Waves

The president was inexperienced, they said. Weak. Oh, he’d accomplished some great things in his year-and-a-half in office, but clearly he was doomed in a couple years. Meanwhile, Congress, which had been a rubber stamp for this Democrat, was seen by the Republicans as out of touch with the American people, who were ready for a change.

The Republicans rode that wave to a massive victory, gaining dozens of seats, their largest gain in over half a century. They would hold more than 240 seats when it was all said and done, their largest majority in three generations. Clearly, the future was bright for the Republicans, and the Democrats — they were doomed.

Knowing that they had the wind at their back, Republicans came to power refusing to compromise with the administration. If they could hold on two years, they’d take the presidency — and then they could rule unfettered.

2010? No, 1946, when Republicans ended 16 years of Democratic rule emphatically, winning 55 seats and gaining a majority of 246 seats to the Democrats’ 188.

What happened next? Well, in 1948, Harry S Truman campaigned against the “do-nothing Republican Congress.” Despite being an underdog to Thomas Dewey, Truman won the election. Everyone remembers that, of course.

What they’ve forgotten is that in 1948, the Democrats took back the House of Representatives. And how. Two years after suffering humiliating defeat, Democrats gained 75 seats, propelling them to a majority of 263. Sam Rayburn, who had been defenestrated just two years before, became speaker once again.

The Democrats would hold the house for 44 of the next 46 years.

This does not mean, of course, that Democrats are sure to win back Congress in two years. History doesn’t repeat itself. But as Arthur Schlesinger once noted, sometimes it rhymes. And while the Republicans could hold the House of Representatives for many years, their hold on it could be tenuous indeed.

The lesson from 1946 for the Democrats is simple and obvious: a defeat today, even a bad one, doesn’t mean a defeat forever. Sometimes, a bad defeat can be followed in short order by an even larger victory. How hard we work over the next two years will determine whether John Boehner is a one-term speaker or not.

But there’s a lesson for the Republicans as well, if they choose to heed it. After all, in 1994, the Republicans rode a wave of discontent to power as well, but they held the House for over a decade afterward. Why? Because for all the rancor and impeachment drama, on policy, Newt Gingrich was willing to work with Bill Clinton, at least once he got smacked by the government shutdown.

If the Republicans choose to be serious about governing, choose to actually engage in the difficult process of compromise and leadership that a complex nation requires, then they may be able to build a durable majority. But if they choose to come in with guns blazing, drawing lines in the sand and proclaiming that they mean to end the Obama administration, they well could meet the same fate as the Republicans in 1946 — swept from power just two years after being swept into it.

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12 Responses to Waves

  1. 1
    Jake says:

    Okay, I’m not USian, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance of your history, but was a speaker of your house really defenestrated? That’s crazy. I hope it was recorded, tv had been invented by then. Off to the youtubes I go!

  2. 2
    Jeff Fecke says:

    Sadly, no. We did have an anti-slavery senator who was beaten into a coma on the floor of the Senate, though.

  3. 3
    RonF says:

    It’s fair to say that the GOP majority in the House will have to cooperate with the Democrat majority in the Senate and the White House. But the reverse is also true – the White House and the Democratic majority in the Senate will have to cooperate with the GOP majority in the House. And after all, the House (by deliberate design) generally more closely reflects the country’s current mood.

    The interesting thing here is that the Tea Party caucus is likely bigger than the GOP’s majority in the House. So the GOP will have to satisfy them while putting together some kind of agenda and acting on it.

    The GOP ran on dissatisfaction with the economy and the actions of the Congress with regards to health care, etc.. If they don’t come up with a specific course of action of their own and pursue it with at least some effectiveness then the first Tuesday of November 2012 will not be kind.

    If we have two years of economic stagnation the GOP will blame the President and the President will blame the GOP. Who’s going to win that argument? I hope it’s not one we end up having….

  4. 4
    RonF says:

    Hey, Amp, your prediction in March:

    My expectation is, all else held equal, Democrats will lose around 30-40 seats in the House, and 4-6 in the Senate. If Democrats end up losing 60-70 in the House and 8-10 in the Senate, I’d call that an enormous, stunning loss, beyond what I’d expect.

    The GOP picked up 60 seats in the House at least, and there’s still a dozen races or so being counted. They picked up 6 votes in the Senate. So, I guess it’s just shy of being an enormous, stunning loss and is just a stunning loss?

    They beat my prediction. I didn’t have them taking the House. I was right on the nose in the Senate, though, I called that 5 to 7 seats. If you go back to the March timeline the pundits of the left discounted the Tea Party having legs through November. They were wrong.

    Robert was wrong on the Senate and right on the House – but if the Tea Party had had a little more sense in a couple of states in the Senate races we’d have had a new ball game for sure.

