In today’s NYT Ross Douthat explores the The Ghosts of 1994 by which he means the possible parallels between the 1994 mid-terms elections in which the Democrats lost their majorities in Congress after a Democratic President pursued massive health care reform and failed. The idea that 2010 might be like 1994 has bubbled up from time to time over the last several months.
In fairness, Douthat does not appear to be making the argument that 2010 has the chance to be like 1994, but does hint at it (really much of the column is basically a review of Frank Luntz’s new book).
However, the column gives me the chance to write about the 1994 analogy, as I have meant to deal with it before. On balance I think that trying to make 2010 into a repeat of 1994 is largely Republicans engaging in wishful thinking. Yes, there are several variable that are similar (Democratic President, Democratic Congress, major health care proposal), but there are also any number of variables that are different. For one: Obama came to office under very different circumstances than did Clinton (one key difference: Clinton only won a plurality of the popular vote, as 1992 was the three-way Clinton-Bush-Perot race, while Obama came in with a solid majority). For another: Clinton struggled through several major legislative fights apart from the health care debate (e.g., gays in the military and over his first budget) while Obama has largely been successful legislatively. That is not to say there haven’t been fights or controversy, but the fights for Obama have been with the opposition, while a number of the fights for Clinton were within his own party–for example, it came down to a handful of votes (and much deal-brokering from the White House) to get the first budget passed in the House and Vice President Gore had to break a tie to pass the budget in the Senate.1
There are several reasons to note for why 2010 is unlikely to be a repeat of 1994.
1) It is rather unlikely that the Senate could flip from Democratic to Republican control, even if the House did (which also strikes me as highly unlikely, although it looks like the GOP will make some gains–not unusual for the oppposition during a mid-term).
2) The economy is still going to be the major issue. If Obama is seen as having helped bring us out of recession by November of 2010, then that will redound to his credit rather heavily and will help the Democrats.
3) As Douthat himself notes:
as long as the Republican Party is defined by its most juvenile ideologues (think Joe Wilson) and its most transparent panderers (think Michael Steele), it’s hard to see the party capitalizing on this angry centrism the way the Gingrich revolutionaries did.
And there is more that could be said that those three.
Sphere: Related Content- See: the NYT (8/793): THE BUDGET STRUGGLE; CLINTON WINS APPROVAL OF HIS BUDGET PLAN AS GORE VOTES TO BREAK SENATE DEADLOCK
This means that the budget plan, the most important legislative issue of the Clinton Presidency so far, cleared Congress by the narrowest possible margin and awaits only the President’s signature before becoming law. Enactment of the legislation was viewed at the White House as essential to Mr. Clinton’s ultimate success as President.
Again: this was all in the context of Democratic majorities and intra-party fighting. A far cry from the moment. [↩]
September 14th, 2009 at 10:11 am
[...] Taylor considers whether 2010 will be a repeat of 1994, where Republicans took control of Congress. He finds it unlikely. On balance I think that trying to make 2010 into a repeat of 1994 is largely Republicans engaging [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Bigger reason why the parallel is faulty:
In 1994, Dems were defending a bunch of districts, mostly in the South, that had kept on voting Dem up through the 1980s despite having long abandoned the Dems in presidential contests. No parallel to that now, at least not in large numbers.
Also, on the policy battles: don’t forget the assault weapons ban, which cost the Dems in many of those districts, and a few in the Midwest. It actually got through with a lot of Republican support, from the now-deceased species of northern Republican (nearly every last one of whom lost in either 2006 or 2008).
In other words, we have already seen the parallel: 2006. Or maybe the analogy should be “mirror.”
September 14th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
[...] Red will Barack’s Midterm Be? In response to a Ross Douthat column both Alex Knapp and Steven Taylor are skeptical that the 2010 midterms will be a “repeat” of the 1994 GOP takeover of the [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I was going to echo Shug’s geography angle.
One more thing to add to the mix–it is pretty clear that much of the antagonism to Obama is racial. Although the leader of the Republican Party is a person of color, the Joe Wilson/Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin crowd is still deploying Southern strategy tactics.
Right wing politics has always had a strong sub-culture of “conserving” ethnic, racial, and religious stratification. This culture was definitely appealed to in the ‘94 Southern districts mentioned by Shug which went GOP.
The problem now is that there have been significant demographic and geographic shifts that weren’t there in ‘94. Growing hispanic populations in the Southwest and parts of the south aren’t going to be swayed by the teabaggers. These are the growing populations. Additionally, I can’t imagine that independent suburban swing voters are going to be convinced by the current crop of prominent GOP voices.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
On the Hispanic population question: much of that growth is in the non-citizen population, and Hispanic voter turnout rates are generally low (something like 30% of VAP historically in Texas). The larger impact will be on majority-minority districting after 2010, which will exaggerate Hispanic voter strength (since districting is based on total population, irrespective of citizenship status or age).
Whether or not the antagonism is racial is really beside the point; it’s there, and the anti-Obama forces will be far more motivated in 2010 than the pro-Obama side will be, particularly if Obama fails to deliver on a lot of “hope and change” by then.
All that said, there isn’t nearly as much low-hanging fruit in 2010 as there was in 1994 for the GOP. But there is some due to the Obama turnout surge in 2008, and enough Democratic Blue Dogs to make life much harder for the administration and the party leadership with some modest GOP pickups.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Chris,
I think it seems reasonable to assume that there will be GOP pickups in the House. I just don’t see any parallel to 1994.
MSS makes a very valid point about what 1994 was in regards to partisan realignment in many southern districts.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Gaining control of both houses of congress is pretty unlikely, especially the senate. IIRC they need about 35 house seats to gain control there, not likely, I’d give about 1 chance in 3.
The thing the Republicans do have going for them is that the Democrats have a lot of fairly weak incumbents defending marginal districts. The Republican candidate recruitment process will be key.
To take the house the Republicans need to create a sense of inevitability that it’s going to happen. Leave Obama flailing on his big initiatives (healthcare, cap & trade, card check), sweep both governors races this fall (NJ and VA) and a few other wins can create the sense that the lame duck season has begun.
Will it happen? Probably not enough to take either house. A pickup of 25 house seats and 2-3 senate seats is my guess.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
On the candidate recruitment, it is not my area of specialty at all, but I have heard that the early signs should not give the Republicans a whole lot of encouragement. Of course, it is still early (although, given the cost of a campaign, not as early as it may seem!).
September 15th, 2009 at 8:38 am
[...] Yesterday I wrote about the degree to which the 2010 mid-terms can be seen to be in any way like the 1994 mid-terms (aka, The Republican Revolution where the GOP took control of both chambers of the Congress for the first time since the Eisenhower administration). [...]