Anatomy of the Most Crushing Democratic Loss in U.S. House Since 1894
Edited on Wed Nov-10-10 12:43 AM by Time for change
Going into the 2010 Midterm elections, the Democratic Party held 255 House seats, to the Republican Party’s 178 (2 seats were vacant). Following the November 2 elections, as of this writing, the Democrats hold 190 seats to the Republicans’ 239, with 6 seats pending final results. That comes to a Democratic loss of 65 seats and a Republican gain of 61 seats, pending the results of the final 6. In the end, the Democratic loss will be anywhere from 59 to 65 seats. They also lost 6 Senate seats.
Arguably, this represents the worst defeat for the Democratic Party in the U.S. House since 1894, the midterm of the second presidential administration of Grover Cleveland – a year in which the Democratic Party lost 116 House seats and 5 Senate seats, to lose control of both Houses of Congress. Here is a capsule summary of the worst Democratic Congressional losses since that time:
1894 – Lost 116 House seats; lost 5 Senate seats; lost control of both Houses of Congress
1912 – Lost 59 House seats; gained 5 Senate seats; maintained control of both Houses
1920 – Lost 59 House seats; lost 10 Senate seats; GOP maintained control of both Houses
1938 – Lost 71 House seats; lost 6 Senate seats; but maintained huge majorities in both Houses
1946 – Lost 55 House seats; lost 12 Senate seats; lost control of both Houses
1994 – Lost 54 House seats; lost 9 Senate seats; lost control of both Houses
2010 – Lost 59-65 House seats; lost 6 Senate seats; lost control of House but not Senate
So 2010 was the first time since 1894 that the Democrats lost 59 or more House seats and lost control of the House. And what makes it all the more devastating is the far right-wing extremism of so many of the incoming Republicans. Therefore it is important to understand the political dynamics of the Democratic loss.
Overview of 2010 Democratic loss of House seats
The 2010 U.S. House elections involved 171 incumbent Republicans running for re-election. 169 of them (99%) won. There were also 24 seats in which no incumbent ran. Republicans won 21 (87%) of those seats. Democratic incumbents fared far worse than Republican incumbents, losing 49 of 240 seats (20%), with another 6 (2%) still pending. Let’s consider some of the factors involved in the loss of so many seats held by Democratic incumbents.
Role of partisanship
Far and away the most important single variable in the loss of seats held by Democratic incumbents was the conservative nature of the districts in which most of the seats were lost.
The Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) is a measure of how the Congressional Districts voted in the last two presidential elections. Of the 240 House elections in which Democratic incumbents won, 184 represented House districts with Democratic PVIs. The Democratic incumbents didn’t fare too terribly in those districts, winning 172 (93%) and losing 10 (5%), with 2 (1%) pending. But in the 58 House districts with Republican PVIs, the Democratic incumbents lost 39 seats (67%) and won only 15 (26%), with 4 pending. In summary, given the mood of this year’s electorate, the PVI alone statistically predicted 84% of the results among Democratic House incumbents.
Therefore, what mostly happened in 2010 was that Democrats from conservative districts lost seats that they had won in 2006 and 2008 when the Democratic Party fared much better. Indeed more than half of the 54 member Blue Dog coalition was wiped out in this election.
Role of voting patterns
The National Journal ranked all but 8 of the 240 Democrats running for reelection in the House according to their tendency to vote in a liberal direction on economic, social, and foreign affairs legislation. Those rankings demonstrated virtually no statistical effect on the likelihood of those Democrats maintaining their seats. The incumbent Democrats from the more liberal districts tended to vote substantially more liberally in all three categories, whereas those from the more conservative districts tended to vote more conservatively in all three categories. So those voting patterns don’t tell us a great deal. Had those from the more liberal districts voted more conservatively than they did, or had those from the more conservative districts voted more liberally than they did, both group probably would have lost more seats.
However, their votes on the health care reform bill and Obama’s TARP plan did have some statistically significant effect – a negative effect for a “yes” vote. Actually, those who voted for that legislation were substantially more likely to hold on to their seats. But that’s just because those who voted for them were mainly from the more liberal districts. It was the Democrats from the conservative districts whose seats were in great jeopardy, and for those Democrats a vote for Obama’s health care bill, and to a lesser extent his TARP plan, increased their likelihood of losing their seat. Evaluation of the health care vote in addition to the TARP vote and the PVI increased the statistical power to predict the election results from 84% to 88%. None of the other voting patterns noted above significantly added predictive power.
