Politics as usual

Its political season right now, and as always, the negative adds are running 24/7,  emotions are high, and since it looks like the Democrats are going be on the short end of the stick this election (Nate Silver, at http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/ has a proven track record of election forecasting, if you're interested in a current update) people on the left are worried about what will happen to the country.

I found this analysis from Matthew Yglesias pretty succinct.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/10/the-banality-of-tea/

In short, our country goes back and forth between Democrats and Republicans.  We can talk about this as a really big deal-because it is-tax rates on the rich, privatization of social security, global warming, abortion, gay and lesbian issues, immigration, there are significant differences between the parties on a whole host of issues, and our lives are shaped in significant ways depending on who wins elected office. On the other hand, we have a pretty broad consensus in this country. Neither party is going to upset the capitalist system, neither is going to eliminate the social safety net, neither will (successfully) change the constitution without the participation of the other side, and since at most, we're going to have divided government, my prediction for the next two years: not a whole lot that anyone really cares about (except maybe immigration reform, but that's another topic) will get done, and both sides will spend most of the time waiting for the 2012 election, hoping to again take control of both the presidency and both houses of congress, and have a chance to do another bigger kind of thing.