Will the Democratic Party survive Obama?

Take Prince William County in northern Virginia, which was recently identified by The New York Times as the poster county for the Obama Majority. In 2008 and 2012 over 160,000 voters turned out to give Obama identical 16 point margins over John McCain and Mitt Romney respectively. But in 2009, when Obama was not on the ballot, only 75,000 voters turned out to vote in Prince William and Republican Bob McDonnell crushed Democratic Creigh Deeds by an even higher 18-point margin. Then in 2010, again with no Obama on the ballot, 91,000 Prince William voters turned out to vote and they voted for Republican House candidates by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin.

If the Obama Majority supposedly arrived in 2008, where did it go in 2009 and 2010? Will it show up in 2012 or 2014? Even Obama’s closest advisers sound skeptical. “The organization doesn’t exist without belief in the candidate,” White House senior adviser David Plouffe told Politico after November’s election. “They turned out for Barack Obama. It was all because of him.”