Repossessing the House
DANIELS, ROBERT V.
DEMOCRATIC PROSPECTS Repossessing the House BY ROBERT V. DANIELS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM holds that the GOP's 1994 electoral success was an epochal annihilation of decades of Democratic dominance in...
...They promptly roared back in 1948, Harry S. Truman's come-from-behind year, as the GOP hemorrhaged 75 seats...
...One indication of a probable backlash was the 1995 off-year election, when the Democrats captured the Kentucky governorship and Bob Packwood's Oregon Senate seat...
...He probably never did, and there will no doubt be additional realignments...
...In Washington State, for example, where the Republicans held only one of nine seats prior to '94 and now have a seven-to-two edge, each of their victories was scored with less than 55 per cent of the vote...
...The Elderly and Medicare: Polls have indicated that the Republicans' efforts to revamp Medicare are opposed two-to-one—and the group most directly concerned, the elderly, does get out to vote...
...The major change is one of style, as the old deal-making Southern Democrats (the right wing of the Left) give way to the new aggressive Southern Republicans (the right wing of the Right...
...The Motor-Voter Law: Automatically registering applicants for driver's licenses and welfare has resulted in a large pool of new voters, as many as 11 million since the statute went into effect early last year...
...No wonder the GOP, further aided by reapportionment, picked up 10 Southern House seats in 1992 and another 16 in '94...
...Southern representation in the House shifted to 64 Republicans against 61 Democrats even before the five defections to the GOP...
...Neither have the government shutdowns...
...Republican Aggressiveness: The OOP's across-the-board attack on familiar programs, and its attempts to cut taxes for the wealthy, have not drawn high marks...
...But the Southern Congressmen voted more often than not with the Republicans and made passing liberal bills difficult, except in times of crisis...
...and the familiar Republican-Southern Democratic coalition...
...The erosion of the old Southern Democratic tradition began with the support of Barry M. Goldwater for President in ROBERT V. DANIELS, a longtime NL contributor and former Vermont State Senate Minority Leader, is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Vermont...
...Their 1994 defeat did not signal a permanent realignment of parties or voters...
...In 1978 and 1980, for instance, Democrats lost a total of 50 House seats as the Carter Administration foundered...
...Five have so far crossed the aisle, venting discomforts that have been building since the 1950s and the Civil Rights era...
...Its one unusual consequence has been some party switching by Southern conservatives who decided to act on their true affinity with the Republicans...
...Labor: The revived militancy of the AFL-CIO under its new president, John J. Sweeney, seems certain to produce a better union vote for the Democrats, especially at the local district level...
...Public opinion analyst Kevin Phillips has said it is all a matter of "Who hates who...
...Judging from their current reactions to Congress' performance, or nonperformance, it would not be surprising if they decided they have had enough of the much-touted Republican revolution...
...More to the point, the revolutionary (or counterrevolutionary) militancy of the present House majority rests on a shaky electoral base...
...South Carolina state legislator C. D. Chamblee recently summed up what has been going on when he declared, "We just don't feel like Democrats in our guts anymore...
...In fact, as Dan Balz and Ronald Brown-stein observe in their new book, Storming the Gates, Americans may find that this year's House contests, more than the Presidential election, offer them the most clear-cut liberal-conservative choice in decades...
...So it was in 1980, when Ronald Reagan squeezed by Jimmy Carter and independent John B. Anderson with 51 per cent of the vote and was credited with a "landslide...
...Presumably this has swelled the ranks of low-income voters who tend to back Democrats, if—a big if—they actually vote...
...WHAT CAN BE said with confidence is that taken together these factors put the Republicans' control of the House in serious jeopardy, despite their fundraising advantage and their having fewer seats exposed due to retirements...
...Their rise from 176 to 236 seats may on the surface seem to have been a sea change, but there is ample precedent for temporary movements of this magnitude...
...Speaker Newt Gingrich's crew apparently forgot that in House contests voters are usually swayed more by what affects them personally than by ideology...
...In Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, Democrats actually won seats vacated by Republicans...