What the exit polls tell us
Much of the exit poll data tells us what we already knew. Voters who were most likely to vote Democratic were young, poor, women, black or Latino, members of labor unions, liberal, not very religious, and were either the least educated of the electorate (high school dropouts) or the most educated (graduate school degrees). But some of the polling data was much more interesting:
The Obama factor
The exit polls show that voters who disapprove of Obama’s handling his job as president outnumbered those who approve by 54% to 45%, and that those who strongly disapprove outnumber those who strongly approve by 40% to 23%. More important, the 40% who strongly disapproved voted for the Republican House candidate by a whopping margin of 92% to 6%.
Furthermore, 37% of respondents specifically indicated that their vote was meant to express opposition to Obama (compared to 24% whose vote was meant to express support for Obama). Those voters voted Republican for their House candidate by a margin of 93% to 5%.
Opinion of the Republican Party
Responses to voter opinion of the Republican Party were especially interesting. Only 42% said that they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, compared to 52% who said that they had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party. Those responses were very similar to an analogous question regarding the Democratic Party – 43% of respondents said they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
One might think that the fact that the opinions of voters of the two parties were almost identical would have foretold a very close election for the House, rather than the huge Republican victory that unfolded. But those who held an unfavorable view of the Republican Party nevertheless voted for Republicans 23% of the time (compared to 10% of those who held an unfavorable view of Democrats voting for Democrats). Why would 23% of voters who held an unfavorable view of Republicans nevertheless vote for Republicans? A powerful clue to the answer to that question comes from responses to the questions about the economy.
Concern about the economy
Half of all respondents said that they were very worried about economic conditions (and another 36% were somewhat worried). Those voters voted overwhelmingly for Republicans – 70% to 28%. That finding should not be too surprising. Economic conditions have been very poor in our country for the last couple of years, and it makes sense that Democrats would be blamed for that, given that they have controlled both the presidency and Congress for nearly the past two years.
But it appears that voters did not blame the Democrats for the economy as much as the above considerations would lead one to think. In answer to the question “Who do you blame for economic problems”, only 23% blamed Obama, while 29% blamed Bush. But the most interesting responses involved Wall Street, which was blamed for our economic problems by 35% of respondents (Either Congress was not addressed in this poll question, or responses involving Congress were not included in this particular report).
Most important, voters who blamed Wall Street for our economic problems voted Republican by a margin of 56% to 42% – and this group made all the difference in the final election results. Some might think that this result is surprising, since the Republican Party has long been much more Wall Street friendly than the Democratic Party. However, over the last couple of years and beyond, the Democratic Party – both its president and its Congresspersons – has done a very poor job of differentiating itself from the interests of Wall Street. That’s the way that I see it (more on that below), and that’s the way that most voters saw it too. In other words, on an issue that pretty much decided the election, the Democratic Party failed to side with the bulk of the American people over the financial elites who provide a good deal of funding for many of their campaigns – and they apparently paid the price for it. It must be said that neither did the Republican Party side with the American people on economic issues. But the Democrats were in control of both Congress and the presidency, and so they were blamed for it.
A few words about voter suppression
One thing you never see mentioned in election polling articles is voter suppression – even though it is a major factor in many national elections in the United States these days, and probably accounted for George W. Bush’s election “victories” in both 2000 and 2004.
Information on what kinds of voters actually turn out to vote comes from exit polling. So when pollsters make assumptions about registered Democrats being less likely to vote than Republicans, they base those assumptions largely on exit poll data. But with intensive voter suppression activities, many voters who come out to vote, or who attempt to vote, don’t actually vote and aren’t included in the exit polls either.
All types of dirty tricks are used to prevent minorities, the poor, and Democrats in general from voting. Massive organized efforts are made to “challenge” voters in Democratic polling places, thereby slowing down the voting process, causing long voting lines, and causing many voters to leave, either because of time constraints or because of the intimidation itself. In many poor neighborhoods, flyers are passed out with incorrect information on voting times and places, or with threats of imprisonment in order to scare voters away from the polls. This year “Tea Party Patriots” put out an ad that put a $500 bounty on “fraudulent voters”. And they also have used fraudulent computer programs to make voters ineligible to vote, as they did to tens of thousands of Florida voters in 2000 and hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters in 2004.
