forgotten college courses

It says here , at the bottom: "In addition, for the first time in its 15-year history, the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll this year showed that the public's negative feelings exceeded its positive feelings about both political parties at the same time."

I took a Religion & Politics class in college about how various religions voted in blocks and affected politics. One of the things we learned was that when everybody gets really fed up with the current parties, third parties begin to appear, and then they reorganize back into two parties, but they're different. An example is around the Civil War, when the Whigs, who used to be Republicans who split from the old Democratic-Republicans, fell apart and joined the new Republicans and the Democrats, the other half of the old Democratic-Republicans. (I think I got that right, and yes, politics were always screwed up.)

So ever since Ross Perot (1992), I've been waiting for a sea change, which I think I remember takes about twenty years. I mean, we have Catholics who can't agree on abortion, and Republicans are voting Democrat over the same issue, and Democrats were all set to vote for John McCain (R-Ariz.) a few years ago. So come on, where's my entertainment? I have to wait all the way until 2012?