At least for the last oh, 50 years, every time the Democrats have had unified control of the government they’ve been punished by voters just two years later. 1994 and 2010 we’re all familiar with, but the two times previous to that, the Democrats lost 13 seats(1978) and 44 seats(1966), making the last time the Democrats managed to control the government and not piss of the country 1964.
I put this thread in the Pit because the subject is a bit pejorative. But I actually honestly want to know: if the Democrats did win in 2014, how would they best be able to avoid the usual backlash in 2016? What should be on their agenda should they win?
1966 is attributable to Vietnam and the fact that '64 produced an unusually large Democratic majority in the House while '78 is obviously attributable to the economic stagnation of the time.
By pointing to the absolute disaster and trainwreck the GOP-led Congress has produced, especially its obssession with spending cuts and repealing Obamacare along with nominating a strong Democrat (such as Hillary Clinton) and pointing to Obama’s policy achievements in 2016.
-Removing the payroll tax cap for Social Security
-Immigration reform, more or less based on the current bill in the Senate
-A massive infrastructure-energy bill, including repairs to roads and bridges, building a national high-speed rail system, and building dozens of new nuclear power plants to expand America’s nuclear capacity
-Close tax loopholes and raise the estate and income taxes for those making over 250k back to Clinton-era loopholes. Consider some modest cuts to the corporate tax afterwards
-Raise the minimum wage
-Restore many of the spending cuts made due to sequestration
-Universal background checks for guns
-Full expansion of PBS into something resembling the BBC or CBC in Canada
-Marijuana legalization, ending the war on drugs, and lowering the drinking age to 18
-Ending the embargo on Cuba
That’s a lot more ambitious than what Democrats did just before 1994 or 2010. Why do you think that would go over any better? It sounds like wishful thinking, that Democrats should merely do what they wanted to do but didn’t get a chance to do, and this time it’ll work.
Your suggestion on the politics makes sense, but weren’t voters already aware of the faults of the GOP in 2010? Didn’t help much. Voters tend to focus on what the party in power has been doing.
Many of the proposals haven’t been seriously pushed by Democrats except for immigration reform and universal background checks for guns. At the least, pushing for more radical reforms would shift the frames of the debate and allow more modest proposals to go forth.
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Not as much as now, with seemingly ceaseless filibusters and battles over the debt ceiling, fiscal cliffs, sequester, and shutdowns.
I would say the Democrats probably did not run aggressively enough against Bush and the previous Republican majority in 2010. In addition 2010 was a midterm year which generally results in lower turnout to the benefit of the Republicans. 2016, OTOH, is a Presidential election year which would boost turnout from lower demographics that favour the Democrats.
That’s right now. And is it really more problematic than an economic crisis and a misguided war? If voters can turn out Democrats in favor of the GOP after what Bush did, I don’t think they’ll be too deterred by the mostly procedural sins of the Republicans.
That’s true, Democrats seem to be developing a natural advantage. But on the other hand, the last time the Democrats went into a Presidential election with unified control was 1980. The result of that was also a shellacking.
2010 featured independents going for Republicans by a huge margin. If they’d gone for the GOP by the same margin in 2012, we’d be talking about how President Romney and the Republican House and Senate repealed Obamacare. So no, I don’t think demographics will save Democrats if they do “more of the same” that they did in 2009-2010.
My own view is that the best way to avoid a backlash is to create a contrast. Voters don’t like irresponsible minorities. Voters don’t like majorities that overplay their hand. Since the Republicans have been so irresponsible, why not just spend the following two years before 2016 governing like adults?
Nope. Just pass legislation in the normal, procedural way. That means not blocking legislation willy-nilly as the Republicans do, or engaging in hostage-taking, and it also means not ramming legislation through as quickly as possible to avoid public scrutiny.
Sorry Adaher, although you both have infantile views of the world, Qin wins on the ability to reason and make logical arguments - a skill you never mastered.
I wasn’t even aware we were really debating yet. Seems rather illogical to call a contest before it even starts, no? But I guess that’s what I can expect from someone of your low caliber.
2010 saw the advent of the Party, who were at the time, an unknown quantity. IMHO, they should have lost the Speaker’s gavel and their 40th Senate seat on the strength of their 2011 shenanigans, but apparently some people require zero nuance in order to make a decision that benefits themselves. If the Dems were to assume uncontested control in 2015, I would feel entitled to chalk that that up to the Tea Party successfully achieving zero nuance.
