I mentioned before the hyperventilation I see here on the comment threads and on other blogs. These are the commenters that say something to the effect that with a Democratic victory in Congress the nightmare will be over or some other hyperbolic bit of excess. These are the people who see themselves as dramatic figures in a great historical struggle, of course. That is evident in many of the supporters of the netroots.
Michael Barone, writing in the Opinion Journal takes a look at the history of historic 6th year changes in Congress. Instead of hyperventilation, he looks at the real changes that occurred in past years. The results are not what you'd expect.
As Democrats begin, in George W. Bush's words, "measuring the drapes" in the offices of the House speaker and Senate majority leader, it's worth looking back on the history of sixth-year-of-the-presidency off-year elections. Have big gains for the out party been a harbinger of future voting patterns? And have opposition victories in those elections resulted in significant public policy changes? History gives us clear answers to those questions. They are: sometimes yes and sometimes no.
Sometimes yes: 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.
Read it all. The results in the 20th century are very interesting. But the basic fact is that despite control of the Congress changing hands, the end results were not ponies all around for the victorious party and their supporters. That's an important point to remember, even if you see yourself as a great dramatic figure in a historical struggle.
