Michael Barone‘s encyclopedic knowledge of American political history helps him with his latest Washington Examiner column, in which he compares the Democrats of 2010 to their counterparts in 1966:
Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. That was a reaction to the big government programs of the first two years of the Clinton administration.
Others compare this year to 1982, when Democrats picked up 26 House seats and recaptured effective control of the House two years after Ronald Reagan was elected president. That was a recession year, with unemployment even higher than it is now.
Let me put another off-year election on the table for comparison: 1966. Like 1994, this wasn’t a year of hard economic times. But it was a year when a Democratic president’s war in Asia was starting to cause unease and some opposition within his own party, as is happening now.
And it was a year of recoil against the big government programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The 89th Congress, with 2-1 Democratic majorities, had passed Medicare, federal aid to education, anti-poverty and other landmark legislation.
Democrats only failed, as they have in this Congress, to pass organized labor’s top priority: then repealing section 14(b) which allowed state right-to-work laws, now the card check bill to effectively eliminate the secret ballot in unionization elections.
In 1966, Republicans gained a net 47 seats in the House. That left Democrats with a 246-187 majority but without effective control.
