Doing My Part to Boost Voter Apathy

Will Wilkinson says , via a broader argument which says that elections in general don't matter as much as people say. Ross Douthat says he doesn't agree with all of it but that "it's still a useful corrective to the vast effort currently underway to persuade you that this election (like the election before it, and the election before that) is a world-historical hinge moment, and that nothing in American life matters more than how many seats the Republicans gain or don't gain next Tuesday."

I agree with both of them, but that still leaves open the question of how important is the election compared to other elections. The 2008 elections led, after all, to a very important piece of health care legislation that's not going to be repealed during the 112th congress. In other words, even after the soon-to-come revival of conservative political fortunes the health policy status quo is going to settle well to the left of where it was before the election. And it seems overwhelmingly likely to me that had Kay Hagan and Al Franken not won their close elections in North Carolina and Minnesota that the Affordable Care Act never would have passed. So as far as elections go, that's a pretty big deal.

By contrast, looking ahead even if the Democrats defy expectations and eke out a narrow House majority they're not going to turn around and pass a cap-and-trade bill. And if Republicans defy expectations and pick up 65 House seats instead of 55 House seats, that's not going to conjure up the votes to scrap the minimum wage. In any remotely plausible range of outcomes, we'll be looking at an era where either nothing happens or else compromises are reached between the party leaders. The precise numbers matter of course, but they don't matter nearly as much as they did in the current congress where a couple Democratic "reach" wins in Senate elections transformed the situation.