For some time now — here, here, and here — I have been arguing what at first must have seemed counterintuitive: that a great political realignment may be in the works.

Today, in The Washington Post, William M. Daley warns his fellow Democrats that they are in danger of bringing just such a realignment about. After alluding to the announced retirements of four centrist Democrats in the House and to Parker Griffith’s switch to the Republican side, Daley argues that “the Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.”

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year’s off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents — many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower — 41 percent — among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup’s generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.

Griffith and the Democrats who have decided to retire are, Daley says, “the truest canaries in the coal mine.”

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Back in early May, James Carville gleefully published a book entitled 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.

In part, an extended rant against George W. Bush and his administration, it also purported to show that “the Republicans are going to keep getting spanked again and again for forty more years because we’re right and they’re wrong, and Americans know it.”

Of course, Carville added, “the Republicans have been down before, and the Democrats have won Congress before, and we’ve still managed to lose.” But, he continued, “this time we strung our policies together into a coherent, appealing narrative. And we did it with the help of the historically diverse, historically Democratic young people who will be the foundation for a lasting Democratic majority.”

This may have seemed a plausible claim late in 2008 or early in 2009 — when the ragin’ Cajun sent off his book to Simon & Schuster. By the time of publication, however, the Republicans in Congress had shown that they still had some fight in them, and the Tea-Party Movement had already made its appearance.

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