How Bad a Midterm Loss?
The Democrats seem to have lost 57 seats in the House, and 6 in the Senate. You know that the Republicans and the mainstream press are going to characterize this as the worst, most complete electoral defeat in the history of the Human Race. So I thought I would look at the numbers from some previous midterm elections:
FDR, 1938: -71 in the House, -6 in the Senate
Harry Truman, 1945: -45 in the House, -12 in the Senate
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958: -45 in the House, -13 in the Senate
Lyndon Johnson, 1966: -47 in the House, -4 in the Senate
Gerald Ford, 1974: -48 in the House, -5 in the Senate
Bill Clinton, 1994: -52 in the House, -8 in the Senate
So, all things considered, Obama's losses were not all that out of line, particularly for a nation in economic distress (that accounts, for example, for the losses Eisenhower suffered in 1958, or the disastrous election of 1938, which resulted from the severe economic downturn the economy experienced in 1937, when Roosevelt started listening to Conservative economic siren songs.)
And remember that all of these elections happened before five blatantly corrupt Supreme Court justices made it possible for corporations and foreign countries to buy our legislators. It may take a long time before we understand how much that factor alone preserved the party of the rich from oblivion.
FDR, 1938: -71 in the House, -6 in the Senate
Harry Truman, 1945: -45 in the House, -12 in the Senate
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958: -45 in the House, -13 in the Senate
Lyndon Johnson, 1966: -47 in the House, -4 in the Senate
Gerald Ford, 1974: -48 in the House, -5 in the Senate
Bill Clinton, 1994: -52 in the House, -8 in the Senate
So, all things considered, Obama's losses were not all that out of line, particularly for a nation in economic distress (that accounts, for example, for the losses Eisenhower suffered in 1958, or the disastrous election of 1938, which resulted from the severe economic downturn the economy experienced in 1937, when Roosevelt started listening to Conservative economic siren songs.)
And remember that all of these elections happened before five blatantly corrupt Supreme Court justices made it possible for corporations and foreign countries to buy our legislators. It may take a long time before we understand how much that factor alone preserved the party of the rich from oblivion.
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