Is 1994 a Model for Democratic Success? (Jay Cost Says No)

In recent weeks, the talk among pundits about the inevitability of Democratic triumph has simmered down. For some reason - one that I have not yet ascertained - Bush in the high-30s induces an entirely different storyline than Bush in the mid-30s. While the logic does not make sense, the result is nonetheless a move in the right direction. We seem to have returned to the much more sensible conversation that we were having in March: for the Democrats to win the House, they will actually have to do something.

What do they have to do? This is the $2.3 trillion question, one for which many answers abound. Most of the answers center on a date and a word. The date is 1994 - the most surprising of political years since Dewey defeated Truman. The word is "nationalize." The Democrats need to nationalize the 2006 election, just as the Republicans did in 1994.

Is that really an answer, though? Nationalizing an election is not like declaring shenanigans at a carnival. You do not simply walk up to a microphone in front of a camera, declare that the election is "nationalized," and away you go. Nationalizing an election is a tricky thing to do.

The reason for this is the pro-incumbent bias inherent to congressional elections. It has greatly increased in the last few decades. When people talk about nationalizing an election, what they usually mean is bringing the national mood to bear on local House races. To nationalize an election is to essentially reward or punish members of Congress based upon the President's job approval. This is a difficult task. Incumbents have become increasingly able to retain their seats despite whatever partisan winds that might be blowing. Part of this has to do with redistricting, but most of it has to do with the fact that our Congress has become professionalized. Being in Congress is now a profession - and so, therefore, is being a candidate. It is part of members' jobs to know their districts and to know what it takes to get to half-plus-one. Professional members can also hire consultants, pollsters and strategists who make their living based upon electoral victory.

But this bias existed before World War II, and it roots extend to the very foundation of the American experiment. Our system of government - in particular its doctrine of separated powers - makes it very difficult to identify who is responsible for any given policy or any given result. So many different actors are involved in any given situation that confidently identifying a causal chain is virtually impossible. Hurricane Katrina provides a perfect example. Who should we blame for Katrina: the state government, the city government, the county government, the President, the Congress, all of the above, none of the above? I think it is literally impossible to place blame with any precision. Most answers I have read ultimately hinge upon the partisanship of the writer - liberals are more likely to blame institutions operated by the Republicans; conservatives are more likely to blame institutions operated by the Democrats. The reality is that power is so divided that nobody is clearly to blame. This enables all parties involved to shirk any responsibility they might have.

So it goes with almost all policies and outcomes. Madison and the founders instituted this type of system to thwart tyranny. Their thinking was that a division of power would confound potential oppressors by pitting them against one another. It was successful; but, as a side-effect, it greatly diminishes responsibility. Identifying who is responsible is a difficult task, and it works to the advantage of incumbents twice over: they can believably take credit for the good stuff and believably deny responsibility for the bad. When you combine this structural feature with members who are very skilled at campaigning in districts full of fellow partisans, you can appreciate why the incumbency retention rate has recently hit the 99% mark.

There is another way to nationalize an election - one that is much easier. You do not have to pit yourself against James Madison when you nationalize open seat races. Recently, it is through open seats that most swings in the balance of power have occurred. When members of Congress decide not to run for reelection - and many times such a decision is predicated upon national political conditions - local races take on a much more "national" flavor. For starters, voters are more inclined to vote according to their partisanship. This is key, as the effect of the incumbent's advantage is his ability to get voters who are of the opposite party to support him. You also see a more explicit discussion of national issues. The freshmen class that entered Congress in 1992 was there largely because the election was nationalized, which in turn was due to the large number of retirements stemming from the House bank scandal.

Thus, to an extent, all midterms are "national:" in every year there are at least a few open seats. Unfortunately for the Democrats, in 2006 there are only about 5 open Republican seats from marginal districts - i.e. districts whose partisan composition does not heavily favor one side or another. What the Democrats therefore need is to nationalize the election in a way that Republican incumbents bear the brunt of the force. This is what the Republicans did in 1994. They grossed 56 Democratic seats that year. 22 of them came from open seat victories. A whopping 34 came from defeated Democratic incumbents, most of whom occupied marginal districts.