The vast majority of voter suppression is conducted by Republicans, targeting Democratic voters. And they did it again this year, with Tea Party zealots playing a major role, as demonstrated in this expose written just before the election:
Numerous reports have documented how state GOP chapters, local Tea Party groups and organizations like Americans for Prosperity are mobilizing across the country – holding training sessions and posting instructional videos on their websites about how to challenge suspicious voters. But the right's concern about widespread voter fraud has virtually no basis in empirical reality; a 2007 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that "an American is more likely to get struck by lightning than impersonate another voter at the polls."
Thus it is that massive organized efforts by thugs to repress voting end up getting interpreted by pollsters as lack of interest in voting by poor and minority Democratic voters.
The bottom line – Connecting the dots to explain the Republican tsunami of 2010
Robert Kuttner, in his book “A Presidency in Peril – The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future”, explains the current political problems of the Democratic Party as well as anyone I’ve read – in a chapter titled “Political Malpractice”. The book was published well before the 2010 election:
Opportunity lost
Kuttner discusses how, following the 2006 and 2008 elections, the Democratic Party seemed to be in a great position to oversee a long-standing, if not permanent realignment of major party loyalties in the United States:
The events of 2008 portended a durable partisan realignment (in favor of the Democratic Party), comparable to the Roosevelt realignment of 1932… The political cycle built on conservative social, racial and cultural backlash, which had energized the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush coalitions, was winding down. It was giving way to an economic backlash that played to the natural strength of Democrats… Voters were steadily becoming more tolerant… Gay baiting was no longer a recipe for Republican success. Younger voters were increasingly tolerant of racial diversity, as Obama’s own election underscored….. Young voters were increasingly inclined to support Democrats… Blacks, Hispanics, and other immigrant groups leaned to the Democrats, and their share of the population was increasing, too. Better-educated and professional people tended to vote Democratic… Women voted Democratic by large majorities… More of today’s voters believe it is the responsibility of government to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves… If the Democrats needed one more gift, the unpopularity of the Bush administration, combined with the open disarray of the Republican Party in 2008 and early 2009, surely provided it. Sarah Palin… was an embarrassment to a majority of Americans. Meanwhile, the party of family values was the party of one tawdry sex scandal after another…
So what happened?
Siding with Republicans and the financial elite against the American people
Throughout much of his book, Kuttner discusses how Obama’s policies have favored the financial elite over the vast majority of Americans. He notes how Obama’s solution to the home foreclosure crisis was a program called “Making Home Affordable”, and he comments on that program, comparing it with the Obama administration’s TARP program (the Wall Street bailout).
Several trillions in loans and loan guarantees for the banks, and a grudging $3 billion for the homeowners who had been the banks’ victims (resulting from Obama’s program). As a consequence of the administration’s half measures and failure to move boldly, the mortgage foreclosure crisis is continuing to drive millions of Americans from their homes, depress housing prices… and retard the recovery… Refinancing underwater retail mortgages is comparatively easy. It just requires political will.
Sometimes it’s difficult to discern the difference between siding with financial elites at the expense of the American people vs. simply trying to conciliate Republicans. Obama’s emphasis during his 2010 State of the Union message appeared to be a combination of both, as Obama indicated that deficit reduction would be a priority over stimulation of a stagnant economy. Kuttner comments on that:
The proposal put a damper on Obama’s capacity to deliver new anti-recession spending. With unemployment still rising, the president was plainly signaling that deficit reduction now came first… The freeze was a feeble sop to deficit hawks…
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s response was even more scathing in its criticism:
A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team… It’s appalling on every level. It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment… It’s bad long-run fiscal policy… And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view… A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”
And then there was the infamous “Cat food Commission”, about which Kuttner explains:
To further appease deficit hawks, Obama appointed a deficit-reduction commission – an idea that the Senate had just voted down. The commission was designed by its advocates to bypass usual legislative procedures and compel an up-or-down vote on a deficit reduction package widely expected to slash Social security and Medicare spending. This is, of course, appalling politics. It signals: We had to spend a ton of taxpayer money to rescue the banks and prop up the ruined economy. Now, though you have paid once through the reduced value of your retirement plan and your house, you will pay again through cuts in Medicare and Social Security.
