Usually, it’s the party out of power that frets about whether it will ever win again. This time, it’s the party in control of government that’s staring into the political wilderness. Democrats now have a Washington trifecta — command of the White House and both chambers of Congress. If the results of last week’s elections in Virginia and elsewhere are any indication, they may not retain it after next November’s midterm elections. And a decade or longer may pass before they win a trifecta again.
The unusual structure of American government, combined with the electorate’s reflexive instinct to check the party in power, makes it hard for any party to retain a hold on both the White House and Congress for long. …
It would be foolish to predict the next decade of election results. Still, today’s Democrats will have a hard time defying this long history. Not only do the Democrats have especially slim majorities, but they face a series of structural disadvantages in the House and the Senate that make it difficult to translate popular vote majorities into governing majorities. CONTINUED
Nate Cohn, New York Times
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