When people compare George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover they are usually making the point that they are two of the worst presidents ever. But there may be more similarities than people suspect. When we have a little time to look back, we may see a lot of similarity between the elections of 1928 and the elections of 2004. The main commonality could be that both elections represented both a high point and an end point for Republican dominance.
In 1928, Herbert Hoover was elected as President of the Unites States and the Republican Party gained 32 seats in the House (giving them a 270-165 advantage) and picked up seven seats in the Senate (giving them a 56-40 advantage). In 2004, George W. Bush was re-elected as president and the Republican Party picked up three seats in the House (giving them a 229-205 advantage) and four seats in the Senate (giving them a 55-45 advantage). During the Reagan/Gingrich Revolution, the Republicans’ high point in the House was 230 (after the 1994 elections). They lost seats in 1996 and 1998, broke even in 2000, and then rebuilt their advantage in the post-9/11 elections of 2002 and 2004. Their high point in the Senate came after the 1996 election when they reached a 56 seat advantage (net gain of two seats) despite Bill Clinton’s re-election. Thus, after the 2004 election the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress by just one seat less than their Reagan/Gingrich highs. It was truly the pinnacle of their power, much as the 1928 election spelled the peak of power for a prior generation of Republicans.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression were the immediate causes of the demise of the prior period of Republican dominance. In 2005 it was a combination of factors, including the Valerie Plame and Jack Abramoff cases, the collapse of the president’s Social Security Reform, the Terri Schiavo case, the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and the increasingly disastrous news from Iraq. Combined, these events crippled the Republicans’ reputation on all fronts: ethics, competence, national security, and honesty. The midterms of 1930 and 2006 marked the first significant reverses for their respective Republican ruling coalitions.
In 1930 the Democrats netted eight Senate seats, marking the first of four consecutive elections during the Great Depression where the Democrats would gain, cumulatively, thirty-seven seats in the upper chamber. In the House, the Democrats netted fifty-two seats and after some additional special elections, they took control of the lower chamber. This is roughly comparable to what happened in 2006, where the Democrats won six seats in the Senate and thirty seats in the House, retaking both chambers. If the House gains in 2006 had not been muted by the effects of gerrymandered districts, they would have been every bit as large and resounding as the victories in 1930.
The interesting thing is what happened in 1932, by which time it had become apparent that Hoover’s Republicans had no answer to the hardships of the Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt took back the White House for the Democrats after twelve years on the outside, and the Democrats had huge wins in both the House (101 seats) and the Senate (an astounding 12 seats). The gains in the Senate flipped control of the chamber and gave the Democrats a 59 vote caucus. The House margin was 318-117. This is the kind of election the Democrats could be looking at in 2008, if all our ducks line up in a row. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration…we have no way of winning anywhere near 101 seats in the House…but twelve seats in the Senate is not out of reach, we’ll almost certainly take back the White House, and another 30-50 seats in the House are not out of the question.
This is certainly how former Bush speechwriter David Frum (subscription) sees things moving.
The conservative ascendancy in American politics is coming to an end…
In primaries and caucuses, Democratic contests have drawn more voters than Republican ones. An early estimate after Super Tuesday suggests that, thus far, 11m Americans have cast ballots for Republican candidates, while more than 15m have voted for Democratic ones. Democrats outpolled Republicans by 20 per cent even in the state of South Carolina, maybe the most conservative in the nation…
In polls, Americans express preference for Democrats over Republicans on almost every issue surveyed, including such traditional Republican advantages as taxes, ethics and competence.
In 2002, equal numbers of Americans identified as Republicans and Democrats. In the six years since, Republican identification has collapsed back to the level recorded before Ronald Reagan. The decline has been steepest among young voters. If they eat right, exercise and wear seatbelts, today’s 20-somethings will be voting against George W. Bush deep into the 2060s. Most ominously, US polls show an ideological sea change: a desire for a more activist government, a loss of interest in the tax question and a shift to the left on most social issues (although not, interestingly, abortion).
As things are going, the Democratic nominee will win a majority of the votes cast (unlike Mr Clinton). They will almost certainly gain an increased majority in Congress (unlike Mr Carter). If the present mood lasts, that nominee will have a green light to move the US in new policy directions (unlike either Mr Clinton or Mr Carter).
The stage has been set for the boldest and most dramatic redirection of US politics since Reagan’s first year in office.
Frum makes another point, and I think it is the essential point about political realignments. Frum makes it in the context of the larger (and much slower) Republican realignment that occurred between Nixon’s 1969 inauguration and the meltdown of 2005.
John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s attorney-general, predicted in 1970: “This country is going so far right you won’t recognise it.” His prophecy was vindicated…
…For three decades, the right has dominated, with the Republicans winning five of the seven presidential elections since 1980. Conservatives did more than just win elections: even when liberals gained power, they governed on conservative terms.
What were the most important accomplishments of the Clinton presidency? Balancing the budget, welfare reform and the expansion of Nato – not exactly left-of-centre projects. And of Jimmy Carter’s? The deregulation of the airline and natural gas industries.
Neither president set out to accomplish these goals. Indeed, they often resisted them. In the end they had to accept the limits of the possible – just as Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon accepted the limits of the possible in the liberal era from 1930 to 1975.
Neither Mr Clinton nor Mr Carter created a single, major, permanent new national social programme. Mr Clinton failed to bequeath power to his chosen successor; Mr Carter failed even to win a second term.
Of course, Frum has just described the experience of every progressive/Democrat over the last 38 years (just coincidentally, this exactly corresponds to my entire life). Whether we have been in power or out of power, we have not had the initiative on policy since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency succumbed to the violence in Vietnam.
But we’re on the cusp of a new progressive era. I will do another piece soon that looks at the differential turnout in the respective primaries of the Democratic and Republican parties, and how that turnout might cause a tsunami in the House and Senate races. I won’t know all the details until I dig into the data, but I can say with some confidence that if Barack Obama is our nominee we will stand an excellent chance of wiping out several Republican senators that most people consider to be safe. And we’ll also wipe out no small amount of seemingly safe House members, too.
The nomination of Hillary Clinton will probably eliminate any chance to beat those safe senators, although big House gains are still possible because most of the vulnerable House seats are in the Northeast or Upper Midwest. But it will much harder to expand the field of vulnerable House seats with Clinton as the nominee because she has such high negatives, particularly in areas currently held by Republican representatives.
When you are considering which candidate has the better health care plan, or housing plan, or whatever, please remember that a realigning election changes everything. Imagine what FDR could have accomplished with a 1928 Congress. Almost nothing. But with a 1932 Congress he gave us the New Deal. It matters a lot more whether our nominees can bring in a tsunami of new congresspeople than whether they have a slightly better policy paper on education reform. We should dare to think big. And, because almost all of us have no memory of living in a country with a progressive ruling majority, we simply cannot dream big enough. In my opinion, Clintonism, the Democratic Leadership Council, triangulation, or whatever you want to call it, is a philosophy for an era of conservative dominance, and it is wholly inappropriate for the times we are about to enter into. In fact, it may be the only thing that can prevent a new progressive era from arriving at all.
