It is hard in the midst of battle for us to see, but we are winning.  We ought to win the presidential election this year, and we must do everything in our power to make that happen, but the defeat of the left today is sure.  The only way to lose this war is for us to quit, and we are not doing that.

Begin with the basics.  Americans, overwhelmingly, are conservative.  The latest Battleground Poll shows what every other Battleground Poll has shown for the last decade: Americans, by a huge majority, choose to call themselves "conservative," even when they can choose "moderate" or "unsure" as well as "liberal."  Look at May 2012, or the twenty consecutive Battleground Poll reports dating back more than ten years in which conservatives have always been an overwhelming majority. 

The Gallup Poll findings are just as stark.  The last poll in February 2012 showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in every state except Massachusetts, and the one in February 2011 showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.  The one in August 2010 showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every state except Rhode Island; in February 2010, again, conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.  And yet again, back in August 2009, conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.

Every time the question is asked, by every polling group which asks the question, and however the question is worded, the answer is still the same: conservatives dramatically outnumber liberals.  Even polls limited to particular states show that this is true, like in Washington State or New York State or Minnesota.  This is a salient fact in American life which separates the United States from every other nation. 

The political problem which conservatives have faced reflects an elitist leftist control of the nongovernmental institutions of American life.  The establishment media, for example, is not an organ of government so much as government is an organ of the media.  Remove the leftist media, and how long could leftism last in America?  What has been happening over the last quarter-century is the inexorable rise of a media -- sometimes more akin to an underground press -- which reflects accurately the conservative values of America.

Moreover, the left has proven unable to stop this rise.  Rush Limbaugh, of course, is the ultimate example in broadcast media, and the boycotts, the name-calling, the smearing of Rush have all failed miserably and shown other conservatives how toothless the censors of the left are in American society.  Fox News is the most popular television news network, and the leftist media is losing audience rapidly.  CNN, for example, now has the smallest number of viewers in ten years. 

The left controls academia, but one consequence of that domination is that very little real critical thinking occurs on American campuses -- a phenomenon which is diminishing the value of leftist indoctrination passing as education.  One result has been the rise of online colleges, which has raised the ire of leftists like Senator Harkin of Iowa.  These are often for-profit academic institutions, which means that real market forces drive enrollment and curriculum decisions.  These courses are not conservative; the courses, instead, tend to be practical and non-ideological.  The education of children is also moving from public schools to home-schooling, which is rising exponentially.

What is true of the media and the educational system is true of entertainment as well:  July 2012 data shows that movie audiences have dropped to a 25-year low.  Television viewing in May 2012 was reported to have declined for the first time in twenty years.  The tools of leftist manipulation of the conservative majority in America are losing their power.

In areas like book publishing, the brilliantly irreverent Regnery Press's PIG series (Politically Incorrect Guide) tweaks staid and dreary leftism with sharp and clear laser beams, and the Christian Science Monitor reported in late August of this year that conservative books were dramatically outselling liberal books.

But it is not so much that conservatives are gaining control of these media of influence as it is that the left is losing control of these levers.  Without totalitarian domination of education, information, and entertainment, the left has only its own disciples, which in most states are about 18% of the population; even in Vermont, such people make for only 28%.  Winning these battles -- the battle which we fight every day when we turn off the television set, pass up the lame tripe which masquerades as cinema today, sign up for nontraditional college learning, and buy conservative books -- and not quitting means winning the war.    

There is a final and fatal nail in the coffin of leftism: it has no ideas, and it scarcely pretends to have ideas anymore.  Listen, when you can bear it, to the drivel from the Obama campaign.  What is true of this presidential campaign is true of the whole of leftism in our land.  It is sterile, vapid, and boring.  The recent exchange between Anderson Cooper and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Newsweek editorial against Obama show just how sick even the flacks of the establishment have grown from the nausea of leftism.

We will win.  Indeed, we cannot lose.