Well...whaddayaknow. There ain't no stinkin' 2006 electoral wave.

The conventional wisdom seems to have been wrong. For months upon months (upon months upon months) every pundit was explaining to us that this was a "national" election in which voters would not even be thinking or caring about local issues. They weren't even going to see the names of the local candidates on the ballot. All they would see is "Yes to George Bush / No to George Bush." As Bush is so hated, no Republican would be capable of stopping the tide.

For my part, I have disagreed with this assessment since I first started writing for this site. I have been arguing for months upon months (upon months upon months) that there is no such thing as a nationalized House election -- that, rather, there is at best a localization of national issues. Most voters do not view their votes as proxies on the state of the nation. They view their votes as decisions regarding two individuals. I have been arguing that national conditions mostly set the context by inducing one party to run better candidates.

A quick scan across the electoral playing field indicates that "I" was right. Or, more specifically, a quarter century's worth of scholarly consensus on congressional elections was right. The major effect of national conditions was to induce strong Democrats, but weak Republicans, to declare candidacies. So, we see more Republican than Democratic seats on the table because Republican challengers have short resumes and no funds while Democratic challengers have long resumes and plenty of funds. Nevertheless, almost all of these races are being fought on local issues and local personalities. Look at the polls that show Republican candidates who should be getting bowled over in a wave looking fairly respectable. More importantly, look at the recap of advertisements and campaign maneuverings that the House Race Hotline offers every day -- in district after district, the fight is local. It is all about the personalities in the race, and who would best represent the district's values in Washington.

What, you might ask, about the "wave" elections of 1974, 1982 and 1994? Weren't the rules of the game thrown out then? Nope. They never were. None of those elections were national in the sense that the pundits take them to be. They were all explicable according to this basic "strategic politicians" theory. The only real exception was 1994 -- which is further explicable by arguing that national issues were localized by crafty Republicans who tied Clinton's liberal legislative record to conservative Democratic incumbents.

So -- what exactly has happened in the last month? There are two hypothesis that explain the change in tone. I'll let you pick which one you think is correct.

Hypothesis #1: There was never a wave coming because waves, in the sense that media pundits mean them, do not exist. The appearance of a wave existed because the campaigns had not actually started yet, but the pundits had to write about the campaign. So, all they did was talk up the national data points. They received "confirming" evidence of their theses from meaningless summer polls that queried voters who had not put any independent thought into the election and were just parroting back the media storyline ala John Zaller's RAS theory (i.e. respondents Receive only a little information about politics, Accept the few data points that they manage to pick up, and Sample from those data points to respond to queries by pollsters) . When the campaign actually started, the debate in each election "became" local because that is the way it always is. The candidates change the storyline, voters get different pieces of data, and, ultimately (and once again), everything comes down to voters' evaluations of candidates.

Hypothesis #2: This was going to be the first ever modern nationalized election. For the first time, voters were not even going to be thinking about the candidates. It was all gonna be about the President. But then, around Labor Day, George Bush -- the man whom a majority of the country has tuned out (not to mention the man who was inducing the anti-GOP wave in the first place) -- gave a few speeches about the global war on terror and turned the races local. His job approval ticked up between 3% and 4%, and that was it for the wave.

Some concluding points -- does the absence of a "wave" mean that the Democrats stand no chance to pick up the House? Of course not! As I said, the media-type wave does not exist. Voters do not suddenly, magically switch from voting locally to voting nationally. Most of them always vote by the same method. What changes is almost entirely on the side of the candidates. So -- there really has never been a "wave" in that sense. That's a good thing, too. If you need a "wave" to switch the House, the Federalist Party would still be in charge.

So -- that means that the Democrats do not need a "wave" to take the House. This is what we have to wrap our minds around: the whole Wave = Dem Win/No Wave = GOP Win is a false dichotomy, one that was always going to wind up damaging the appearance of Democratic prospects come Labor Day (Side note: for a long time, I have thought that (a) the media has a Democratic bias, but that (b) this bias damages Democratic electoral prospects more than it helps them. This wave business seems, to me, to be another instance of that occurring. Ultimately, the problem for the Democrats is first that the media understands very little of how American politics operates from a broader frame than just the day-to-day Washington soap opera; and second that since they know so much about the soap opera, they incorrectly presume that they know just as much about the broader frame). The Democrats were always going to win or lose the House depending upon candidate recruitment, candidate fundraising and the quality of their candidates' campaigns. National conditions have aided them greatly in putting together a good slate of candidates. But the GOP has a lot of incumbents running. More than usual for this type of national climate.

So what is going to happen? The truth is that I do not know. As everybody has been shifting their estimates toward the GOP, I have found myself shifting toward the Democrats a bit. The reason is that there are a whole swath of GOP seats where, on an individual level, the party looks obscenely weak. I am thinking (in order of obscenity): TX 22, AZ 08, IA 01, CO 07, OH 18, PA 10, NC 11, IN 09, IN 08, IN 02. That's 10 seats. Half of them look like "gimme's" for the Democrats. That's 1/3rd of what they need. That is a lot. I am starting to think that the performance of stronger-looking incumbents in swing districts -- FL 22, PA 06, PA 07, CT 02, CT 05 -- is not so much a sufficient condition for the GOP to hold the House, but really more like a necessary condition.

And this, of course, was before Foley resigned. Here's a fun question: just how many more Republican congressman are going to resign before Election Day and, as a consequence, essentially cede their seats to the Democrats? At this point, at least 20% of what the Democrats need will come from this type of seat.

Make no mistake -- this is bad news for the GOP. Tim Mahoney, the Democratic challenger, has no experience as an elected official. However, he is self-funding, so he has the cash to capitalize on this. And, as National Review is reporting, Foley's name stays on the ballot (though, according to what they have on their site, any votes he receives goes to whomever the Florida GOP designates as the nominee -- though, if this is not cold comfort for the GOP, that metaphor has no significance whatsoever).