Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 17:52:00 -0500 From: Joshua Mason <jmason at aflcio.org> Sender: Joshua Mason <jmason at aflcio.org> Organization: AFL-CIO To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Why the Left Cries even When We Win Importance: normal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-disposition: inline Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Connect2-SMTP 4.30A MHS/SMF to SMTP Gateway
> What we are all celebrating is that the Republicans didn't win as big as
we
> had feared that they might. A Dunkirk, if you will. But nobody ever won
> anything by carrying out a successful evacuation.
Yeah--and why did everyone think the Rebulicans would win big? In large part, because of this pattern where the party that holds the presidency loses House seats in the off-year election. But isn't the main reason for the off-year phenomenon the fact that the party that wins the presidency also carries a lot of marginal districts that they have trouble holding without the presidential boost? By my count, in the 18 presidential-year elections from 1920 to 1988, the party that won the presidency gained an average of about 45 seats in the House; in the 18 off-year elections over the same period, the party with the presidency lost an average of 60 seats in the House. So most of the off-year effect seems to be the loss of seats that were carried in the slipstream of a winning presidential candidate.
But in 1996 the Dems gained only 2 seats. (In 1992 they lost 18.) That, along with the big swing in 1994, meant the Republicans were already holding most of the marginal seats that the presidential party normally loses in the off-year. In other words, the seats the Dems didn't lose in `98 are just the ones they didn't win in `96.
So I agree with Doug--even granting the questionable premise that a victory for the Dems would be something to cheer about, this wasn't it.
Josh