When trying to find solace in the wake of the debacle that was the 2014 midterm elections, many have pointed to the fact that the president's party almost always loses congressional seats in midterm elections and assume that we will be winning big in 2016. I think that is a bad assumption due to another historical pattern that nobody is talking about. Since 1952 on only one occasion has a party held the White House 3 elections in a row. That was when George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. It is worth noting that Dukakis ran when of the most inept presidential campaigns in modern history.
The chances of holding the White House for 4 terms is even more daunting. That has only happened twice in the last 100 years. The last time, of course, was when FDR won an unprecedented 4th term.
What this tells me is that if we want to avoid seeing a GOP presidency within the next eight years we'd better have an exceptional candidate or hope that the GOP puts up an exceptionally poor one.