    I wonder about the Tea Party movement. I think it’ll continue to have influence. Will it learn from it’s mistakes in this cycle? It was actually quite successful. A movement that no one had heard of in the last election endorsed at least 40 successful candidates in the House and I think 4 or 5 in the Senate. That ain’t chicken feed.

  5. 5
    Jake Squid says:

    I think that the Tea Party prevented a GOP takeover of the Senate and limited the number of seats picked up in the House. A reasonable GOP candidate would have easily won both Delaware and Nevada and most likely won Colorado. Those 3 seats would’ve done it. In the House, you had races like the Oregon 4th where an absolutely ridiculously enormous amount of money was plugged into the campaign of a wacko and it got him to 45%. A reasonable candidate would have had a great chance to win.

    Everything favored the GOP in this election. The economy, the poor job of PR done by both Obama and the Democratic Party. I thank the Tea Party for Buck, O’Donnell and Angle.

  6. 6
    Korolev says:

    I’m sick of people saying “Party A” is dead whenever Party B wins or vice versa. It was stupid when the Republicans said the Democrats were dead in 2004, and it was equally stupid when the Democrats said that the Republicans were dead after 2008.

    Power in the US fluctuates. The two parties rarely win more than two terms consecutively. All those people who voted for Obama in 2008 didn’t suddenly die, so to say that the democrats are “finished” is stupid. Likewise, most of those who voted for Bush in 2004 didn’t suddenly all die en mass, so the Republicans aren’t dead either.

    I will say, that, given how it is mostly the elderly who vote for Republicans, as time goes by the demographics WILL shift to favour the democrats, but that’s a process that takes many, many years.

    No doubt in the next election, Democrats will win seats and triumphantly declare the republican party dead, and in the next election after that, the Republicans will win back some seats and triumphantly declare the Democratic party dead, and so on and so on.

    I’m also getting really sick of the triumphalist, “in-your-face, you-are-my-sworn-enemy, ahaha-I-beat-you” feeling I’m getting from both parties (although particularly the Republican party). The US has reached extreme levels of partisanship, the likes of which I have never seen in Australia. And both sides are to blame, although the Republican party are probably more guilty of this.

  7. 7
    Robert says:

    Jake – the economic dislocation is pretty serious. But are you seriously suggesting that Obama and the Congressional Democrats have done such an appallingly poor job that the NORMAL shift of 20-30 seats, 2-3 senators, would have instead been a once-in-a-century realignment of the Congress, if it weren’t for the Tea Party handicapping conservatives overall? That the Tea Party is responsible for stopping the most profound realignment of political power since 1894?

    Cos I have to say, I have seen some pretty delusional stuff in my day, but that would have to earn some kind of record. Yes, the TP candidates in a few states were not the best candidates and lost because they weren’t ideal (definitely in the case of O’Donnell, more questionably for Rossi and Buck). We didn’t fully implement Buckley’s Law this time around (in the primary, always vote for the most conservative electable candidate). It’s a learning process.

    It’s about energy. The Tea Party has spent the last two years, since Bush began the appalling series of bailouts, organizing and motivating people. That had an impact. The impact wasn’t one that slowed down Republicans, other than perhaps a certain small subset of professional Republican – but that subset isn’t the party.

  8. 8
    Jake Squid says:

    Without arguing about the other stuff, Rossi is not a Tea Party candidate.

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012327319_rossi11m.html

    He’s run for all the statewide positions for the last 6 years, at least. He’s very narrowly lost every time. There were 3 recounts in his first election run against Gregoire. Rossi’s problem is that he’s not particularly charismatic and has a history of, at a minimum, strong associations with corruption.

    The Tea Party’s problem with its candidates has to do with the Tea Party’s political inexperience. Lack of vetting often kills neophyte political groups (and McCain campaigns). It happens all the time. If the Tea Party faction can stick around for another eight or ten years it won’t be a problem for them after that.

  9. 9
    Elusis says:

    I heard some Republican (Was it Boehner?) on NPR today referring to this election as “the most historic in 60 years.”

    And I was like “uhhhh….”

  10. 10
    Dreidel says:

    Well, at least the Republican congress that Jeff is referring to (the “80th U.S. Congress,” January 1947 – January 1949) managed to pass the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prevented both Reagan and Clinton from running for a third term. So it wasn’t a total loss.

  11. 11
    Ampersand says:

    A third Reagan term probably would have meant that George Bush Sr would never have been president, which in turn probably means that Bush Jr wouldn’t have been president. That doesn’t sound entirely awful to me.

  12. 12
    RonF says:

    Seems to me that there’s going to be an interesting dynamic in the GOP. President Obama is saying “You need to come left some to help us govern” to a GOP House delegation that the Tea Party movement has just pulled farther to the right.