Let’s go ahead and pop this balloon before it takes flight.
Ken Mehlman, this morning on Today:
“[W]hen it comes to both the House and the Senate, we obviously always knew this would be a tough year. We had a combination of, not only the fact that it’s the 6th year of the President’s term, where typically you lose more than 30 seats. Also the nation’s at war, where typically you lose seats, as Tim [Russert] pointed out last night. And the fact that a number of members unfortunately were involved in scandal.
Typically lose more than 30 seats? You might guess that Mehlman was not challenged by the Today hosts on this little flight of expectation-lowering fantasy. And it appears to be one of the GOP’s morning-after talking points.
Here are the number of House seats lost by the President’s party in the 6th year of his presidency during the post-war period. I pulled the numbers from the House website and quickly did the math:
1958: Eisenhower–Republicans lost 48 seats
1986: Reagan–Republicans lost 5 seats
1998: Clinton–Democrats gained 5 seats
So only once in the last half century has the President’s party lost more than 30 seats in the second-term midterms.
The 1974 midterms, in which the Republicans lost 48 House seats in the aftermath of Watergate, occurred after Nixon resigned.
Of course, if Mehlman wants to compare the sea-change that followed the dark period of Watergate to the sea-change that occurred yesterday, I have no objections. Quite an apt comparison in many ways.
