Unmarried female seeks socialism.

Thomas B. Edsall, political editor of the liberal “Huffington Post”, has written a big “think piece” for the Atlantic about the Democrats’ future. Edsall stresses demographic realities, which conventional wisdom—as noted in this blog—says favors Democrats. Yet while Edsall is optimistic about the out years, he’s somewhat concerned about what’s happening right now to Obama’s agenda.

I was especially interested in what Edsall reported about unmarried women and about socialism.

Democrats have identified (see here) their key supporters as unmarried women, youth under 30, African-Americans, and Hispanics—together 52% of the population and 46% of the 2008 vote. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg has collectively branded the four groups “the rising American electorate.” Greenberg’s tag is in line with the work of Ruy Teixeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority.

Unmarried women make up 26% of the voting age population and 21% of the 2008 electorate, a larger bloc than youth (22% voting age and 18% of 2008 voters), African-Americans (11%, 13%), and Hispanics (13%, 9%). Unmarried women overwhelmingly (70%-29%) voted for Obama in 2008; only African-Americans (95%) provided Obama a higher percentage of support. I’ve called Democrats the “Pink Party”—Edsall’s figures bear me out.

Edsall regrets votes Democrats are losing, especially the downscale whites whose ancestors were solid Roosevelt New Deal Democrats. These “have nots” fail to do what Democrats say they should do—vote their economic interests (see What's the Matter with Kansas?). At the same time, Edsall is excited about a future America where by 2016, less than half the electorate will be white Christian, and Democrats will by then truly be in control.

And Edsall’s also excited about America going socialist:

[A Gallup] survey demonstrated that just 36% of Americans view “socialism” positively, and 58% have a negative view—not a particularly surprising finding. Looking [deeper], the survey gets more interesting. By a solid 12%, 53-41, self-identified Democrats view socialism favorably, as do an even larger share of self-identified liberals, 61-34. Among these segments of the electorate, “socialism” is not rejected reflexively, according to Gallup. Decisive majorities of Republicans and conservatives were found to hold negative views of socialism, by respective margins of 79-17 and 75-20. Gallup reported that by better than two to one, white respondents were critical of socialism, 64-31 negative-positive, while non-whites were favorable by a 49-40 margin.

These general findings suggest the possibility that the political strength of voters whose convictions are perhaps best described as Social Democratic in the European sense is reaching a significant level in the United States. With effective organization and mobilization, such voters are positioned to set the agenda in the Democratic Party in the near future.

Wow. For real. Democratic socialism coming to our country soon.

But you already knew that.