One way to review previous political realignments is to look at the numbers by party of the House of Representatives in each Congress throughout U.S. history. Because congressional elections occur every two years, you will be able to isolate the shock elections where a huge number of seats changed hands. But shock elections can be brought on by singular events, and they can fade quickly. A better way of judging the history of political realignments is to look at the history of the numbers by party in the Senate. Because only a third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years, it usually take two successive shock elections to make a fundamental change in the makeup of the chamber. In 2006, the Democrats picked up six seats. This year the Democrats will probably pickup six or more additional seats.
Looking at the 20th Century, we can see that the Republicans dominated the upper chamber until 1910. The 1910 and 1912 elections were both huge Democratic landslides, and starting in 1913 the Democrats had control of the Senate. They maintained that control until the election of 1918 swung it back to the Republicans. From that point until the Great Depression, the Republicans ran the Senate with large majorities. They also controlled the White House and the House of Representatives. The Great Depression ended a long period of Republican domination extending back all the way to the Civil War. You can see what happened here:
71st Congress (1929-1931)
Majority Party: Republican (56 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (39 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Farmer-Labor
Total Seats: 96
—————————————————————————————————-
72nd Congress (1931-1933)
Majority Party: Republican (48 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (47 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Farmer-Labor
Total Seats: 96
—————————————————————————————————-
73rd Congress (1933-1935)
Majority Party: Democrat (59 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (36 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Farmer-Labor
Total Seats: 96
—————————————————————————————————-
74th Congress (1935-1937)
Majority Party: Democrat (69 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (25 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Farmer-Labor; 1 Progressive
Total Seats: 96
The Democrats reached the zenith of their power in the 75th Congress:
75th Congress (1937-1939)
Majority Party: Democrat (76 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (16 seats)
Other Parties: 2 Farmer-Labor; 1 Progressive; 1 Independent
Total Seats: 96
House of Representatives
75th (1937-1939)
Members: 435
Democrats: 334
Republicans: 88
Progressives: 8
Farmer-Labor: 5
From this high water mark, the Democrats would maintain control of the senate for the great majority of the remainder of the century. The exceptions being 1947-1949, 1953-55, 1981-1987, and 1995-2001. With the exception of 1947-1949, the House remained in the Democrats’ hands until 1995. There are a variety of reasons why the Democrats became the dominant party of the last two-thirds of the 20th-Century. But the single biggest reason was the Republican Party’s opposition to the Welfare State. The Democrats’ congressional majorities took occasional hits, for example…after post-war doubts emerged about Harry S. Truman’s capabilities (1946), or over the Korean (1952) and Vietnam Wars (1966). But, with the exception of the last, those were one-time shock elections. In 1965, when the Vietnam War began in earnest, the Democrats had 68 Senators and 295 Reps. When it ended in 1975, the Dems still had 60 senators and 291 reps. The war created fissures in the party that would rip it apart in 1980, but during the war there was no realignment.
It wasn’t until the economic and foreign policy disasters of the Carter administration that the New Deal coalition was truly challengable as the ruling party of the country. And we are all more or less familiar with post-1980 politics. But because post-1980 politics represents the majority of most of our lives, we have a hard time envisioning a period of sustained liberal dominance. But there are two reasons why we are about to see a second round of it. George W. Bush’s second-term has been at least as disastrous as Harry Truman’s second-term, and its been more disastrous than Jimmy Carter’s single-term. There’s no question that we are about to see the second shock election in a row. We might worry that the Republicans will quickly recover, as the Democrats did after the shock elections of 1946 and 1952. But what’s really happening is an ideological collapse of the Republican’s rationale for being.
In a country with a popular welfare state (however underdeveloped) the Republicans are more or less a permanent minority party. By 1980, the Welfare State had developed enough to allow for some downsizing and this provided a window for Republican dominance. But that window really closed during the Clinton administration and the first Bush/Cheney term, when unpopular programs were shrunk, reformed, or eliminated. When Bush moved to privatize Social Security the Republicans had reached the end of their viability. They had nothing politically sustainable left to do, and they started challenging the very structure of the Welfare State as we have known it since FDR.
