Coming Soon: Gridlock on Top of Gridlock

If you think that Washington is messed up, and the political system is failing to address many of America’s biggest challenges, stick around. Things look to be getting even worse. That’s the message of the primaries held on mini-Super Tuesday, and the latest opinion polls, which show the Republicans leading the Democrats in many of the states key to the November midterms.

Now that the Republicans have decided not to hand elections to the Democrats by nominating right-wing looney tunes in races for winnable seats, they stand prepared to exploit the three big factors that are running in their favor: an unusually friendly electoral map, an unpopular President, and a widespread feeling that the country is on the wrong track. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago in a bluffer’s guide to the midterms, the situation has turned around dramatically since last fall, when, for a brief moment in the wake of the government shutdown, Democrats were dreaming about recapturing the House of Representatives. Today, that seems virtually impossible. Unless something changes over the summer, the G.O.P. is likely to gain the six seats it needs to capture the Senate, which could well usher in a two-year standoff with the White House that would make the current gridlock look like a model of benign administration.

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