I just want to point out a few signs of the coming realignment that have come to light in the last few days. Perhaps the most startling sign comes, once again, out of Mississippi where a DSCC poll shows Democrat Ronnie Musgrove beating incumbent Senator Roger Wicker 48%-42%. In North Carolina, a SurveyUSA polls shows Sen. Liddy Dole holding a narrow 50%-46% lead over Democrat Kay Hagan and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beverly Purdue leading her Republican opponent by seven points. In Missouri, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Nixon is up by 24-25 points over his likely Republican opponents. Out in Colorado, an internal poll shows Democratic challenger Betsy Markey leading incumbent Republican Marilyn Musgrave by a 43-36 margin in a district that Bush carried in 2004 with 58% of the vote. Two recent polls show Anchorage, Alaska mayor Mark Begich narrowly leading incumbent Senator Ted Stevens. In New Mexico, Rep. Tom Udall is blowing out both of his Republican opponents by 16 and 26 points, respectively, in their race to replace Pajamas Pete Domenici. In Texas, John Cornyn is clinging to a four point lead over the relatively unknown State. Rep. Rick Noriega. And Democratic candidates for the Senate hold commanding leads in New Hampshire, Colorado, and Virginia.

Two newly minted Senate candidates, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Bruce Lunsford of Kentucky, join Scott Kleeb of Nebraska, who was nominated last week, in expanding the map of competitive senate seats. The Republicans really have nowhere to hide. But there are other signs that the nation is moving solidly Democratic. For one, Barack Obama has an eight-point national lead over John McCain in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll. I can only imagine that that lead will grow substantially once the primary season comes to a conclusion.

But the most important sign is actually a combination of media and mainstream media hostility to John McCain’s foreign policy pronouncements. This really becomes obvious if you just scan the articles on the front-page of Think Progress. They’ve been doing an outstanding job of documenting this trend. Defense Secretary Robert Gates refused to defend Bush/McCain/Lieberman’s recent remarks about appeasing our enemies in his testimony before Congress yesterday. Appearing on FOX News, former Secretary of State James Baker openly disagreed that talking to your enemies is appeasement. One of John McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, Chuck Hagel, has gone so far as to accuse McCain of disingenuousness over the issue…something echoed by McCain’s former colleague Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. This is important because it renders one of John McCain’s central lines of attack (that Obama is inexperienced and naive) ineffective and turns the knife back around to face himself. And if John McCain loses the national security argument, he is going to lose all but the most racially resistant states in the country. Obama is already polling fairly well in Alaska and Mississippi and he hasn’t even solidified his base yet. So, yes, there is a realignment coming and we just have to see how strong we can make it.