that is less often put into words, but it is the pin that holds together both maximalism and urgency - faith in the network. The social sector, rather than the private or public sectors, is the place where the action is. Not in the small sense of people turning off the unused light, but in the large sense, that the energy of the social sector is capable of being directed and focused to create a powerful, forward moving, progressive wave.

Since 2002, we have seen the explosion of these ideas. And at this moment, we are seeing the collapsing of both the Clintonian thesis, and the Rovian counter-thesis. The Rovian counter-thesis is that one could have the energy of the social sector - in the form of radical reactionary religion - and the urgency of a new epoch, without progress or progressivism. Rove may have been the political expression of this, but he was far from alone, left or right, on the idea that the new environment could be harnessed in a strictly post-modern way. That just as the early post-modern world was originally seen as merely hyper-modernism, the digital world and its people were seen first as merely a better way of selling post-modern producer/consumer top down media politics. Producers of politics solve problems, and little people send checks, vote, and stuff envelopes. And then they should go away and let the real people do the work of government.

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The examples of the crumbling of the Rovian counter thesis are more amusing, and hence more fun to write about as Ezra Klein picks up Ian Parker's evisceration of Christopher Hitchens. Hitchen is part of the "911 at my brain" club, seeing the present in 1930's esque terms - which it distinctly is not, we are not on the verge of a complete disintegration of one global monetary, political and economic system under the pressure of a new technology and society. He thought of 911 as being "our Spanish Civil War", and if this is the case, he threw his lot in with our Franco.

There is also of course the Foley Fallout - a gift which keeps on giving as it turns out that Rove himself argued to Mark Foley that he had to run again for office. Think about the grind of the architect of anti-gay hysteria as a vote getting tool arguing to a promiscuous closeted gay Republican man with a long term partner and a taste for cruising the page pool... well "some jokes just write themselves."

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The electoral wave that is now threatening to capsize the Republican era of corruption in Congress, however, began far out at sea. Over three years ago Matt Stoller and I wrote a memo, "The Clark Congress" saying that the Democrats could, by generating a 5% ideological shift, take power by grabbing districts in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and the upper midwest, buttressed by districts in the South. We weren't alone in this thinking - Tom Schaller was laboring in the vineyards to produce what may be the "Emerging Republican Majority" analog for a new political era. Frequently Daily Kos writer Armando also emphasized the "Lincoln coalition" in his posts. But at the time the memo was circulated, Democratic strategists, the press, and even much of the party base, was still hypnotized by going South.

The thesis was, and is, that the cultural climate of the South and Parts of the Rockie mountain west, even if they vote Democratic, will not be core to a progressive working majority in Congress.

Thus the Democratic Party should focus its energies on electing representatives that will form parts of that working core, and create a core presence in the other areas that can add weight in elections where events, local or national, are favorable. Seeing the Democratic Party as the instrument of progressivism led to the conclusion that one should look for progressive votes first.

This was the reverse of the Clintonian/DLC thesis that one sells out base voters in safe districts outside the South, to appeal to marginal voters in close races inside the south. Don't go after the 5%-10% of marginal Republican leaning independents in the north, but instead the 1%-2% in very close races who can't decide whether they hate gays or gas prices more.

The political strategizing of searching for a progressive, rather than merely partisan, however, is important because it created a simple political imperative. Fight everywhere, even in the districts of Tom DeLay, Roy Blunt and Hastert the Unspeakerable. Because the objective was not just to win votes in Congress, but change the political culture, and therefore what Congress voted on.

It was, at first, a lonely task. As Howard Park recalls:

Since almost the day after the 2004 election I've been informally promoting a few House candidates who are now in very competitive races. Over a year ago, however, I literally experienced laughter & derision when I even suggested that people take a look at those races. One person, a friend then & now, even suggested that I was promoting the Republican cause just by suggesting that a little seed money go into those races rather than being "targeted" at one of the 10 races or so that were thought to be competitive at the time. In districts that are now in "play"-- without the early, lonely groundwork -- gathering the signatures months & months ago, begging money from people they don't know for hours on end just like a telemarketer, spending hours campaigning without any real interest and nothing but disdain from the "professionals" we would not have anybody running in many districts that are now the key to a Democratic majority.