Just as the Republicans did in 1994, the Democrats have to find a way to counteract the advantages that incumbency confers. The question becomes: how did the Republicans manage this counterintuitive result?

They did this, in essence, by using Bill Clinton's knack for the art of persuasion against him. Clinton was able to persuade Democratic members of Congress to go on the record supporting left-center policies that their districts opposed. He thus made what is usually an opaque picture of responsibility crystal clear. This enabled the Republicans to do what is so rarely done: bring the national mood home to the district.

For how much the conventional wisdom asserts that Clinton only gained his political bearings in 1995, the fact remains that the 103rd Congress had an impressive number of achievements that Clinton spearheaded. Many of them were decidedly left-of-center: notable among these were the tax increase provisions in the Deficit Reduction Act, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and the assault weapons ban provision in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Clinton - in conjunction with the House leadership - was very adept at inducing Democrats from marginal House districts, where these measures were quite unpopular, to vote with the party. In roll call vote after roll call vote, Democrats - particularly from the South and the Mountain West - voted with the party and against their constituents.

These roll call votes were what landed Democrats in so much trouble on Election Day. They explicitly and clearly attached House members to that which had upset voters in these marginal districts. Republican challengers could say more than, "Our Democratic incumbent is part of the problem!" This is what every challenger in every race says every year. It is not effective because it does not offer a coherent or compelling causal argument. Republicans in 1994 offered something more. In race after race, Republican candidates declared, "Our Democratic incumbent is part of the problem; just look at his votes on H.R. 1025, H.R. 3355, H.R. 2264!" In other words, the roll call votes made what is normally a quiet and confused trail of responsibility loud and clear. Voters who were angry about the direction of the country came to believe, thanks to Republican campaigns based upon these votes, that their members were to blame for it. They thus developed bad impressions of their members, and, on Election Day, they voted Republican.

The evidence is pretty clear on this point. As Stanford political scientist David Brady has argued:

Would an identical strategy work this year? It might, but it might not; 2006 is different in many respects from 1994. As mentioned, the Republicans won 22 open Democratic seats that year. This year, the Democrats can only hope for 5 such seats. Further, there was a tension that year that is absent this year: namely, there were many districts that tended to vote Republican in the presidential election and Democratic in the House election. This gave Republicans many opportunities for pickups that are simply absent this year. More than 90% of Republican members are in districts that voted for Bush. Fortunately for Democrats, the number of seats they need to win is much lower. The Democrats had a 40-member majority going into the 1994 midterms. The Republicans have a 15-member majority today.

These factors are the kind of variables that are outside the control of the parties and their candidates. They are essentially what establish the size of the playing field and the goals of each party. We should expect them to vary every year. What we are interested in is the viability of this incumbent-targeting strategy this year. If the Democrats implement it as successfully as the Republicans did, would today's political landscape yield them enough seats to control the House? If we control for the differences in political environment - i.e. if we subtract from the GOP's gross of 56 the seats that they won because of open seats that do not exist this year, and the seats that they won because of the congressional-presidential tension that also does not exist this year - we are left with about 20 to 25 seats. Thus, if the Democrats in 2006 can target incumbents as successfully as Republicans did in 1994, they would pick up more than enough seats to win control of the House.

So, if mimicry of the GOP's strategy would work for the Democrats this year, the next question is: can they mimic it?

The answer to our question is at the other end of this thought experiment: name 2 to 4 specific pieces of Republican-spearheaded legislation passed in the 109th Congress that have angered voters in marginal congressional districts.

