The electoral winds are at Democrats' backs -- and they won't be shifting anytime soon.

That was the message from a National Journal panel of Democratic and Republican pollsters and pundits this morning. National demographic changes are all moving in the Democrats' direction, the panel agreed, with America becoming a "brown and black" country that is increasingly non-Christian. Meanwhile, the white working-class voters who continue to be the GOP's bread and butter are shrinking as a proportion of the population, said Ruy Teixeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority.

With Democrats making gains in the House and Senate for the second consecutive cycle, and the 2010 midterms looking grim again, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg maintained that the leftward shift was more than just an impulsive reaction to the Bush years.

"Voters did this twice, and they're conscious of what they're doing," he said.

When moderator Ronald Brownstein, the political director for Atlantic Media Company, asked if Americans would be happy with their presidential choice four years from now, even the two Republicans on the panel wouldn't predict failure for Barack Obama. Bill McInturff, John McCain's chief pollster during the presidential election, argued that the situation in Iraq is stabilizing and almost ready for troop withdrawals, and that the American economy will bounce back by 2012. Given those two eventualities, Obama will look pretty smart come re-election time, whether he deserves credit or not, McInturff said.

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, added that Obama's success at parlaying President Bush's toxicity into political capital shouldn't end Jan. 20, particularly on the economy.

"He needs to leave it be Bush's recession for as long as possible," he said, which means avoiding controversial legislation, like raising taxes, that could become GOP ammunition.

No panel featuring Kristol would have been complete without some mention of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom he vigorously touted for the vice-presidential slot over the summer. When an audience member's question steered the conversation toward Palin, the room leaned forward and Kristol smiled.

"Success has a million fathers, but failure is an orphan," he said. "So I'll be the orphan parent of Sarah Palin here."

The Alaska governor was something of a trade-off for McCain, Kristol argued.

"Clearly, the pick of Palin lost some voters who were swing voters," he said. "I suspect they were mostly blue state swing voters who weren't going to change an electoral outcome. And I think Palin gave them at least a shot at energizing voters who could have put together the Electoral College math needed in states like Ohio."

The two best weeks of the McCain campaign, polling-wise, were right after after the Republican convention, Kristol added. If McCain had tapped Sen. Joe Lieberman, whom the Arizona senator was widely rumored to have favored, the party would not have been unified leaving Minneapolis, and the national conversation for the next few weeks would have been about a fractured GOP.

Kristol also defended McCain's Sept. 24 decision to suspend his campaign and fly to Washington to take part in financial bailout talks, but overall he called the Arizona senator's campaign "confusing."

UPDATED: A full version of Kristol's quote on Palin was added Nov. 20.