November 2, 2010: 1994 all over again

In November 1994, Hal Crowther published in The Independent an article about that month's national election. Our current month's election seemed so similar to 1994's that last week, The Independent reprinted Crowther's article last week, under the title "We've seen this movie before: 1994 revisited." Some excerpts:

I remember my first editor laughing at me because I seemed to require logic in my politics. But can you deliberately block your opponent from achieving anything, then ask the voters to sack him for his lack of achievement?....
    The stuff that animates rightwingers in my part of the world is so inchoate and simplistic you couldn't accurately call it ideology. My guess is that neither ideology nor widespread misery derailed the Democrats...Throwing out some of the best politicians along with some of the most expendable was a voter's irrational reaction to a profoundly irrational system.
    The one thing in this country that's indisputably wretched is the way we conduct our politics, and the way we govern ourselves as a consequence of those politics.
    "Every Senator who participates in it knows this system stinks," says the [in 1994] retiring Senate majority leader, George Mitchell. "What matters most in seeking public office is not integrity, not ability, not judgment, not responsibility, not experience, not intelligence, but money...Money dominates this system. Money infuses this system. Money is the system."
    ...
    "We think the diametrically opposed party system is an absurd joke," one college student told The Washington Post [in 1994]. "We're just watching the whole American experiment and wondering 'Can this go on?'"
    ...
    Do Americans grow dumber as they grow older, through some insidious process that probably involves television? Is there intelligent life after 30? Trust the young people. If the two-party system isn't dead already, it smells pretty funny to me. Resisting even the most basic campaign reforms, perpetually posturing and positioning themselves for elections years away, the Democrats and Republicans have reduced democracy to a rowdy, childish tug-of-war that provides almost nothing but expensive entertainment.