The Democratic Party in Maryland scored a net gain of 12,000 voters in registration since last Friday, extending the blue party's lead over Republicans in the state to 962,589 voters. This is a record margin and it's just getting wider. Since January, Democrats have increased statewide by nearly 160,000 while less than a third of that total, 31,093, have signed up as Republicans. The state also had 470,074 unaffiliated voters as of yesterday afternoon. All kinds of organizations have been staging voter-registration efforts, among them the Maryland Disability Law Center. The MDLC reported yesterday having registered more than 1,000 Marylanders with disabilities to vote in the upcoming  election.  . . . As I reported in last Sunday's column, Maryland, of course, is a blue state getting bluer. But the partisan shift is occuring in places where it hasn't been seen in years. Here's a New York Times story on the subject. For more on the shift, tune into my Midday show on Tuesday. Our guest Bob Moser, Nation contributer and author of Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority, argues that the Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have an historic opportunity to build a new generation-long, nationwide majority by tapping into a growing base of left-leaning Americans below the Mason-Dixon line. Here's a piece by Moser on Democratic resurgence in Texas.