The Political Landscape: The Slobs Versus the Snobs

Last week, Dick Morris became the first pundit to predict a Republican sweep of both houses of Congress next year. Looking at Obama’s sliding poll numbers, and increasing voter frustration, Morris said, “This erosion of support makes the elections of 2010 look more and more like a rerun of 1994.”

Yeah, yeah, I know — it’s Dick Morris saying this, take it with a silo of salt and all that. But Mort Kondracke is one of the more level-headed pundits in DC, and he noted Pew’s study saying that “voters’ anti-incumbent mood is approaching 1994 and 2006 levels,” when Congress changed hands. Kondracke added that he thinks that “there’s reason to believe that the public’s anger is even deeper than Pew’s estimate because voters believe – correctly – that ‘the way things are going’ is not getting better.”

Kondracke was saying all this in the context of seeing “an opening” for a third party to make it big in 2010. But don’t be too certain.

Usually, third parties coalesce around a single candidate (like Ross Perot) or a single issue (like the Greens [no relation]). America’s current funk isn’t really about a single issue, but about a whole host of issues — and Washington’s inability (Democrat and Republican alike) to deal with them. If that seems like fertile ground for a third party, in this case it isn’t. Because what the country really needs is a second party.

Please, let me explain. You might want to pour yourself a lovely adult beverage, because I’d had one or two when this occurred to me.

(more…)