Fundamental change in US politics hinges on electoral competition, of which we have very little thanks to the circumstances just cited. More than 85% of congressional incumbents running for re-election earlier this month were in fact re-elected. Over the last decade the average has been more than 90%. “Change” does not characterize Congress, nor most state legislatures, except in a few states where term limits have been adopted for the latter.

Loosening ballot restrictions so that a viable major third can emerge would help promote real, healthy change as would adoption of term limits for Congress. Term limits seem to work well for the presidency and many state governors. Britain has three major political parties — Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat — who all hold significant numbers of seats in the House of Commons. Liberal ballot access has not hobbled British democracy.

We need to adopt both term limits and liberal ballot access.

That would be real “change we can believe in.”

Meantime, most of the same folks who were on Capitol Hill in the last Congress will be back, along with the tens of thousands of top unelected federal bureaucrats and 50,000 lobbyistswho helped craft, or at least did little to stop, the nightmare of the last eight years.

The president-elect and his top advisors have their work cut out for them.