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Having spent only one day as House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi is already talking about the quick potential return of the Democratic party to the majority. While winning the minimum 25 seats required to regain the majority would be difficult, looking at the historic record, it is possible.
An examination of the past 30 congressional elections going all the way back to 1952, the average net partisan change in seats from one Congress to the next was just over 19 seats. Almost a third of those changes, 9 out of 30, had a net partisan swing of 25 seats or greater. Having a 25 seat swing, while larger than average, isn’t uncommon.
Of course, that level of swing goes to either party. If you go by just a crude look at averages and divide by two parties that would put the chances of Democrats regaining their majority at around 15 percent. A remote but not improbable outcome.
Just looking at an average swing over the past 50 years, however, is too simplistic. There are many other important factors that should be considered.
Republicans are likely going to benefit from the fact that in this decade they control more of the redistricting process, allowing them to design districts that are easier for their incumbents to hold, and so reducing the chance Democrats could win back control.
On the other hand, Democrats will benefit from what are, traditionally, the more liberal turnout demographics of a presidential election. In addition, last year saw the benefits of incumbency in House races reduced dramatically. If the pattern of incumbency no longer being such a large benefit continues, it will not necessarily mean Democrats will gain in 2012, but it does increase the possibility for big swings in seats springing from only modest swings in the public’s overall partisan support. On net, these general factors are probably a small plus for Democrats.
Whether Democrats gain or lose seats in 2012 will depend heavily on the state of the economy and politics in two years, but, looking at recent history, there is a decent possibility Democrats could win back control of the House. While I wouldn’t begin to guess this far out from an election what the results of that election will be, based on recent history, I would put the probability of Democrats winning back the House at roughly 15 to 30 percent.
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And the Senate? Will the Ds hold on to that?
The Democrats are part of the problem – big deal. So what. Etc.
The pity here is that, if Obama wants to hold the Senate and win the House, he knows EXACTLY what to do.
Sure they do but I won’t be with my vote unless my new demodog is anti war (talk is cheap mcnery) and I’ll be voting for green or none of the above. It has to stop some were and as an old guy now is as good as a time as any.
Good luck kids but the ride is about to get weird and then strange and yes I would like to care about you but you seem not to care about yourselves. How Sad.
Bad economy. Bad policies. Bad redistricting.
Not going to happen.
Hey Jon, no offense, but who says progs WANT the corporate fascist bought and paid for dems back in the House majority anymore than we want the rethugs?
*G*
Game on hoss, time for a different lens.
*G*
The Rs are certainly not going to do anything that will cool the anger of We The People. It’s been obvious for some time that they actually have no plan. Usually when they are in power, they give lots of money to the rich and then start a war. Their wingnut buddies just love war – makes them feel tough to go all John Wayne. When teaching my children about politics and their country, I always told them to remember that Rs consistently go too far. Happens every time and they will do it this time, too. Just watch.
One theory indicates that Democratic (Republican-lite) Majorities will only prolong the pain. American Democracy requires more tangible damage from the real republicans, for Progressive Change to occur.
Gawd! well said…when Americans decide to stop rewarding corporatist Dems with their vote we will then make progress for ordinary Americans.
We vote for ‘em then they turn around & hire political hacks who represents Corporations to teach ‘em how to screw us even more.Bill Daley & Springle..Sperlin…Spindle ..or whatever is name is.This has to stop folks if we are ever going to have a chance at a better life & decent country.
I got a call from the DCCC this evening and got yelled at by the caller when I told him that the Democrats failed and don’t deserve my support. He started shouting nonsense about how I’m wrong to have expected to have gotten everything I wanted. I started to list all the promises that were broken. He interrupted me several times with the same nonsense. So I hung up.
The bottom line is that I’ll contribute between now and 2012 only to individual candidates for the House I believe in. There’s no eff’ing way I’m giving to the DCCC.
Jon putting the probability of Democrats winning back the House at roughly 15 to 30 percent might be about right, but won’t mean much if the DCCC does it by getting a bunch of sellout Blue Dogs back in office.
Democratic majorities in both houses and the executive are NO better than republicans.
