In April I blogged about Larry Sabato’s statement that, in the wake of the much-vaunted 2008 Obama realignment, “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.”  Sabato was all over the tube last night and today, but I didn’t hear any mea culpas from him about what now seems like a ridiculous prediction.  Nor did I hear any apologies from the many other pundits who made similar predictions.

Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia was the crown jewel of the supposed realignment.  Now it’s a glaring example of how silly virtually every declaration of realignment turns out to be.  As I said in April, such declarations “are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election.  But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless.”