Rachel Maddow: 'Tidal' is an apt metaphor after all

[babylonsister]

'Tidal' is an apt metaphor after all
By The Rachel Maddow Show
-
Thu Nov 4, 2010 3:00 AM EDT



With apologies to our friends and colleagues in the news analysis business who want so badly to cast the outcome of Tuesday's election in the grandest possible terms (quick, what's bigger than a tsunami?), in the context of history, electoral victories by the opposition to the sitting president's party are so common they're to be expected.

Through the graph-tacularity of Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly we can see clearly in the downward-projecting bars that in almost every case, the president's party loses seats in Congress in the midterm elections.

Not only are Tuesday's results unexceptional, they actually represent a return to normalcy. Despite all the revolutionary chest pounding, mixed party control of Congress is the norm for America - single party rule was the oddity.

Rachel explains:

more...

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/04/5405803-tidal-is-an-apt-metaphor-after-all

[Inuca]

1. Yeah, but that last

blue line is pretty damn long :-(

[gkhouston]

4. considering that the economy's in the shitter, not really.

Factor in the racist nutjobs and the brazillions of cash poured into the campaign and it's amazing we didn't lose the Senate as well, even with the teabaggers running.

[WI_DEM]

10. 60 isn't that much more than the 54 we lost in '94 when unemployment was under 6%!

[FBaggins]

24. Was 1994 something less than a blowout?

How does "not much worse than 1994" make us feel better?

And 65 is a fair bit worse than 54. It's a significant proportion of the number of seats necessary to win back the House.

[NewJeffCT]

25. It basically doubles the amount needed

If Dems had lost "only" 54 seats, they'd only need to pick up about a dozen to retake control of the House. However, since they lost 65, I think they need to pick up 22 or 23 seats.

[iamjoy]

2. No, This Is Horrible

And I wish people would stop making light of it. This is the biggest loss of seats by the party in power since 1938. The Republicans gained double the seats the Democrats did in 2006, which was still more than Democrats gained in 1982. We lost more seats than we did in 1994.

There's always been high tide and low tide, but sometimes a huge freak wave comes along and does a crap load of damage.

[fasttense]

3. Hmm, it seems to me that the last blue line hasn't been beat

since 1938. It tells me that it was a very large turnover of Democratic seats to RepubliCON control. It is the 2nd worse since 1934. I don't see how you can call that normal or average.

[Lochloosa]

5. There is one other thing to remember about this.

Someone said right before the election that the Dems held about 30 seats that they really shouldn't. I think it was Howard Dean but I'm not sure about that.

[budkin]

6. There's no spinning the fact that we got thumped

Let's just work harder to get it back.

[DCKit]

7. Thanks for posting this. I needed some perspective. Seriously. n/t

[Jennicut]

8. The midterms losses for the party in power is nothing new but the economy made it even worse.

[totodeinhere]

9. Why do people keep trying to downplay the fact that we got killed in the election?

We had the most House losses since 1938.

The GOP flipped 14 state legislatures and unified control of 25.

In Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Republicans took seats that had been held by Democrats. They also took seats now held by Democrats in Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming, and they won a hard fought contest in Florida. The GOP now holds a majority of governorships nationwide.

We had a net loss of six Senate seats making it much easier for the GOP to filibuster anything it wants too, even if a couple of GOP senators such as Scott Brown or the ladies from Maine don't go along with it.

I don't see any way to spin this in a positive way. President Obama was right when he said we got shellacked, and I wish that posters at DU would stop trying to say otherwise.

[WI_DEM]

11. It was bad but it could have been much worse

60 isn't much worse than the 54 in '94. Unlike '94 we held onto the Seante with a solid 53 seats (in '94 we lost 8 senate seats) in the governors races the GOP had a net gain of 5 compared to a net gain of 12 in '94. I'll agree state legislative seats are worse.

[FBaggins]

21. Only in the Senate.

In the House it WAS "much worse" (It's at least 65, not 60 BTW)... and in 1994 they couldn't immediately redistrict many of those wins into safe seats.

Take a look at where they grabbed new state legislative power

http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=21318

and where they already had control (includes new states).

http://www.ncsl.org/tabid/21253/default.aspx

and compare it to maps of where they picked up many of those seats.


in the governors races the GOP had a net gain of 5 compared to a net gain of 12 in '94.

Yeah... but CT, MN and VT count the same as WI, PA and OH when you're just talking about "net gain". The loss of the FL race along with PA/OH/MI/IA/FL is not really offset by holding NY or picking up CA. None of the ones we won (except NY) are "bench" for future presidential runs, and none of them (ditto) give us much redistricting help.

Looking back though... I don't know that we won much of anything in '94 (Alaska?)

I'll agree state legislative seats are worse.

I don't think that any of us had fully grasped how substantial a loss that was or how significant the future impact will be. IMO, this alone makes 2010 substantially worse than 1994.

[hedgehog]

12. I wonder why we lost so many seats in 1938? Was it because we were coming out of the Depression,

and people had already forgotten, or because we were slipping back, and people were mad?

[WI_DEM]

13. No, because there was a recession that year--unemployment was back up to nearly 20%

The truth is that while the New Deal did a lot of good and people had more of a safety net and jobs were created--the US didn't really get out of the depression until WWII.

