It Was a Bad Day to be a Democrat

The votes are in and counted (for the most part). The question now is; what happened?

If you look at the results of the day and compare them to where we stood as a nation yesterday, an easy conclusion to draw would be that a law was passed banning Democrats from the US House of Representatives. Another (more legal) conclusion to draw would be that the American public got tired of its Democratic leadership.

When the morning broke on this month of November, there were 257 Democratic Representatives and 178 Republicans. As of right now, the numbers in January for the 113th Congress will be 186 Democrats and 239 Republicans.

So what’s the big deal? Americans got fed up with the Democratic Party and after a six year run as a majority, they are back in the minority. Well, the problem lies in how it happened.

INSTANT MEDIA

In the past ten years, it seems that the American public has become in ever increasing need of instant gratification. This applies to their need for almost anything, be it food, entertainment, or most notably in this decade, information and results. Information is available now more than it ever has been quite literally in the history of the planet and all someone has to do is log on to the internet and all the information they could ever desire is just a click away. Unfortunately, this has only enflamed our insatiable need for instant gratification.

Applied to politics, people want what they want and they want it now. Political analysts always talk about FDR in the days leading up to a presidential election. They talk about how in his first 100 days in office, he set the pieces in motion that would help lead us out of the darkest economic times of this country’s history. Now, presidents are measured by what they are able to achieve in those first three months and change in office with absolutely no regard for a few simple facts.

- FDR was one of the best president’s this country has ever had according to any number of rankings.
- Starting in January 1933 (when he took office) he was supported by an overwhelming congressional majority (313-117) in the House of Representatives.

Add those together and you get a formula for getting a lot of things done. In fact, during his first six years in the White House, the Democrat’s margin in the House only grew (from 196 seats in 1932 to 244 seats in 1936).

When a president doesn’t do well in those first three months, citizens already start looking ahead to next time and to be honest, that’s pathetic.

2000-2010

In the year 2000 when George W. Bush was elected, the Republicans had a 9 vote margin in the House, a slim lead they had maintained throughout the Clinton administration. This lead held through Bush’s first term, but in his second term, public opinion started to sway violently. In 2004, when Bush was re-elected, Republicans held a 29 vote margin in the House, the largest majority they had had since 1946 when Truman was in the White House.

Two years later, the Democrats retook the majority with a 37 vote margin.
Two years later, the Democrats retook the White House and extended their margin in the House to 79 votes.
This year, Republicans retook the majority and now have a 53 vote margin.

In six short years, Republicans have gone from 29 votes up to 79 votes down back to 53 votes up. This year alone, the Democrats lost 71 seats. To give you a better idea of what that means, since the House expanded to 435 members, the Democratic party has lost 71 seats just one other time, in 1938, but that year they started with such an enormous majority that they still held a 93 vote margin.

Since the rough beginning of Republican/Democratic politics in Congress, the Democratic party has lost this large a chunk of the House seats only three other times and two of those were in the Civil War when there was a very successful and popular Republican president.

THE SPIN

So now that I’ve thrown a whole bunch of numbers at you, what does all that mean and why am I so riled up about all of this? For that, I have a relatively simple answer. There’s an old saying in baseball for the 162 regular season schedule. No matter what, you’re going to win 54 games and lose 54 games; it’s what you do with those last 54 games that really matters.

If you apply that to politics you can get a rough outline of our country. 33% of the people are hardcore Republicans and 33% are hardcore Democrats. The last third of the country might identify with one party more than another but they can be swayed by cunning campaigning. Indeed, every election is a dogfight for those 33% in the middle of the political spectrum and politicians are so advanced in their practice of persuasion that often it comes down to the middle 5-10% rather than 33%.

Here’s the part that irks me. In the second half of George W. Bush’s presidency, that middle third was flocking towards the left and for a minute, it almost looked like this country was going to undergo honest-to-god social change, perhaps shifting more to the left and away from the right. Now, just a scant few years later, America is shifting wildly back to the right.

In 2008, 62 Congressmen and women were elected for the first time; 24 Republicans and 38 Democrats. Of those 62 elected representatives, 27 of them, or 43.5%, will be looking for a new job come January. For the record, the party breakdown is indicative of what is going on around the country; 22 of 24 Republicans finishing their first term were re-elected while just 13 of 38 Democrats were similarly re-elected. How do we know that it was those 27 first time Representatives and not the 25 Representatives that have served for more than 30 years who are to blame for our current predicament?

In short, we don’t.

SOLUTION?

We, the people, of the United States of America, sent these men and women to Congress to do a job and instead of letting them complete that job, they were there for 6 months working and then 18 months campaigning and now we’re telling them we’re going to try someone else.

Is there a solution? Happier and more prosperous times, perhaps. The American people weren’t reshaping the face of the government every two years in the 90’s when the economy was booming and everyone had too much money to spend. So, true to form, the economy will stabilize once again and the sitting president and Congress will get all the credit despite having relatively little to do with the ultimate results.

Yes, this is a cynical way to view politics but don’t worry, I’ll be less cynical after the face changes itself once again…


730 days and counting…


Leon Kodak: You see, the country has mood swings.

Lewis Rothschild: Mood swings? Nineteen post-graduate degrees in mathematics, and your best explanation for going from a 63 to a 46 percent approval rating in five weeks is mood swings?

Leon Kodak: Well, I could explain it better, but I'd need charts, and graphs, and an easel.

American President (1995)