1968=2008 the other way around? (user search)
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  1968=2008 the other way around? (search mode)
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Author Topic: 1968=2008 the other way around?  (Read 1710 times)
DS0816
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Posts: 3,109
« on: February 05, 2016, 02:49:20 PM »

This question just came to my mind: Was 2008 the beginning of a reverse from 1968? Before 1968, Democrats were in charge of the presidency for the most time of the past four decades. In 1968, an era of several GOP presidencies begun. During 28 of the next 40 years, we had a Republican in the White House (only 4 years of Carter and 8 of Clinton). Meanwhile, in the same time span, the GOP controlled the entire congress for only twelve years (1995 to 2007; if you include the Senate tie from 2001-2003); even Reagan had only a Republican senate for the first six years of his administration. Now, after 2008, the opposite seems to happen: Democrats control the presidency for the most time, while the GOP maintains its congressional majorities (especially the House, like Dems did in the 1980s). We all talked about the GOP’s difficulties to win back the White House (for example, there is almost no realistic path to victory without FL) and Dem’s problems to retake the House (even the Senate will be tough this year, and even if Hillary is elected president).

Some historians argue that 1968 was a realignment (from 1932), but I disagree with that in the most part, because that only applies to the presidency alone.



Last month, in response to a different thread, I wrote the following:

@ https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=225995.msg4858204#msg4858204

I don't think one strategy fits everywhere. For example, in Georgia it's probably a better strategy to run on Obama's legacy, seeing as to how the Hispanic population is on the rise and general Black turnout is higher. Both of those demographics could help flip Georgia without much of a shift in candidates. However, in Arkansas or Louisiana, Democrats should look to cultural conservatives or moderates who are progressive on economics. They cannot be flaky on economic issues. Minimum wage increases are popular in places like West Virginia and Arkansas.

Democrats should actually be looking more at the Rust Belt states, including my home state Michigan. In midterm election years which are a wave for the White House's opposition party, and results in a pickup of the U.S. House, the trend on Election Night is immediately considered with the Rust Belt states. In 2006, it was obvious with Indiana (which closes its polls at 07:00 p.m. ET). In Michigan, 9 of the 14 U.S. House seats ended up in the Republican column as President Obama won that state with re-election by close to 450,000 raw votes and 9.5 percentage points. (The state is typically close to 6 percentage points more Democratic than the nation.)

The Democratic Party needs to perform routinely stronger in Core Democratic states on the eastern half of the electoral map. And the party needs to be doing that, at the U.S. Senate level, throughout all of New England (much more so now with Maine than the swingiest of those six states, New Hampshire). If the Democrats, going forward, fail to shore up these weaknesses, I would question whether they are actually bothered by losing in midterms. After all, since 1914 the White House opposition party gained congressional seats in 23 of the 26 elections with include as the most recent 2014. It's like asking the question, "Okay—no party wins everything. Or wins everything for long. So which would you prefer—President and maybe the U.S. Senate or fail to win President but win U.S. House and U.S. Senate?" The Democrats, during the Republican presidential realigning period of 1968 to 2004, won Congress the majority of that period while the Republicans won the presidency. From 2008 going forward, we may be looking at the opposite. (Between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, choosing just one of them to be in the column of the party of the president, it's typically the Senate which will fall in the column of the party of the president…while it is the House which goes first for the opposition. Refer to the midterm elections of 2006 and 2010 as examples of that.)

I received the following response from a forum member who said I have "a relatively good point":

The Democrats, during the Republican presidential realigning period of 1968 to 2004, won Congress the majority of that period while the Republicans won the presidency. From 2008 going forward, we may be looking at the opposite. (Between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, choosing just one of them to be in the column of the party of the president, it's typically the Senate which will fall in the column of the party of the president…while it is the House which goes first for the opposition. Refer to the midterm elections of 2006 and 2010 as examples of that.)

This is a relatively good point, and I think there may be some truth to it. However, it seems more like that their Congressional dominance began in 1994. Republicans, at this point, already had enough voter support to take over Congress, they just hadn't found a way to get people to vote at the state/Congressional level the way they were voting at the presidential level, which was pretty strongly Republican, and obviously the Republican Revolution was their breakthrough.

Not every dominant stretch is going to be the same and is subject to unique circumstances of the time. Bush was, by most measures, a bad president and his 8 years of rule brought a lot of misfortune to the party. Scandals, the neverending wars, him simply being president when the economy tanked, which got his party blame, and so on. With that in consideration, its reasonable to see how Democrats could pick up so many seats and then lose them. They benefited from a backlash and not a genuine change in older people's voting habits.

The Democratic realignment I think we have having now is not a FDR-like realignment where people of all ages change allegiances, but rather a combination of overwhelmingly minority support, of whose population is growing very rapidly, and generational replacement - Millennials have been overwhelmingly Democratic for a long time now and they will continue to grow older and vote more and more often, squeezing out the Republican-leaning older voters.

All said, I think Republicans best performance will be in the House, and only for 15 or so more years at most. The Senate will probably be relatively flip-floppy as Democrats do have impressive numbers in presidential elections, but those voters fall out in midterms. So while theoretically they have the support in a lot of crucial states, they need to figure out how to get them to vote in midterms or simply wait until Millennials get old enough to vote more frequently.


Bottom line: Look to the past 57 presidential elections of 1789 to 2012. Realigning elections are not just realignments of the map (1988 Republican; 1992 Democratic). They are realigning presidential elections which kick off with a specific year, the result of a disastrous event or incident, and they cause the voting electorate to move away from that president's party and toward the opposition party with a more general trust for voting the presidency of the United States. Those past realigning presidential elections were 1800 (Democratic-Republican); 1828 (Democratic); 1860 (Republican); 1896 (Republican); 1932 (Democratic); 1968 (Republican). And I'm adding to them 2008 (Democratic).
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