Verily
Cuivienen
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Posts: 16,663
Political Matrix
E: 1.81, S: -6.78
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« on: June 19, 2009, 11:35:50 PM » |
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The Republicans have been in decline since 1994. This is likely to be the nature of US politics from now on: Parties win big victories and then slowly erode. This element was never really there prior to 1994 because US national politics, at least in Congress, tended to be decided at a local, less "partisan" level prior to the 1994 elections. 1994 changed that, ending a lot of the local-level political structures in the South especially (and, prior to the break-up of the Solid South, elsewhere in the country, too) that had previously prevented particularly ideologically cohesive parties.
The US's odd Presidential system with intermediate-year legislative elections means we might see double-gains as in 2006 and 2008 fairly frequently, once in a solely legislative election and then again in a Presidential year. That didn't happen in 1996, of course, but that was probably because there was an incumbent. I also suspect that the cycles will typically be shorter than 1994-2006, but the Republicans had the advantage of a terrorist attack on their watch. No September 11 and 2002 probably would have resembled 2006 (maybe not so much due to redistricting, which throws another wrench in things since the US is one of the few developed countries where redistricting is explicitly partisan in nature).
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