In many ways, the same thing can be said about the Bush administration’s radical moves on the Unitary Executive and the powers of Congress. The American people will accept reforms and occasional downsizing of the Welfare State, but they do not support fundamental changes that betray over a half-century, if not more, of settled ways of doing things. The Democrats will restore the state to the way it was before Bush came to power. The bigger question is whether they will do more. And a lot of that depends on the size and culture of the Class of ’08, and on Barack Obama.
After the realigning elections of 1930-1932, 1958-1960, and 1964, the assumptions about what was possible changed. In every case, there was major progressive legislation that proved to be popular. Will 2006-2008 do the same thing?
As for the Republicans, they may occasionally occupy the White House, but they won’t control Congress again until they find a new reason for being that doesn’t included rolling back the Welfare State.
I have a problem with your conclusion Boo so help me out. I agree with you regarding the congressional Dem majorities. However two questions leave me very nervous and I don’t think that I am alone.
First, given the divisions within the “Dems”- (eg-Blue dogs)- the congress is not truly a Democratic Congress.
Names don’t mean anything when such groups do not support the general Democratic positions.
Second- and maybe a much more serious problem- the development of a truly conservative juidiciaryBoth on the federal level as well as the Supreme Court.
So Boo- if my concerns are valid, then controlling Congress won’t mean a damn thing. And, a Democrat in the White House will quickly discover that he or she will not be successful in returning the country to sanity.
What say you?
Bill-
The New Deal coalition was absolutely dominated by segregationists and war hawks until it broke up over civil rights and the Vietnam War. The idea that the New Deal coalition was uniformly liberal is a myth.
When you start seeing people like Ronnie Musgrove, Travis Childers, and Don Cazayoux getting elected on an anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-immigrant, anti-choice platform, you know that the return of the New Deal coalition is at hand. The difference is, these guys are as anti-Iraq War as the northerners. They’re more anti-free trade than the northerners. And westerners are more libertarian than easterners.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
much to think about Boo,thanks!
“The Democrats will restore the state to the way it was before Bush came to power.”
If that’s the best they can do their time of power will be brief indeed. To make meaningful and realignment-producing change they will have to restore the path we were on before Reagan came to power. Given recent events, I doubt that they’ll even try. It would be hard, and they’d get criticized by wingnuts.
We’ll see how big the margins are and how hard the last two classes push on the leadership.
One thing to keep in mind is that the influence of the chairmen and chairwomen is going to be superdramatic in the next Congress.
On health care, the last battle was between Moynihan and Kennedy in 1993. If could be Baucus and Kennedy in 2009. Or, if Kennedy doesn’t recover, it might be Dodd or Mikulski vs. Baucus. And in the House, it will get marked up by Dingell on Commerce and Rangel on Ways & Means.
These are old war horses that remember the good old pre-Reagan days, but also carry the scars of 1994. As for Baucus, he is surprisingly intrigued with single-payer health care. So, don’t assume anything just because he’s a raging centrist corporate hack.
In order to restore the constitution and the New Deal consensus more than control of the White House and Congress will be required. The context of the political dialog will need to be shifted back at least to the center and the mainstream media will have to be either reinvigorated and supplemented with new voices and the whole neo-con politics and neo-classical economics and their popular appeal will have to be delegitimized.
The bully pulpit of the presidency will be vital and Obama’s communication skills will be valuable. To an extent they can be supplemented by Representatives, Senators and Governors. However, there needs to be a counterweight to the influence of the conservative think tanks and their PR.
They have popularized the notion of a “liberal media,” and there is some truth to the assertion that many of the reporters are liberal in their point of view. However, and more importantly, the publishers and station owners are increasingly corporate and conservative. It matters little what are the views of a reporter if the editors and news directors do not assign them to cover the stories most important to putting the true scope of the problems before the public.
The Hoover Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Foundation have provided a continuous flow of white papers with talking points to buttress the neo-cons and their economic agenda. Their intellectual foundations may be weak, but their output effectively targets a large segment of the population and the media.
Perhaps some of the more liberal think tanks can step up and provide a counterbalance, but new, more progressive institutions are required. If ever there was a time when a progressive endowment could be timely this is it. Perhaps some of the more progressive foundations can move to fill this void by shifting some of their efforts to this arena. Without intellectual “air cover” a more progressive administration and congress will face stiff headwinds on arrival in Washington.
How have Americans NOT excepted the Unitary Executive?