Two More Years

“The American people have spoken,” Mitch McConnell said last week, after announcing his intention to lead the Senate’s new Republican majority. “They’ve given us divided government.” It’s a habit. Since 1981, party control of the White House and Congress has been split for all but six and a half years. Voters continually tell pollsters how disgusted they are that government doesn’t function, then cast their ballots in patterns that all but insure gridlock. This pathology has many causes. One is that the electorate that votes in midterm years is smaller, older, whiter, and, these days, angrier than the one that votes in Presidential years. This contributes to Election Night whiplash; the change of control in the Senate next January will be the seventh since the Reagan Administration.

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