A teary-eyed post-election missive

A party with radical roots wins an unprecedented third term

Albert here. It turns out a lot of our pre-election jitters were unwarranted. Kind of, sort of? You can read Michelle’s take at The Guardian, where she describes accompanying her parents to the polls on a gorgeous Saturday morning.

The top-line story coming out of this election: the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) wins a historic third consecutive term. Since 1996, when Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, no party has controlled the presidency for more than eight years. This win cements a shift that has been decades in the making: the transformation of the DPP into the establishment party.

This is a stunning reversal. As recently as 2008, the DPP looked like a party on the verge of collapse. Rocked by corruption scandals during Chen Shui-bian's presidency, the 2008 elections were a far-reaching humiliation for the party. The DPP presidential candidate lost by almost 20 points. The party lost 62 seats in parliament. The victorious party, the KMT, along with its pan-b…