From The LA Times
By Ronald Brownstein

An exhaustive national survey of American attitudes released last week sent the same message as the Democratic sweep in the 2006 midterm elections: a shift among independents is providing the party its best opportunity since Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 to establish a durable electoral advantage over the GOP.

It’s another question whether Democrats can seize that opportunity better than they did in 1993, when missteps by Clinton and the party’s congressional majority set up a GOP landslide just one year later. And, in fact, two other trends in contemporary public opinion spotlight dangers lurking for the Democrats again today.

Let’s start with the signs of Democratic opportunity.

Democrats romped in 2006 mostly because independent voters broke decisively for them in both the House and Senate races, after splitting about evenly between the parties in 2004 and 2002. That shift in turn was driven by a collapse in support among independents for President Bush and the Iraq War. Bush’s approval rating among independents in Gallup polls hasn’t reached 40% since August 2005.

The most important finding in the study published last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center was that the rift between independents and Republican voters now extends far beyond assessments of Bush and Iraq. On most key issues Pew measured, independents expressed views much closer to Democratic voters than to Republicans.

Read more Warning Signs