...Other pockets of marginal GOP success were the Ohio River Valley (three seats picked up in Indiana and three in Ohio, all but one by under 55 per cent) and the Plains States (five seats in Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, four by less than 55 per cent...
...If the Democrats recoup a mere 20 of the seats they lost in '94, they will not only repossess the House but have a majority that is less dependent than ever before on Southern conservatives...
...Continued anger, frustration and cynicism could work against the Republicans this year as abruptly as it worked for them in 1994...
...predicts that economic anxieties will fuel a Democratic revival—if the party has the courage to stand by its progressive antecedents...
...1964, soon extended to the backing of Republican candidates for the Senate and governorships, and in the last two elections included working to seat Republican House delegations and state legislatures...
...In his latest book, They Only Look Dead, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr...
...and the first post-Watergate election in 1974 cost Republicans 49 seats...
...Victory margins were slim for many freshmen...
...In all, there are 18 districts where the Republican candidate won with 51 per cent of the ballots cast, or even less...
...The participation of all three groups dropped off abnormally in 1994...
...DEMOCRATIC PROSPECTS Repossessing the House BY ROBERT V. DANIELS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM holds that the GOP's 1994 electoral success was an epochal annihilation of decades of Democratic dominance in the House of Representatives...
...But the real precursor of 1994 was the 1946 postwar election, when the Democrats lost 54 seats and their House majority...
...Turnout: Because more voters go to the polls in Presidential years, Democrats are bound to be buoyed by greater support from women, low-income earners and minorities...
...Indeed, the complexion of the House after November 5 seems likely to depend on the following factors: ?GOP Vulnerability: Many of the Republicans elected outside the South cashed in on one-time economic events, such as the defense spending cuts that led to layoffs at Boeing Aircraft in Kansas and Washington...
...The misconception reflects the media's addiction to political hyperbole, to trumpeting Electoral College vote totals and tallies of won or lost Congressional seats until even anemic victories become sweeping mandates...
...In short, whatever happens in the Presidential and Senatorial contests, the Democrats could retake the House in November...
...The rest of the Republican additions were thinly scattered—a district here, a district there, mostly by less than 55 per cent...
...And their course can already be gleaned from the battles waged by Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt and Minority Whip David E. Bonior in the 104th Congress on issues ranging from health insurance to the environment to the minimum wage...
...But the Southerners who remain Democrats will be more at home in the party...
...Congress' liberal-conservative balance, in any case, remains essentially the same as it was in the heyday of the old Republican-Southern Democratic coalition...
...Forty-seven Democrats were ousted in 1966, leaving Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society hostage to Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur D. Mills (D.-Ark...
...Of 166 House seats Republicans won outside the South, 39—including most of those taken from Democrats—were secured by less than 55 per cent of the vote...
...True, Republican candidates scored a headline-grabbing gain of 54 seats and took control of the House with a modest majority, but they did it with just 51 per cent of the votes cast in contested elections nationwide...
...The GOP "revolution" of 1994 was similarly a media creation...
...Two bellwether examples of Republicans now in the danger zone are Rick White, whose 52 per cent of the vote in '94 pried Washington's first district (encompassing part of Seattle and its northern suburbs, and carried by Bill Clinton in 1992) away from incumbent Maria Cantwell, and Jon Christensen, whose 50 per cent took Nebraska's second (Omaha) district away from Peter Hoagland...
...Voter Volatility: Pollster Stanley Greenberg is worried about our "failed politics, one fully capable of expressing rage but incapable of capturing the public's imagination...
...The numbers tell a very different story?of narrow Republican wins owed to momentary advantages that could well be reversed this time around...
...In those days die-hard citizens from the 11 states of the former Confederacy, their numbers increased by like-minded Northern migrants, regularly sent 90-100 mainly conservative Democrats to Capitol Hill, and thereby accounted for a third of the Democratic House contingent...
...Thus the GOP can hardly be credited with a broad "sweep," and its gains could be reversed by slight shifts in public opinion...
Vol. 79 • January 1996 • No. 1
