Department of Election Pre-Analysis (posted by DT)

I'm coming around to the point of view that the electoral deck is just stacked against the Democrats this year:

-The party in power always loses seats in off-year elections
-The party in power always loses seats when the economy is bad
-2006 and 2008 produced lots of democrats in conservative districts, which are bound to swing back
-The economy was such a wreck in '08 that no realistic fix would have been enough to reverse it enough to matter politically. Even if liberals had gotten their $1.5 trillion stimulus, unemployment would still be 8%, which though better than 9.6% still isn't good enough to satisfy the public.

Just looking for excuses for the coming electoral destruction? Fair enough, maybe so. But when you look historically at the previous times that a single party has controlled both houses and the presidency, you see that it never lasts long. The only exception was 2002, and clearly 9/11 had a lot to do with that.

Not that I saw this coming or anything. I was swept up, and figured the GOP had screwed up the economy so badly that it would be years before they'd be back. Color me wrong about that!

Of course the implications of this are that Democrats only had a short window, and needed to pass as much important stuff as possible while they could. The administration would argue that they've done just that- health care reform and financial reform being the big things. I would have liked to see more. If the Democrats somehow do hold on to the House and Senate, they absolutely have to end the filibuster and keep plugging away at their agenda, because they probably won't hold both houses for long after that- no matter what happens. See, I've learned my lesson.