Thomas Frank in the New York Times:
Democrats did so well, in part, because a conservative Supreme Court handed them a political gift by overturning Roe v. Wade and Republicans ran a group of dreadful celebrity Senate candidates.
The reality of the triumph, however, is that liberals are back to stalemate. Stalemate, that is, with an opponent that has been radicalizing for 50 years. An opponent that continually produces outrageous fire-breathing extremists, then supplants them with a new crop when the zealotry of the first bunch has worn off. It feels like the cycle is endless. But there is an answer to this problem, if we can just think beyond the limits of our current political imagination.
Ever since I started paying attention, virtually all the country’s political dynamism has been located on the right. They brought us Prop 13, the Reagan revolution, the Gingrich revolution, the Tea Party and Trumpism, each successive explosion securing some new tax cut or making some grand deregulatory thrust before exhausting itself and leaving the stage. That there will be another explosion soon, picking up where the last one left off, is almost a certainty.