Democrats Have Super-Duper New Plan for November Elections: Running Against George W. Bush

You know who they should run against? That lickspittle ponce Rutherford B. Hayes. Why, just the image of him in his spats and top-hat makes me want to give him some what-for with my mitts.

But that's Option B. For now, they're going with a slightly more relevant historical figure.

House Democrats plan to revive the political ghost of former President George W. Bush in their bid to retain the majority this fall, according to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the head of the party’s re-election efforts.

Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on Tuesday signaled House Democrats will try to repeat their success in the last two election cycles by once again running under a change banner.

More at the link. The Democrats want to avoid a repeat of 1994. The AEI blog says they probably will avoid a replay of 1994-- instead, they'll get a replay of 1946.

Recent polls tell me that the Democratic Party is in the worst shape I have seen during my 50 years of following politics closely. So I thought it would be interesting to look back at the biggest Republican victory of the last 80 years, the off-year election of 1946. Republicans in that election gained 13 seats in the Senate and emerged with a 51–45 majority there, the largest majority that they enjoyed between 1930 and 1980. And they gained 55 seats in the House, giving them a 246–188 majority in that body, the largest majority they have held since 1930. The popular vote for the House was 53% Republican and 44% Democratic, a bigger margin than Republicans have won ever since. And that’s even more impressive when you consider that in 1946 Republicans did not seriously contest most seats in the South. In the 11 states that had been part of the Confederacy, Democrats won 103 of 105 seats and Republicans won only 2 seats in east Tennessee. In the 37 non-Confederate states, in contrast, Republicans won 246 of 330 seats, compared to only 85 for Democrats.

There are some intriguing similarities between the political situation in 1946 and the political situation today.

They point out some political parallels. There's another parallel, this one psychological -- the country was exhausted of Democratic rule after years and years of FDR's socialist tinkering. Obama, I think, has managed to exhaust the country in a mere two years of Democratic rule.

posted by Ace at 03:07 PM

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