Michael Barone, whose analysis leads him to the conclusion that 2006 will probably not “have the sweeping partisan or policy consequences of the midterm elections of 1874 and 1894, or 1938 and 1994″:

In the post-Civil War years, there were two big sixth-year victories for the out party. The first was in 1874, during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, when the opposition Democrats converted a 194-92 deficit in the House to a 169-109 majority. Historians writing in the backwash of the New Deal tended to ascribe this reverse to the Panic of 1873. But my reading of history tells me that this was a revolt against Grant’s policy of stationing troops in the South to enforce civil rights for blacks. Americans had been growing weary of this strife (as they may be growing weary of the strife today in Iraq) and wanted the troops sent home. They were, and Democrats held the House for 16 of the next 20 years–and Southern blacks were left to the mercies of segregation laws and lynch mobs.

There was another great reversal 20 years later–the greatest in American electoral history. Amid a depression deeper than any except that of the 1930s, with violent labor strikes and low farm prices, the House flipped to 244-105 Republican from 218-127 Democratic. This was the beginning of the McKinley Republican majority (said to be the model of Karl Rove) which prevailed for most of the time till the ’30s. The laissez-faire policies of Democratic President Grover Cleveland were rejected, even by his own party, and the era of Progressive government interventionism–and Republican majorities–followed. This sixth-term off-year election was consequential indeed.

The 20th century presents more of a mixed bag. In 1938 FDR’s Democrats had been flying high for six years. In 1936 they won the popular vote for the House by 56%-40%. But in 1938 the popular vote was only 49%-47% Democratic and Republicans gained 75 seats. For most of the next 20 years Congress was dominated by an anti-New Deal coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats, much to the fury of liberal political scientists who argued that every Democrat should somehow be compelled to vote for Roosevelt-type programs. FDR’s Third New Deal, as Alan Brinkley chronicled, was stopped in its tracks. The field was set for talented maneuverers like the (in 1938) freshman Congressman Lyndon Johnson to manipulate the system for his conservative and Democratic confreres.

The 1946 elections looked like another landscape-altering reversal. Republicans won the House races by a 53%-44% popular vote majority and got a 245-188 majority. “Had enough?” was their slogan, and they promptly set about repealing wartime wage and price controls, reducing wartime tax rates and passing the Taft-Hartley Act, which reduced the power of labor unions (1946 saw the largest number of strikes in American history). They also supported Harry Truman’s Cold War aid to Turkey and Greece and the Marshall Plan. This 80th Congress, which Harry Truman labeled “do nothing,” and in which Richard Nixon and John Kennedy served as freshmen, made major changes in public policy. But the Republicans’ work having been done, the voters pitched them out in 1948. Republicans never again had such a large House majority.

For another fascinating, but hard-to-follow critique of a 2006 realignment scanario, we recommend Jay Cost’s RCP piece.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Polling, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.