The answer to how Congressional Democrats regain their footing remains unknown. But, history grants a clue. Governing.com,
We looked at how the parties fared under the last three presidents in U.S. Senate seats, U.S. House seats, governorships and state legislatures. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all suffered grievously down-ballot over the course of their tenures…
Historically speaking, an additional two more years in office doesn’t make a difference — neither Clinton nor Bush was able to break into positive territory after their eighth year in office….
Only one president managed to gain seats in any category over that entire time: Ronald Reagan gained six Republican state legislative seats over eight years. Even that victory, though, represents a paltry fraction of the 7,000-plus state legislative seats nationally…
The takeaway is clear: Win the presidency, and you’ll lose everywhere else. “There is a presidential penalty in American politics,” said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. “The Democrats’ best chance to take back Congress is to lose the White House in 2016.”
If the Republicans succeed in convincing themselves our recent elections are not ordinary mid-terms, but a “stunning” and “historic” defeat for the Democrats, the resulting two years of over-reach could give the Democrats more than even Ronald Reagan ever delivered for the Republicans.
Keep telling yourself you’re right. when you go to sleep at night please sob into your tear stained pillow so you wont keep the rest of us awake.
This liberal fool has been hammering away at the mid-terms being ordinary, run-of-the-mill nothings since the smackdown occurred. That tells you how scared the leftists are, when they’re shouting to the rooftops about it being “status quo”, they’re really wetting their pants about the changes that are happening and hoping their liberal media homey’s will cover for them.
Well, if you want to go on about a “smackdown” which had *zero* Congressional seats change hands here in Washington state, and which left Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43rd LD, Seattle) firmly in charge of our state’s legislative agenda, I can’t stop you. Should resultant over-reach produce a backlash in the next election, thus allowing Gov. Inslee to pursue more of his agenda, I won’t complain; you can just keep caterwauling about how the voters were “duped.”
Speaking of which, I keep hoping the blog whose stated reason to exist is for “shifting the debate in Olympia” will publish something on our passage of I-594, the one true shift which we local voters forced upon our politicians in our state’s Capitol. I had thought this year’s one election result which truly changed the status quo there might get a front-page mention here, as a possible “stunning” (and maybe even “historic”) new direction for such legislation nationwide, but perhaps I over-estimated this site’s ability to address its own stated reason for being. (As a financial contributor, maybe you could demand this action from them?)