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).
To return to this issue, let me note two things.
1) If historical trends hold, then it is likely that the Republicans will make gains, as typically the party holding the White House normally loses seats during mid-term elections. Further, the current gap (256-178 with one vacancy) is sufficiently out of whack with recent trends that one would expect a narrowing.
In terms of potential GOP gains, Chris Lawrence makes the case for a rebound in 2010.
And Chris does make a noteworthy argument about how such a rebound could matter:
While the Republicans need 40 House seats to recapture a majority, recapturing even half of that could produce a working “winning coalition” with Blue Dogs on fiscal issues that will endanger any White House plans that can’t pass in the next year (which, at this point, is probably most of them)
2) In terms of a repeat of 1994, however, Matthew Shugart noted in the comments yesterday a key reason that a repeat of that election is not in the cards that I should have noted in my post yesterday: part of what was going on in 1994 was the shift in many Southern congressional districts from conservative Democratic to Republican. That realignment cannot happen again, and therefore a dramatic shift of 40+ seats to swing the House back to the GOP is rather unlikely.
Also, to underscore a point I made yesterday, there is absolutely no way that the Senate will flip. Of the 35 seats up for election (the 34 in Class III plus the vacant Kennedy seat), there is no way to find the 10 seats that the GOP would need to recapture majority control of the chamber.
So, any talk of a repeat of 1994, if by that one means a dramatic shift in control of the congress, isn’t going to happen.
