What Did Not Happen

While a lot has been written since Tuesday about what happened in the U.S. Election, let me pause a moment here to discuss some important things that did not happen.

Incumbents Won

While this was not universally true, the fact is that about 90% of those incumbents who chose to win re-election won in the end.

Some of the worst slime in the universe managed to win. William Jefferson of Louisiana didn't win, but he didn't lose, either. Robert Byrd, who is often barely lucid, won easily. (That was for the Republicans.) Tom Reynolds (left), who heard about the page scandal and did nothing, won re-election, as did Dennis Hastert, the House Speaker who should have taken responsibility and did not. (That was for the Democrats.) So much for the dead girl or live boy theory. If it's in the neighboring bed it apparently doesn't count.

While voting patterns wee challenged, these challenges were generally unsuccessful. People even the Republicans hated, like Bill Sali in Idaho and Vern Buchanan in Florida, actually won. 

Old habits did not break, in other words.

But this was of secondary importance.

Issues Left Alone

The most important thing that did not happen was that the issues which define our future – global warming, energy – were barely discussed, and were not decisive anywhere.

After being feted around the country for An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore became as obscure as he was in February 2001. Where are all the President Gore bumper stickers? Put away.

Why? Because the truth, inconvenient as it was, could still be hidden. Gas prices fell during the fall, and are now down about a dollar a gallon from their peak. There were no big hurricanes, and no one seemed to think it important that the normal directional cycle of these storms seemed to reverse – Mexico was hit repeatedly as storms spawned and turned around, and Atlantic storms headed east whenever they could.

In addition, interest rates conveniently fell in the fall. The housing bust has not yet happened. It has been postponed, not prevented. The economy was barely an issue, and where it was one the issue favored Republicans, business-oriented Republicans in the homebuilding and real estate investment industries. This was especially true in the South, where I live.

Thus the exurbanization of America, a process as environmentally disgusting as anything an Indonesian or Brazilian subsistence farmer is doing in what's left of the rain forest, continues apace. Without objection. With an endorsement from the voters.

This will not continue.

Here is the bottom line.  The crisis that will define the politics of the next generation has not occurred yet. Republicans lost power all on their own, with little help from the DCCC or the Netroots or anyone else. Just on sheer, bull-headed incompetence. It did not have to happen.

 

But the issues defining our time will not be put off forever. What most disturbs me about "pundits" is that they seem to live in a steady state universe, based on the last election returns. They let themselves be continually surprised by events, they never put 2+2 together.

This, too, will not continue. Change is coming -- real, fundamental change. Not from Washington. And no one seems to even be discussing it, let alone preparing for it.

There are no levees. No big policy changes. No nothing.

But things will happen in the next two years. Big things. Bad things. The issue terrain will not be muddied in 2008. It will be as clear and serious as a heart attack.

The pundits who ignored it will nor survive, any more than the politicians.