The 2002 elections: much sound, little fury.

• Author: Brady, David

"Now we can look forward to more obscene tax cuts for the rich, wholesale rape of the environment, huge deficits, obstruction of any investigation into corruption and a packed judiciary." Letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 2002.

According to much postelection commentary a shift of two Senate seats has delivered full control of national policy to the Republicans. Soon oil companies will drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and conservative judges will assume seats on various federal courts, among other Democratic nightmares.

In fact, as any freshman who did not sleep through American Government 101 should know, nothing of the sort is likely to occur. Certainly, there will be some movement. The Homeland Security Bill, for example, has already become law, Democrats having realized that seeming to place the interests of public sector unions over national security was not a winning electoral strategy. In budgetary matters, the Republicans will do better on the margins and a compromise version of prescription drug coverage will pass.

But Republicans with loftier ambitions are likely to be disappointed, for the switch in control does not greatly increase the likelihood that major Republican legislation will pass the Senate. The implication of the filibuster is that on most matters (the budget is the exception that seems to have misled so many) sixty Senators must be willing to take up legislation or nominations. Nothing that forty-one or more Democrats strongly oppose will pass. The switch in control has not magically produced sixty votes for a Republican version of a prescription drug bill or a producer-friendly energy policy. Two months ago Tom Daschle could not pass anything that fortyone...