Under those circs, I would expect the Dems to be able to succeed in 2016 by invoking the utter horror that would necesarily be involved in a TP resurgence. That said, Qin’s proposal does seem a little ambitious. We’re still the Democratic Party, after all.
If the Dems control both houses of congress and the presidency, why would they even need to use the tactics of a minority (or partial minority) party? That is what you are describing. Now, they might have to do so in order to beat the 60 vote rule in the Senate, but with that rule they are, in some sense, a minority party even if they do have a majority.
So, for your thesis to work, you need to postulate a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
> At least for the last oh, 50 years, every time the Democrats have had unified
> control of the government they’ve been punished by voters just two years later.
Let’s look at who controlled the government (House, Senate, Presidency) since 1933:
So Democrats controlled the government for seven consecutive two-year terms. It was split for one two-year term. Democrats controlled it for two two-year terms. Republicans controlled it for one two-year term. It was split for three one-year terms. Democrats controlled it for four term-year terms. It was split for four two-year terms. Democrats controlled it for two two-year terms. It was split for six two-year terms. Democrats controlled it for one two-year term. It was split for four two-year terms. Republicans controlled it for two two-year terms. It was split for one two-year term. Democrats controlled it for one two-year term. It’s been split for the past two two-year terms.
Is there any consistency there? The only one that I see is that the last time that a party could control the government for a long time was during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Since then it has gone back and forth. Democrats have had more chances at consistent control, but it never lasted too long (since the Truman administration). You’re trying to find a pattern in something with no pattern.
Democrats tend to do worse in non-presidential year elections because democrats (poor people, non-whites, the disabled, etc) are less likely to vote than republicans (upper class whites), and turnout in non presidential elections is lower. So in 1994 or 2010 the democrats lost, but how much of that was turnout? Keep in mind that the democrats won the presidency in 1996 and 2012 after these shellackings.
I don’t really care if the dems win the house. The senate dems will still be outclass, outgunned and outmaneuvered so it won’t matter. No meaningful legislation will get through. I’m more concerned with the long game (10+ years). If the GOP keeps alienating millennials and non-whites to appeal to elderly white people it will lead to a more progressive legislature by the 2020s, followed by a few decades of progressivism.
I wonder if Democratic turnout will narrow the gap with GOP turnout this time, if the disaffectation with the GOP from this crisis continues and people are still fired up about the attempted disenfranchisements across America (there’s nothing that makes people value something so much as trying to take it away.)
In addition, there are the two years of demographic change as older GOP supporters die off and the country becomes less white. In any given two year cycle it’s not a huge difference, but it’s big enough that it could affect marginal races. Moreso than a lot of stuff the talking heads use to fill the hours with soundbites.
If the Insane Clown Posse gets its way, all the Democrats will win is the right to govern a smoking ruin. No, the Humungous does not rule the Wasteland, the Democrats do! Yay.
This is not a good view of history – that Democrats lose when they have a unified government.
It’s a well-worn political axiom that the President’s party tends to lose congressional seats in the mid-term elections – there are very few exceptions to this rule, which are principally 2002, 1998 and 1934 out of the last 21 mid-term elections. Note that the years cited – 2010, 1994, 1978, and 1966 were all mid-terms.
Betting which party will control Congress – or screw it up – in a presidential election year has no clear pattern, because a winning presidential candidate tends to have coattails that bring Congress toward the winning candidate.
So, if government were unified under Democratic control in 2014, the question of what would happen in 2016 is more of a function of who the presidential candidate are, since both will be running for a first term, rather than how the last 2 years went for the Dems.
The Democrats controlled the Presidency and both Houses of Congress from 1976-1980. They lost seats in the House in 1978, (15, not 13 in 1978) but that’s common. The party that controls the Presidency usually loses seats in off year elections.
The same thing happened in 1966, like you said, but the Democrats managed to hold control of both houses and the presidency until 1969.
In fact, the Democrats managed to control both houses of Congress straight through from 1933-1947, then 1949-1953, and then 1955 to 1981, and then again from 1987-1995.
My point here is that I don’t know that “loses seats” means “pissing off the country.”
But is that new majority progressive? Parties that think they have a better coalition and think they will have the majority more often than not tend to overstep. We heard this same Democratic triumphalism in the wake of the 2008 election, yet the worm turned pretty quickly.
And sure, the scale of the GOP victory was due to low turnout by reliable Democratic voters, but independents broke for the GOP so huge that if the GOP hadn’t alienated those new GOP voters, they’d be controlling everything right now. Likewise, if Obama had been able to hold onto all the new young voters he won in 2008, he would have by a much bigger margin in 2012 and maybe even won the House.
