CNBC.com

It would be remarkable, in any year, for a black Democrat to lead presidential polls a week before Election Day. Even more remarkable is that it's happening in 2008.

Just four years ago, after President Bush won re-election with expanded Republican majorities in Congress, academics, journalists and party strategists wondered whether his blend of free market economics, cultural conservatism, and national security hawkishness might create long-lasting Republican rule.

National chairman Ken Mehlman called his party "in a stronger position…than at any time since the Great Depression."

Today that Republican dream appears in shambles; Mr. Bush recently recorded, at 71%, the highest level of public disapproval in the history of the Gallup Poll. Democrats see a chance to elect not just Barack Obama, but House and Senate majorities large enough to enact his ambitious agenda. How did that happen so fast?

In part, the answer stems from developments so rare that, as Alan Greenspan has observed of the financial crisis, they occur "once in a century." Hurricane Katrina shattered the administration's reputation for domestic competence just as problems in Iraq eroded its national security credibility.

Not even partisan critics of Republican policies anticipated how a pricked housing bubble would devastate Wall Street like a giant cluster bomb and damage the entire economy.

• Obama's Lead in Polls to 'Disappear'?

But another part of the explanation may lie in an underappreciated reality of 21st century politics. Despite the nation's polarization along partisan and ideological lines, the contingent of unattached swing voters remains large enough to rapidly undercut any Democratic or Republican coalition in reaction to shifting events.

That means, as University of Texas political scientist Walter Dean Burnham puts it, "There's a huge amount of instability that's built into the political system right now." For Democrats, that instability is helping in 2008. unhappiness with Republicans, combined with demographic changes in their favor such as the growth of the Hispanic population, have helped create the wave Barack Obama is riding.

• New Presidential Poll: McCain (SUV) In Dead Heat With Obama (Mini)

He is competitive with John McCain in the South in states like Virginia and North Carolina, and in the West in states like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. But even if Obama wins those "red" states, and the election, there's no guarantee that Democrats could hold them beyond 2008.

That would depend on how well an Obama administration and a Democratic Congress governs—and whether Republicans can catch the next political wave.

• Obama Campaign Spending Far Outpaces McCain

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