What did we get? Basnk Bailouts, AHIP Health Insurance with increased premiums, more GWOT, expanded surveillance state, expanded Pentagon and MIC spending…
Social Security Cuts, Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich, Foreclosures, No jobs, No unemployment benefits, Charter Schools, Religion, Faith Based Initiatives, Saddleback, Global Climate Change, Increased Oil Production, No green energy…
no stem cell research, Massive Corporate Profits, Offshore Tax Havens, Job Outsourcing, NAFTA, Korean NAFTA, Degraded Environmental and Food Safety, Mountaintop Mining, Gubmint BP Oilspill Coverup…
Rham Emmanuel, Ben Bernanke, larry Summers, Cass Sunstein, Nudge, Geithner, Goldman Sachs, BOA, Daley, Hillary Hawk, AIPAC…
Hackworth — Thanks for posting. You saved me the trouble. Hit. Nail. On. Head.
I don’t think your guesstimate is far off, but it’s going to be tougher with Obummer at the top of the ticket and a boatload of vulnerable Dem incumbents in the Senate.
2012 is going to be very strange.
a lot of new dems will be running against OBAMA and Blue Dog type of Dems.
No Dems running for office in 2012 are going to be saying they love wall street (like OBAMA)
New Dems will beattacking the RICH, and telling the base they will kill the BUSH tax cuts
(David Axelrod will be making us all laugh, at his foolish attempt to get OBAMA re-elected. Obama will be saying crap like I was against the Bush Tax Cuts before I made them OBAMA tax cuts)
Like Knoxville said above, Dems will not be supporting people that only talk about being a Democrat, only Dems with actions that match their words will get progressive support. (hint to Dems planning to run in 2012, you may not want to say you love Reagan)
Democrats across the nation can thank OBAMA for this new way of supporting Dems.
the OBAMA effect is going to make for a funny 2012 campaign.
(Few Dems trying to get elected in 2012 will want to be seen with OBAMA)
do you think?
Senate Dems up for re-election in 2012 will follow the OBAMA agenda?
today jr Dem Senators ask to change how Chairmanships are assigned.
Senate Democrats have to look at the White House and shake their heads and disgusts.
With elections coming up, should Democrats be getting into bed with Wall Street?
There is a small difference between parties.
Did anybody notice that an anti-flag desecration constitutional amendment did not come up for a vote in the last 2 Congresses? I believe I am correct when I say this. I believe such an amendment will be introduced and passed (by 2/3 vote for) in the House within the next 2 years.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HE01273:@@@P
H.Res 1273 on the National Day of Prayer was introduced and had 93 co-sponsors, only 1 of whom was a Dem (Boren). The bill never came up for a vote; probably didn’t make it out of committee. This bill or 1 like it will likely pass the House in the next 2 years.
The differences between the parties are sometimes expressed as the kinds of bills which actually make it to the floor for a vote. Some nutso Repub ideas are killed in committee when Dems have majorities.
So what? The Democrats suck. You can’t even say they suck less than Repugnicans, they just suck differently.
We need election reform, along the lines of the proposals in this petition, so that Congress will obey the people not corporations: http://www.petitiononline.com/PoliTru3/petition.html.
If we act together now, maybe we can still save our country.
Who cares if the dems get the house back or not? When they had it they played politics and got ho hum bills passed. The last thing the democrats and the country need is Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
They’re already in bed with the Rs and snuggling under the covers.
There are a couple of things other than unemployment that matter.
1. How many stupid people actually vote
2. How insane the republicans will be in the next two years.
3. The democrats have to message well and consistently.
4. How republican control of the House has been counter productive or
damaging to the country.
I am passed even thinking about the President. His recent toadying to the corporate swill may buy time but if the republicans can find someone, and it really can’t be anyone we really know a lot about, and are able to package he or she, probably he, I think the money will try to buy the White House.
The last vestige of control the electorate still have left is voting for congress. If the republicans control congress for more than two years
the country is toast.
IMO it depends if Obama is successful in gutting SS, if so the Dems have 0% chance of taking the house, keeping the Senate or the WH.
The real reason dems can win in 2012 is voter turnout. Between 40-50 million less voters turned out in the mid term than in 2008. That is 1/3 of the electorate(I haven’t seen the media focus on the low mid term turnout. It gos against the medias need for Obama rejection). A presidential year will bring out the voters. Maybe not like 2008 but even if 30 million show up the dems will have a great chance.
If Obama, the house and senate dems get the turnout machine going it will be all over for the rethugs.
