Walter F. Mondale on the ballot. Bruce Springsteen on the record charts. And Republicans popping champagne on election night.
Almost everything about the 2002 election season felt retro -- like 1984, in fact. The Republican triumph this year didn't approach the scale of that year, when Ronald Reagan rolled to a 49-state victory over Mondale, the former senator from Minnesota and vice president, who was the Democrats' presidential nominee. But the debate between the parties this fall -- and the ways that competition divided the electorate -- often seemed to reprise the early 1980s. Which is not good news for Democrats.
Understanding exactly what happened and why in this month's election is more difficult than usual because technical problems have prevented the release of the Voter News Service exit poll, the principal tool in recent years for assessing how the electorate aligned and which issues moved them.
But county-by-county results and …
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