Okay, so it looks like my prediction from a year ago where I thought that the toxicity of Bush would help Democrats in the 2006 midterms on the scale of Herbert Hoover undershot the level of disgust Americans have with George W. “29%” Bush. He’s more hated than Hoover.
My guess was that we would use Bush as the anchor to drown a good number of blue state Republicans trying to stay afloat. As it happened, we drowned several in red states too.
What started this prediction recalibration was when I wrote that:
In the 1930 Midterms, Hoover’s popularity was extremely low, what with the sinking economy, foreign investment in the dollar getting yanked, the imperialistic mishandling of the invasion of the Philippines, rising inflation and unemployment as well as growing concerns about an impending economic collapse: Americans rejected Republican incumbents.Results:
In the House, the Dems gained an amazing 52 seats.
In the Senate, the Dems pulled to within one of a majority.Though Republicans were still in control, it was only by the skin of their teeth. For the lame-duck last two years of his Presidency, Hoover was still at the wheel and proceeded to wrap the country around a tree.
This year we ended up gaining 33 seats in the house taking the majority and in the Senate we pulled ahead by one seat giving us control of Capitol Hill. We did better than I thought. Bush is worse than Hoover.
If you LexisNexis the hell out of it, you’ll see that in 1930, even though we didn’t win the House on election day, Democrats did start the new term in the majority. Wha? The strange circumstances are too numerous to explain here, though Susan F. Stevens’ 1980 Ph.D. dissertation at the State University of New York at Buffalo, “Congressional Elections of 1930: Politics of Avoidance” excavates it, essentially 19 Congressmen-elect died between Nov 3rd, 1930 and the start of the new session. In those months, 14 of of the 19 changed over to the Dems. Bizarre. American history is shady.
Last year I wrote:
I believe in 2006, Dems will make great gains, but the GOP will still hold on to control. But shit is going to get worse. As it did between the 1930 midterms to the ’32 Presidential. Which leads us to our next Presidential. We’ll be in the middle of a deep, deep recession stemming from the housing bubble bursting. As long as the GOP doesn’t nominate an avowed Bush-basher, the last two years of the Bush Presidency will either be war with Iran (end of world) or a recession, either way the discussion those 24 months will be how far down on the list of ‘Worst President Ever’ does Shrub belong – worse than Harding, Hoover, Polk?
This President will only grow more toxic if he lives and in 2008 The Restored United States’ next New Deal will arrive, The Next Deal will throw Democrats back into the majority. The candidate who wins will have to run on an anti-oligarch, anti-poverty, pro-reform platform. Pulling out of the recession will be difficult but if we can do it like Clinton did in ’93, then 2012 will be awesome. It will be the second time Conservatism collapsed in a century.
To make 2008 a mirror of 1932 a few things must happen. Everything this Democratic Congress does must be against the wishes of the GOP and it must be for the middle class. We must play some class warfare for these two years.
The coming housing bubble recession must have a Democratic solution, one that the GOP refuses to sign off on. Get Robert Rubin back and draw up Bill Clinton’s budget of 1992, you know the one that Gingrich said would ruin our country, the one that passed without a single GOP vote, the one set off a decade of growth, peace, and prosperity. Do that again. And have the GOP oppose it.
Propose election reform, actual election reform, and have the GOP oppose it.
Propose that Americans under 25 get health coverage. Have the GOP oppose it.
Propose phased redeployment, force McCain to fight for his position is that we should send more troops to Iraq.
Repeal the Bankruptcy Bill, take on Predatory Lenders, and have the GOP fight for the loan sharks and credit card companies.
Support Net Neutrality, have the GOP oppose it.
We must show the possibility of greatness if only, if only we had a president who embraced the future instead of one who will bring back the past. The story has to be that a Democrat in the White House is the embodiment of a country which refuses to become an oligarchy, one that cares enough to fight poverty, and one that wishes to fix problems rather than hide them or make them worse.
And we must mitigate any peelers from the GOP party line – and again, I’m thinking about McCain. Whatever immigration legislation we try for, if we must, the bill cannot be a “McCain was right all along” moment. We might have to poison pill that with harsh crackdowns on big box stores refusing to give union rights to workers and a reimplementation of the full OSHA rules that Clinton signed on his way out the door.