That has been the thing no one has been talking about. Turnout in the midterm was 40% or so, and weighted towards groups that traditionally vote Republican anyhow. In a Presidential year, it’s going to be a voter base that is shifted much more toward groups that vote Democratic, and so some of those big Republican victory seats are going to come back into the D column.
If the Republicans redistrict away some of the Democrats, they still have to put the Democratic voters somewhere, and for the first time since Kennedy (1961), the Justice Department is in the hands of a Democrat during redistricting (1971 – Nixon, 1981 – Reagan, 1991 – GHWBush, 2001 – GW Bush). So the Republicans have to be careful about trying to dilute minority strength that tends to vote Democratic.
you left out:
(Not a complete List)
Red State/Blue State is a game for fools.
After losing 63 seats in the midterms just past, the DCCC calling, and then yelling at voters doesn’t strike me as particularly productive.
Although…I’m sure that last November’s historic defeat left them a little irritated, to say the least.
Jon, how is that possible? What you’re saying is that Obama and the democrats are going to greatly increase their popularity with the voters from the ass-whipping they just got.
Are the republicans who now control the House going to commit political suicide by letting him pass powerful stimulus legislation to turn the economy around?
Does he even really WANT to do that? (I giggle…)
Is Obama going to put a leash on Wall Street? What evidence have you seen of his wish to do that? Was it the hiring of a corporatist pig like Bill Daley to run the White House?
Is Obama going to honor his promise to get all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of this year…again, even if he wants to?
The republicans don’t want that, and just as importantly, neither does the Pentagon.
Other than his firing of McChrystal (who was publicly farting in his face…) he’s shown zero willingness to mix it up with the warbots. AND, in exchange for canning McChrystal, he let them force Petraeus on him in Afgahnistan, when he desperately needed someone to speak the truth; that we are not winning there, and we’re not going to win. The fact is, that getting Petraeus in as honcho in Afghanistan was a huge upgrade for the war party in that they now have a man preaching “stay the course!” who has the PR cred from his “success” at bribing the Sunnis to use when he waxes optimistic about making Afghanistan safe for the Fortune 500.
I’m sorry; I really enjoy your threads, but I think your optimism about our chances in 2012 is misplaced. I see no chance for Obama to turn this misery around enough to recoup enough political clout to hang on to the Senate, much less win back the House.
In fact, for us to keep enough seats to even monkeywrench the GOP’s more- of-the-same agenda, I think we’re going to have to run Obama out of office, before the voters do it for us and take a lot of democrats along with him.
“Who says progs want the corporate fascist bought and paid for dems back in the House majority any more than we want the thugs?”
Good question, Larue. In fact, who says the VOTERS want the corporate fascists back in power? The mid-term hammering we just got was far more about the voters rejecting Obama and the dems, than it was about the attraction that the utterly failed republican agenda holds for them.
It aint rocket science: you can’t fire people up and then crap on their heads without them getting pissed about it. Obama is history. He’s a caretaker lame-duck. If we try to shove him down the voters throats in 2012, we’ll be reduced to the status of a rump party with no chance of putting the brakes on the republican resurgence which Obama has engineered.
“After losing 63 seats in mid-terms just past, the DCCC (DLCC?) calling, and then yelling at voters doesn’t strike me as particularly productive.” Bingo!
Obama and the dems regularly using the act of bashing progressives as earnest money to try to convince voters that they’re not wild-eyed “extremists”, at the same time he sustains so much of Bush’s agenda, for me, is proof-positive of where his head and his heart lie. The GOP didn’t extort that from him with the threat of a filibuster. No one was holding a political cattle-prod on him to make him do that.
It was a considered political choice, and if we continue to support him as he does it, then we deserve anything that he and the rest of the “centrist” assholes do to us.
No they don’t. Mr. Obama, if reports are accurate, is poised to propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his SOTU speech to try and beat Republicans to the punch. If and when that happens, the Democrats will no longer be a viable party, less more having a chance in hell of taking back the house. This weak and fearful president is allowing the right to play him like a fiddle, and when he makes this proposal, after just handing millionaires and billionaires tax cuts, he will essentially end the Democratic party as a national party. It will firmly place itself in the same corner with the Republican party and will have to be treated by progressives and liberals as such, an enemy party.