The outcome of Tuesday’s elections may have been staggering, but it’s not the first time a president or party has been upbraided at the ballot box. Four writers reflect on historical midterm waves and what lessons they have for the present.
Max Boot: The first wave in 1894
Tuesday’s midterm election delivered a stunning rebuke to the Republican Party, with Democrats winning both the House and Senate by large margins. This is part of a historical pattern of one party winning the presidency and, two years later, the opposition winning a “wave” election.
That pattern dates all the way back to at least 1894, when, amid an economic downturn, Republicans captured both houses of Congress two years after Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected to his second term. There were similar waves, with both houses changing hands, in 1918 (Republicans won), 1946 (Republicans won), 1954 (Democrats won), 1994 (Republicans won) and 2006 (Democrats won). It’s even more common for control of one chamber to flip.
It’s normal for voters to punish the party of a president who overreaches. Typically, presidents who have been so rebuked pull back and govern in a more bipartisan fashion. After the 1994 midterms, Bill Clinton went from advocating a government takeover of health care to yielding to Republicans on balancing the budget and reforming welfare.
Sadly, it’s almost impossible to see President Donald Trump employing this strategy moving forward. More likely, he will clash with majority Democrats and try to govern, as he has already, by executive order. He may even act more provocatively abroad because he has lost power at home. But unless he does something to curb inflation — which will require, at minimum, ending his war with Iran — Republicans are likely to face another painful election in 2028.
Kate Andrews: Nixing Nixon in 1974
This week’s midterm election has been described as the biggest historical upset since 1974, when voters badly punished the Republican Party months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal.
The comparison is apt, not just because of the numbers but because of the climate in which the election took place. There has been a growing movement on the political right to revive Nixon’s reputation over the past year. Last month, it was revealed that President Donald Trump had tasked the Justice Department with reviewing the conduct of the special prosecutors who oversaw Watergate. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance claimed this summer that if Watergate happened today, it would be a “12-hour news story.”
This relaxed attitude toward elected representatives abusing power may have been part of the Republican Party’s problem this week: 90 percent of exit poll respondents told NBC that government corruption was either “crucial” or a “major factor” in their vote for Congress.
The president is presumably hoping that his political ending looks different from Nixon’s. Though he has conjured the spirit of the 37th president, repeating the 1974 midterms — or Nixon’s exit from office — is surely not what Trump had in mind.
Keith Richburg: In 1994, a Newt world got old quick
“It’s a Whole Newt World,” blared one headline after the Republican Party’s electoral earthquake in the midterms of 1994. The architect of the sweep was the brainy, boisterous Georgia firebrand Newt Gingrich, who came up with the idea to nationalize the midterms around a common set of pledges for Republican candidates: the “Contract with America.”
The “Contract” promised that a Republican majority would vote within 100 days on a raft of popular conservative proposals: balancing the budget, imposing congressional term limits, reforming welfare and making sentencing tougher for criminals.
The landslide gave Republicans 52 seats in the Senate and control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Several prominent Democratic committee chairs lost. Gingrich became the most prominent politician in Washington, while President Bill Clinton, two years into his presidency, was reduced to arguing that he was “still relevant.” Gingrich was Time magazine’s 1995 Man of the Year.
The Republican Revolution proved less than durable. Clinton, though chastened by an opposition Congress, cruised to reelection in 1996, when the Republicans lost three House seats. Two years later, the GOP overreached, voting to impeach Clinton following his affair with a White House intern. The Democrats gained four House seats — the first time since 1934 that the president’s party gained seats in a midterm. Gingrich resigned soon after.
Kathleen Parker: The 2010 ‘shellacking’
Every so often, a midterm jolts Washington awake. Tuesday’s election was one of those moments, a cleansing flush of the capital’s toxic bilge.
History saw it coming, even if Washington pretended not to. Since 1934, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but two midterms. President Barack Obama called his 2010 lesson a “shellacking” after Democrats lost 63 seats, the biggest midterm shift since 1938, giving Republicans a 242-193 majority and making Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) House Speaker.
The fiscally conservative tea party movement was a major force in turning out Republican voters after a year dominated by the health care reform debate, but it wasn’t a complete GOP victory. Many blamed tea party nominees for costing Republicans a Senate majority.
This week’s blowout, which should have shown President Donald Trump the limits of his power, isn’t likely to impart wisdom or humility to a man impervious to the instruction of either. Already, he’s promising to veto any legislation that reaches his desk. Even so, the American electorate can take comfort: The republic stands. We are not our neighbors’ enemies, and those who would try to make us so will soon be flushed out, too.
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