The health care “reform” fiasco
I’ve criticized in great deal Obama’s so-called health care reform, especially with regard to his decision to omit the public option which he had promised during his campaign. Kuttner’s take on this issue is very similar, and he expounds on how Obama’s handling of health care “reform” affected him and his party politically:
Cutting a deal with the insurance and drug companies, not exactly candidates to win popularity contests, associated Obama with profoundly resented interest groups. This was exactly the wrong framing. This battle should have been the president and the people versus the interests. Instead more and more voters concluded that it was the president and the interests versus the people… The interest-group strategy made it impossible to put on the table more fundamental and popular reforms, such as using federal bargaining power to negotiate cheaper drug prices, or having a true public option like Medicare for all. Instead, by embracing a deal that required the government to come up with a trillion dollars of subsidy for the insurance industry, Obama was forced to pursue policies that were justifiably unpopular – such as taxing premiums of people with decent insurance, or compelling people to buy policies that they often couldn’t afford, or diverting money from Medicare…
The bill helped about two-thirds of America’s uninsured, but it did almost nothing for the 85% of Americans with insurance that is becoming more costly and unreliable by the day – except frighten them into believing that what little they have is at increased risk of being taken away
A few words about FDR as a means of comparison
I believe that a comparison of Obama’s approach with that of FDR is highly instructive. Both were faced with what are likely the two greatest financial crises of our nation’s history. There are basically two ways to respond to a crisis or to politically prepare for the next election. One is to fight for legislation and policies that will benefit the vast majority of people. The other is to approach it mainly from a political perspective, acceding to the wishes of powerful elites who have the ability and desire to fund your campaigns, or to fight you if you turn against them. Kuttner explains:
Unlike Obama, Roosevelt was not afraid to take on Republicans for fear of being called a partisan. Nor was he reluctant to take on Wall Street for fear of being called radical. Roosevelt was not intimidated by claims that drastic reforms would “unsettle” financial markets, which were already unsettled to the point of collapse. The point of the New Deal was not to appease money markets, but to remake them – which Roosevelt did. The strategy was not to conciliate the Republican Party, but to outvote it. Virtually all of Roosevelt’s major reforms were enacted over the strenuous opposition of both Wall Street and Republicans in Congress. But it didn’t matter, because the reforms served the people and the goal of a broad recovery. Roosevelt didn’t aspire to consensus at all costs but to help people, and that proved astute politics. Despite the hysterical opposition from the Republican Party and Wall Street, the people reciprocated. In his reelection campaign, Roosevelt carried forty-six (of 48) states.
During that campaign, Roosevelt brilliantly framed the battle as one of the people versus the selfish special interests. He could do this with credibility because his policies were bold enough to yield concrete benefits in people’s lives… Far-right movements trying to rally desperate people kept bumping into folks who loved Roosevelt, because Roosevelt had tangibly improved their lives. Socially conservative citizens who did not think much of Roosevelt’s relatively liberal views on race… nonetheless supported him in droves…
In conclusion
Kuttner explains that when there are no leftist/liberal/progressive forces to address peoples’ problems…
the right fills the gap. It doesn’t matter that their diagnoses make no sense or that their remedies fail. Anxious and frightened people seek scapegoats and simple explanations. The charge that Obama was a dangerous radical was preposterous, yet it resonated in part because of his failure to use a little constructive radicalism on behalf of popular frustrations….
In an economic crisis, popular frustration has to go somewhere. If progressives don’t tell a coherent story about the culpability of rapacious elites and work to restore some balance to the economy, right-wing populists are happy to supply the narrative. A moment when progressives were primed to take back a majority politics has been not just lost but actually ceded to the right… Barack Obama’s New Democrat advisers… evidently had nothing plausible to say to those in economic distress. A deep recession was demolishing people’s dreams, and the incumbent Democrats were plainly not delivering enough. When Democrats failed to deliver, they (voters) easily reverted to Republican.
Little else matters. A Democratic Party that puts too high a priority on appeasing Republicans and the rich and powerful is a party that is either headed for electoral disaster or one that will produce little or nothing of value for the American people – probably both. As Robert Kuttner says:
The Republican Party had no serious program to remedy the financial collapse… Nor did it have plausible national leaders… But none of that mattered. If the in-party fails to perform well in a crisis, the out-party gains.
