There’s the argument that D.C. has been wired for Republican rule for a long time.

Or maybe the difference is also driven by changes in the D.C. establishment. These days the Beltway establishment vaguely seems more diffuse, more fractured, a bit less status-confident, and indeed harder to define than it once was, what with the crisis, the seismic shifts in the media landscape, and the generational transfer of power Obama’s arrival portends.

Then can David Broder and Pat Buchanan just fucking go away now?