Do not feel like a bad citizen if you are stumped. I have only been able to come up with one: Public Law 109-3, a.k.a. the "Palm Sunday Compromise" in which Congress and the President transferred jurisdiction of the Terri Schiavo case from Florida state court to federal court. This seems to me to be obviously insufficient for Democratic purposes. On a scale of issue salience, with the 1993 tax increases ranking at a 10, this probably ranks at about a 2. Unlike Democrats in the 103rd Congress, Republicans in the 109th have not voted against their constituents on salient issues.

In other words, the Democrats lack the ammunition that was so critical to Republican success in 1994. Republican members of the 109th Congress have been careful not to attach themselves, on the record, to unpopular legislation. They therefore have retained the capacity to deny responsibility for that which has angered the public. Ironically, the fact that Republicans in the House have distanced themselves from Bush - on, for instance, Social Security and immigration - might be the saving grace of their majority. So much, once again, for the electoral value of partisan unity: division blurs the voter's picture of responsibility, and therefore plays right into the hands of Republican incumbents.

Perhaps a way to describe 1994 that is better than saying "local races were nationalized" is to say "national issues were localized." Democrats, through their roll call votes, gave Republicans an opportunity to bring national dissatisfaction to the district level. Ultimately, it was a political gamble by Clinton and the House Democratic leadership: they believed they could pass left-leaning legislation and still retain their marginal House seats. They were wrong. In the 109th Congress, Republicans have made no such gamble. This means that they can use our complicated system as cover; while the public is angry about the state of the nation, Republican incumbents can plausibly deny responsibility for it.

This is not to say that the Democrats cannot take the House, or that they cannot find a way to "nationalize" the election. It is only to say that 1994 cannot be their model. There are too many differences - in both the broader political environment and the actions of incumbent Republicans. To take the House, the Democrats are going to have to develop and implement a new strategy, one that we have never seen before.

"To take the House, the Democrats are going to have to develop and implement a new strategy, one that we have never seen before."

well, that's gonna be a toughie for them. I doubt they're willing to give up the Ol' Book. LOL

The funny thing is, with Murtha, Kerry, and Dean as the front people for the dems, it is the Republicans who should seek to nationalize the elections to their advantage. What is this playing defense shyt. The Republicans should make the dems vote on every issue that puts them at odds with the American People, i.e. immigration.

The Dem'crats find themselves in a bind. On the one hand, it looks like a shoo-in if, as they perceive, the incumbent Republicans really are caught in a quagmire in Iraq. But on the other hand, they cannot, or will not, provide any details as to HOW the US can extricate themselves from this "quagmire". When the obvious is pointed out, that they shall simply declare the situation settled just before they cut and run, no matter what the consequences to the Iraqis, they grow quite agitated, even furious, that anyone would question their dedication to principles of freedom, democracy and human rights. And yet these are just the very things that WOULD be denied to the Iraqis.

Dem'crats are just not very good democrats. Not when they shall so willfully deny the opportunity to exercise these basic expressions of self-determination to anybody in the world.

"All electons are local" (except for '74 and '94).

Regardless of party, in Nov 2006 a winning candidate must pay attention to the issues and dynamics of the district. Take a look at the recent "cut and run" or "deploy" votes. The MSM repeatedly describes the Feingold-Kerry position as the "Democrat" position despite the fact that only 12 Dems and 1 Republican (Chaffee) voted for it. The majority of Dems voted for what the MSM labels the "Republican/Bush" position.

The MSM is not doing the Dems any favor by mis-construing reality like this.

Here in Illinois, Republican Roskam will beat Rahm-Duckworth on local issues; not the least of which is Chicago Dems trying to dictate the Dem candidate outside Chicago.

Republican McSweeney will beat incumbent Dem Bean (for a gain of 1 for the Republicans) based on issues of local concern and based on local organizing efforts of volunteers such as the Republican Assembly of Lake County - RALC, and STAR-Schaumburg Twp Alliance of Republicans, and TOPPAR and similar local activist groups. Cheney recently came to campaign and "raise money" for self-financing McSweeney. The appearance of Cheney is a non-event. It can neither help nor hurt McSweeney.

in 2006 "All politics is local".

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