I can’t help but recall that, in the last ten years, we’ve been confidently informed by partisans and pundits of both the “permanent Republcan majority” and the “new Democratic majority” and the supposed relegation of the G.O.P. to a “rump party.” Both claims have been falsified in pretty short periods of time. Can we now accept that what we have in the U.S. is a more-or-less permanent see-sawing between the conservative party and the liberal party and that neither one is ever going to be able to claim decisive once-and-for-all victory? As T. S. Eliot memorably put it, “there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.”