[hedgehog]

15. Again, I'm fuzzy on this, but I have the impression that just as things

started to turn around, Congress cut a lot of the New Deal programs. This is rather analogous to passing a Stimulus Bill that is too small and ends too soon. If I'm right, did a lot of Democrats sit home or switch votes in 1938 because the Democrats had become too conservative?

On edit: look at 1966 - Johnson was dragging us into Viet Nam, and the Democrats lost big.

1978 - My memory is that the Democrats in congress were drifting to the Right, starting to talk that we had to cut back on social programs like Medicare and Social Security - we lost seats.

1994 - Clinton had dropped all efforts on health care reform - we lost seats.

I'm probably way over simplifying this, but I do see a pattern emerging!

[Marsala]

18. Also we had a truly ridiculous majority in the House before 1938

It was unsustainable, barring the Republicans becoming a permanent minority party.

[FBaggins]

20. Very similar to today (in some ways)

The public wasn't satisfied that significant measures (ever heard of the New Deal?) taken by a president were successfully getting them out of a deep recession.

Unlike the current environment, this was also the first election after Roosevelt "packed the court" and there was a chasm between New Deal democrats and the (now largely dead) southern conservative Democrats.

And it sure didn't help that we were defending 334 seats when Republicans only had 88!

[hedgehog]

14. If I heard right last night, overall, the Republicans led by 5 million votes.

14 million voters who came out in 2008 stayed home. (This is what I think I heard Michael Moore say last night on Lawrence O'Donnell, sorry, no link.)

If those numbers are right, then I think what hurt us is that a lot of people were disappointed at what they saw as a lack of progress. I'm not saying Obama hasn't accomplished anything, what I'm saying is that too many people think he hasn't accomplished anything.

[FBaggins]

22. I think that's missing a key factor.

2008 was a presidential election. People don't have to be "discouraged" or "disappointed" to have lower turnout in a midterm election.

It's a simple fact of political life. Some people (:hi:) will show up to vote in a primary for dog catcher. Others only show up for statewide elections... or national elections... and yes, millions of people only vote in presidential years. Entirely apart from whether they are encouraged or discouraged.

[hedgehog]

27. That's a new thought to put into this analysis - that the flipping of the House

is more due to voter apathy than to voters preferring Republicans or wanting to send a message. I suspect you are correct. Of course, maybe voter apathy is the message; we've got to get our message out!

[FBaggins]

28. Sorry... but I'm actually saying the opposite.

The "discouraged democrats" meme was (IMO) always incorrect. The "enthusiasm gap" wasn't between energized republicans and disillusioned democrats... it was with normally enthused democrats and others who were ape-sh1t-enthusiastic.

Most polls showed enthusiasm numbers for democrats that were roughly what they have been in prior mid-terms... but off-the-charts numbers for republicans (significantly higher in many cases than even '94).

The good news is that such rabid enthusiasm shouldn't be sustainable for very long.

[hedgehog]

29. I see what your saying there, and I think you're right about what happened Tuesday

and what's to come. This crowd does tend to get distracted by the latest shiny object.

[treestar]

16. Look at the comedians coming back to our side

Now that they have republicans in power to attack.

They just attack. That's all they do. They attack Democrats when Democrats hold all the power.

[DRoseDARs]

17. I love how people can make analysis by feeling, and try to discredit those who do so by fact.

Three times. THREE times, since 1934, has either party held both chambers and the White House at the same time after a midterm election. Rachel's point there was that in context the lose of the House was an easy bet. The bars in that graph represent the number of losses, the color represents the party of the sitting president. She doesn't make light of the number of the Democratic loses on Tuesday, but does point out that they're not as bad as they could have been given the economic conditions being as bad as THEY are. We didn't dodge the bullet, and in historical context it was very unlikely we would have, but it did graze us pretty bad. 2012 will show if it was a mortal wound.

[FBaggins]

19. There's no possible way to spin Tuesday as "unexceptional"

Trying to spin "a loss is a loss... it doesn't matter whether it's five seats or fifty" doesn't sell well either.

Yeah... they lost seats in almost every mid-term race... but only VERY rarely lost this many (and the graphed total is smaller than the actual results from Tuesday).

[Lilyeye]

23. Wow. We lost more seats than the repukes in 2006 when it was certain Bush was a disaster?

The power of lies and deception is strong.

[ProSense]

26. People keep focusing

on the number of House seats lost as the defining thing. Yeah, that was a lot, but it doesn't matter if they lost 30 or 60 iwhen they gained control the House. The Dems gained 31 seats in 2006 to control the House (with about the same margin Republicans now hold). Dems gained another 21 in 2008 to increase their majority to 257, which is 17 seats more than the new Republican majority.

Also, unlike 1994 and 2006, the party out of power failed to take control of both chambers of Congress, that is significant. It keeps Republicans at a disadvantage.

In 2006, Democrats gained the majority in the Senate, but there is a big difference between a 2-seat and and a 6-seat margin, especially when Dems control the WH.

Yeah, they lost a lot of House seats, but this isn't a disaster.

Looking across the state and local governments, there is no telling what the results mean for the next election. There is a lot of fear mongering around redistricting, but no one can be certain about the impact that will have.