Three weeks ago, under the headline “Activists Seize Control of Politics,” Politico (5/19/10) was reporting that U.S. politics may have changed forever:
The 2010 electorate has swallowed an emetic–disgorging in a series of
retching convulsions officeholders in both parties who seem to embody
conventional Washington politics.The anti-establishment, anti-incumbent fevers on display Tuesday are not
new…. What’s now clear, in a way that wasn’t before, is that these results reflect
a genuine national phenomenon, not simply isolated spasms in response to
single issues or local circumstances….This is a stark and potentially durable change in politics. The old
structures that protected incumbent power are weakening. New structures,
from partisan news outlets to online social networks, are giving
anti-establishment politicians access to two essential elements of effective
campaigns: publicity and financial support. In effect, the
anti-institutional forces that coalesced in recent years now look like an
institutional force of their own.
These epochal changes, Politico reports today (6/9/10), lasted for approximately three weeks:
On the biggest primary night of the year so far, the wild 2010 plotline took a turn for the familiar: The political center–and the conventional politicians that gravitate there–showed some enduring power.
