Did Tuesday’s elections redraw the U.S. political map?
Partly, Democrats have been driven from office in rural areas, the suburbs and every one of the 11 states of the old Confederacy. They lost an overwhelming number of gubernatorial and Senate races in the South, the Midwest and interior West. Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia, states Barack Obama won in 2008, returned to the Republican fold, while battleground states, like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that went Democratic two years ago, elected Republican governors and senators and swept out some House Democrats. Democrats also suffered extensive losses in suburbs clustered around cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, Orlando, Fla., Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, Las Vegas and Phoenix. But didn’t Americans vote for change only two years ago? This is the third election in a row in which U.S. voters kicked out the party in power. In 2006, the House of Representatives and the Senate went from Republican to Democrat. In 2008, control of the White House followed. This year, Republicans won t
