Is our recent victory a minor one in light of historical precedents?
Recently, both Will Safire
http://www.nytimes.com/... (totally don't remember how to embed links and i'm post-op right now and don't feel like it), and Ann Coulter (not even going to link to that crazy) and who knows who else have started passing around this notion, either before the results came in, or after.
The democrats, as the non presidential party, stood to make enormous gains of at the 6 year mark. This situation has produced an average loss to a president in second term of beyond 40-50 since 1914 (who spots the obvious problem here?!?!). True statement, admittedly. And therefore, a pick up of 30 is both unimpressive and, to use ann's words "just a sign of an irrelevant party on the decline". Indeed, mid term loses in the first term means that democrats would have needed an enormous pick up in house and senate to be "average" for the game. Safire, suggests similar things
Duh duh duh duh duh.
Lets take a look. In the last "6 year sit(uation)" Republicans LOST 5 seats! Of course, most remember this, its the reason newt left politics. Then in Reagan's Presidency Dems picked up a meager 5 seats. This puts us back two decades, a serious chunk of time statistically speaking. The net for our itchin' parties is zilch. You have to go back past the not nixon's second term but to johnson's second midterm to see a crushing blow. Republicans came back big. But over the past two decades, democrats should have expected to pick up about zero seats this time using the odd and at this point meaningless past performance predictor.
The reason that party swings aren't big any more are numerous. More entrenched incumbency from gerrymandering, advanced fund raising, reduction in local news coverage, possibly increased partisan sentiment, the list goes on.
Coulter and Safire's myth overanalyzes to within 1-2 percent of an enormous body of voting. Democrats won big, the biggest victory for a six year itch in at least 30 years!
Also sorry if someone has mentioned this issue. I did search. And if anyone knows of other pundits making similar claims, totally point them out!