Part of the reasoning, and I know because I made this argument myself, was that the Republican congress was indelibly corrupt, and therefore its leaders would, sooner or later, trip up. At the time we were waiting on the DeLay indictment, and I argued in 2004 to people that running in DeLay's district was important, because "when DeLay is indicted, we win the district straight up." It didn't happen in time for 2004, but DeLay has run from the ballot.

These two factors combined - Republicans gave leadership posts to people in "Northern Moderate" districts which were unwinnable only because of the power of the incumbent. But if powerful incumbent means corrupt, and therefore eventually vulnerable, incumbent - then running against incumbents would mean picking up the very districts necessary to break the back of the Republican Party outside its reactionary base.

The Foley Fallout is gutting Pryce and Reynolds and Hastert - three key players in the reactionary machine from otherwise winnable districts.

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However, as important as the crumbling of Rove, is the crumbling of the conservative Democratic thesis of governmental minimalism and merely maintaining New Deal and a few Great Society programs. One of the first casualties is Mark Warner's bid for the Presidency. I ribbed Warner sometime ago about his chances, and he is a sincere and smart guy. However, without a maximalist agenda - a demand on society, there is no reason why any governmental minimalist should vote for anyone but Hillary Clinton. Clintonism is collapsing back from whence it came, in no small part because Hillary and Bill Clinton - as a team - were the only people who were smart enough, and saavy enough, to make it really work. There aren't many Rhodes Scholars who are as smooth as Elvis, married to Fortune 500 quality executive talent.

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Clintonism transformed the country, and perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, it created the conditions where the left would be resurgent under different terms. No small part of this is the growth of the internet culture, or rather, the growth of the internet culture is a sign of the change in question - however the other component is, of course, Iraq.

Iraq represents the death of Clintonism, because it is a betrayal of the Clintonian ethos of "do the minimum". Instead, it was a vast throw of the dice. And it was backed by Hillary and by the Clintonians, who pulled others along in their wake to join the crusade. It was a maximalist grab, in an era that kept telling us we didn't have the money to do anything about global warming. Iraq has pushed up the price of oil, and cost more, than Kyoto would have. Think on that.

That does not mean the end of the chances for Hillary Clinton - she is smart, and has smart people. She has money and is busy giving it out to get loyalty. The pop media system may be wounded, but she has the name recognition in a world were that still counts. But it does mean that she is turning from running to the right to rack up a big election victory, to edging out to the left to try and cut off the air from an "unHillary" coming into the race and grabbing the 35% of people who are not going to ever be convinced that she is with them.

The Forward Left is then, both the product of, and in part a revolt against Clintonism - and more viscerally a revolt against the Rovism that Clintonism allowed to grow, and in part helped to power by backing Iraq. The signs of the end of the era of Clintonian and Rovian politics point to the rise of the Forward Left simply because it is one of the last ideas standing. 2008 may well be the last gasp of Clintonian politics, but it will be hammered into the ground by the other idea that current haunts American political thinking.

That idea, and the topic for another day, is neo-Reaganism. One might think that neo-Reaganism is absurd, since Bush is, and portrayed, himself as Reagan. But that is the gag, people don't realize that it was precisely the Reaganite elements of Bush's governance that led him to grief. Instead, they remember Reagan because he gave them hope in a bad moment, and then delivered with the last great rebound in the American economic past. Reagan's morning in America really only lasted from late 1983 until mid 1987 - but that four year period has a mythic place in American political lore.

Thus 2008 will see the Republicans nominate someone running as Reagan reborn, and if the Democratic candidate is seen as a Clintonian - who, in American political lore is merely an echo of Reagan - the result will be a defeat at the polls for the Democrats at the very moment when the country in fact, even if they don't know it, is leaving behind the borrow and squander solutions of Reaganism, and probing into the future for solutions which fulfill our need for urgent, sweeping and social solutions.