Why Are We Talking About 2010?

Terence Samuel asks if Tuesday's elections mean anything at all:

Given the orgy of gloating on the right and the hand-wringing on the left that followed this week's elections, it would not seem unreasonable to conclude that next year's midterm elections have already been decided via Tuesday's results.

The parties -- and their associated franchises in the punditocracy -- have split in predictable ways. Progressives see the two congressional special elections, which Democrats won in New York and California, as way more predictive of the national political mood than the two governor's races, which they lost in Virginia and New Jersey. Meanwhile, Republicans are ecstatic about their high-profile gubernatorial victories and what the results portend for 2010. The truth is that Tuesday's wins and losses tell us next to nothing about next year's elections.

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