There’s been this common refrain after most recent elections, particularly mid-term elections where the focus is not obscured by the Presidential race at the top of the ticket, unfavorably comparing the turnover rate in the House of Representative to the Soviet Politboro.  I used to stand behind this statistic as a sign of our non-democratic government, what the gerry-madering and incumbency fundraising advantages have made this a joke, so I thought.  This even as I understood that in the seeminly optimal state of being, 85 percent of incumbents will pass on through — you elect a Congress critter, that means you must have liked him and seemingly nothing is going to change that means you won’t like him the next time out, right?

The 2006 elections have altered my thinking.  I now have two major electoral upheavals in my civil memory:  1994 and 2006.  Behind this, there are glacial movements that only broke through in those years.  That Clinton lost a few House seats for the Democrats in 1992 was a precursor for 1994.  That Bush only managed a few House pick-ups for the Republicans in 2004, under the number that gerry-mandering Texas mid-stream awarded the party, was a precursor for 2006.  We have 1998 and 2002 when subtle shifts marked significant enough political meaning.

I find it difficult to imagine either party picking up more than maybe five House seats in 2008.  Both have a fairly obvious list of seats to try to pry loose from the other party, and both parties will only dislodge a couple of those opportunities.  It is the figure tossed out that is similar to the Soviet Politboro I mentioned in the first sentence.  We now revert to the norm and wait for the next “1994 / 2006” big wave, in the meantime seeing the small “breezes” of 2002 and 1998 admist the “stillness inert sinkholes” of the other years.

I recall somewhere the figure 10 percent of Republican incumbents losing in 2006.  I imagine 1994 had a similar number for Democrats.  That means, with 0 percent of Democratic incumbents losing, roughly five percent changed in what was a “sea-change” election.  The shifts in the electorate are measures on the margins of the margins of voting habits — glacially changing since most voters vote as they always have — which is registered in those normal elections where nothing changes.

That is the Democratic System we have.  That is the Democratic System we must tolerate.  That is the 2-party system of Inert Action that is what it is..

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