Whats Distinctive About Democrats Losses Under Obama? Their Magnitude.
When Barack Obama was inaugurated nearly six years ago, Democrats ruled the roost in the nations capital, with solid majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Now, after Mr. Obamas second midterm election, Democrats are a distinct minority on both sides of the Capitol.
That in itself is not unusual. Mr. Obamas two most recent predecessors, Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush, were in similar positions at the six-year mark of their presidencies: with congressional majorities in the presidents party giving way to the hegemony of the opposition. And six years into his presidency, Ronald Reagan saw the demise of the Republican-controlled Senate that he had helped sweep into power in 1980.
But whats distinctive about Mr. Obamas presidency in this regard has been the magnitude of his partys congressional losses. Democrats emerged from the 2008 elections with 256 House seats and 57 Senate seats. After this months elections, the Democrats are likely to have 188 House seats and 44 Senate seats (not including the two independents that caucus with Senate Democrats), according to Kyle Kondit, managing editor of Larry J. Sabatos Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Altogether, that would represent a loss for Democrats of 68 House seats and 13 Senate seats since 2008. After six years in office, no other president in the past half-century has seen his party lose more than 50 House seats or more than a dozen Senate seats.
One needs to go back to Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s to find the presidents party suffering such congressional carnage as the Democrats have experienced under Barack Obama. Mr. Eisenhower helped sweep the GOP into control of both houses of Congress when he was first elected in 1952. But after his second midterm election, in 1958, Republicans were a distinct minority in both chambers. They had lost 67 House seats and 14 Senate seats from the halcyon days when Ike was initially elected.
Then, Republican congressional losses represented a return to normalcy, as Democrats ruled Congress for the bulk of the period from 1932 to 1994. In a sense, that is what has happened again. Neither party of late has boasted the near-monolithic control of Capitol Hill that the Democrats long wielded. But for most of the past two decades, Republicans have enjoyed the upper hand in both houses of Congress. And now, with continuing Democratic losses, they do so again.
Rhodes Cook is a political analyst and publisher of a bimonthly political newsletter.
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Whats Distinctive About Democrats Losses Under Obama? Their Magnitude.