Asymmetrical Information

"Side note: interesting to look back to a time when jam was a much anticipated luxury, innit?"

Well, yes, but it isn't very interesting to look back at a time when little girls considered jam a much anticipated luxury. I would suspect that the main limit on Alice Liddell's jam consumption was her mother's desire for her to eat other foods, not her budget.

Before Mr. Jeffords’ defection, with the G.O.P. in charge of the White House and the Congress, the Democrats’ prospects for 2002 seemed rosy.

Didn't something happen in September of 2001 that might have had some effect on the 2002 elections?

I don't have time to look it up, can somebody with a better memory remind me?

All political parties--and political coalitions in general--are composed of a spectrum of individuals, some of whose views may even overlap those of another party or coalition.

Because of this, there is an optimal level of majority. Too small of a majority, and you find yourself constantly fighting for that 51st vote (broadly speaking), and giving disproportionate power to people on the margins of your coalition.

Too large a majority, OTOH, has a more subtle effect: by immunizing you from the need to fight for a majority, it makes you sloppy and arrogant.

What you want, ideally, is a majority where you can achieve the 51 percent threshold in coalition building on any given issue with about 85 percent of your caucus--though not always the same 85 percent. So this implies you need about a 55% percent holding in the legislative chamber of interest to accomplish anything useful (ignoring filibusters, etc.).

This is one of the stupidest articles I've read in a long time. The effects of the Jeffords switch were obviously swamped by the effects of 9/11. Furthermore, if Lieberman were to switch parties, the organization of the Senate will not change. In 2001, Republicans and Democrats agreed to reorganize the Senate if the makeup changed. They did not do that in 2007. Every Democratic Senator but Harry Reid could drop dead and he'd still be the majority leader, because the Republicans cannot call another vote on the matter until 2009.

There's no reason why 9/11 and the Democratic Senate majority couldn't be reinforcing trends - the fact that the Dems had a majority put the committee chairs in the spotlight in the months after Afghanistan, after all, and gave the American people a good look at the first faces of the legislature during the debates over Iraq. They're hardly to be blamed if they found it a distinctly uninspiring sight. The President obviously (to me, at any rate) wanted a vote on Iraq before the election because he thought that Congressmen weren't willing to go back and explain to their constituencies why they had voted against it, even though a significant minority of them disliked the idea - if the things their staffers were saying privately at the time are any indication.

I tend to think 9/11 and the war(s) probably put the GOP majority on life support in the House, too - it seemed like we were due for a change before the attacks upended everything. It's not like the stuff that ultimately got them thrown out was a secret, even then - it was just suddenly secondary to concern about national defense.

yeah, like david said this is all moot. control of the senate CANNOT change until 2009.

This is too easy: ". . . except that it implies that both parties would be better off if they never got into power" Cross out "both parties" fill in "the country."

I just couldn't resist. sorry.

Nothing to be sorry about. A plurality of Jane's readers would probably agree with you. I know I certainly would.

I don't think that the Congressional Republicans are too terribly upset with losing. They could have made the arrangement the Dems did in 2001.

From a party perspective, if you have to lose an election, isn't the 6th year of your party's president in power the best time to lose? He is a lame duck (especially this one), you are going to have better luck getting bills pushed through with the next prez, the other party is given a chance to screw up, and it makes the job tougher for the opposition party's candidate to run.

I'm not saying that you tank an election on purpose. (No one, not even Karl "the talking egg" Rove is that good.) But I do wonder why didn't the GOP make the same deal with the Dems that the Dems made with them in 2001? It seems that the Dems would have been hard pressed to refuse it.

But I do wonder why didn't the GOP make the same deal with the Dems that the Dems made with them in 2001? It seems that the Dems would have been hard pressed to refuse it.

Because much like the North Koreans, there is no reason to believe that the Democrats would have kept the deal they made.

Unlike treaties with the North Koreans, an organizing resolution is a document binding upon the legislature. They couldn't negate it unilaterally.