Not to mention that the notion of bipartisanship is still all upside down in DC.
It's a peculiarly American notion, at that. In the UK everyone expects whoever takes parliament to vote through their agenda and live or die on the results.
Bipartisan negotiations were a big part of the last half-century of US politics because we have a system where the executive can (and often is) in a different party from the legislature, and because of the historical makeup of our national parties. They used to be patchworks of regional parties without much ideological coherence. You had liberal New England Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats mostly as vestiges of the Civil War divisions.
It was easier finding cross-party alliances, but it wasn't a better system. When Adlai Stevenson (!) wins the South because of an unspoken agreement to maintain Jim Crow, that's not a good thing.
kinda makes me want to go back and read all the hubris surrounding "new age of dem dominance! 40 years! demographics!" talk that popped up after the election.
bad economy+dem incompetence will throw that out the fucking window
Judis and Teixeira published their book in 2002, when Bush's numbers were huge and the GOP had the House for eight years running. We're talking about the cold equations, not irrational exuberance.
There's always going to be fluctuations in politics, especially based on the economy's performance. I'd expect Republicans to take some seats in the House and maybe the Senate. But unless you can figure out a scenario where they start winning over atheists and minorities, the long-term numbers are pretty unforgiving.
Give the panic button a rest for a while.
