NP: A Perfect Circle, Mer de Noms

In today's Washington Post, columnist David Broder talks about how GOP losses in opinion polls haven't amounted to Democratic gains. When the issue is framed as a two-party problem, this leads to Broder's conclusion that the Dems need to get their shit together.

Of course, if you discard that framework entirely, there's a fundamentally more interesting interpretation. There's a void that needs to be filled by the retreat of support for the GOP. The Democrats are not filling it, so maybe there's a different faction that can.

Which reminds me of something I read about Dubya's criticism of the recent Iranian elections, where he was quoted expressing displeasure with an unelected board artificially limited candidates for the country's highest offices. Personally, I don't see how that's any different from what the FEC and that bullshit council for deciding who gets into the presidential debates, but maybe that's just me.