How midterms have had big impacts through history (or not)

….Reagan became the dominant political personality of the 1980s, defeating incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and winning a 49-state landslide reelection in 1984. He was able to carry in a majority for Republicans in the Senate and establish a kind of working majority in the House with the aid of conservative Democrats in that chamber.

On the strength of those elections, restrained only marginally by the midterm elections of 1982, Reagan began his second term on top of the world. But he soon learned how hard that height can be to hold. As he neared his second midterm, Democrats were on the march nationally and restoring their strength in the more populous Southern states.

In 1986, Democrats defeated six GOP senators who had been elected with Reagan in 1980. The net gain of eight Senate seats gave them a 55-45 majority. In the session of Congress that followed, the Senate would override Reagan's veto of a highway bill and reject his nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Reagan was a spent force.

Reagan was able to see his vice president, George H.W. Bush, take the White House in 1988, but the party's hopes for momentum into the 1990 midterms were largely unfulfilled. The presidency was also lost in 1992, when Democrat Bill Clinton won a three-way race with just 43% of the popular vote, defeating Bush and independent candidate H. Ross Perot.

Clinton's lack of a majority and list of frustrations in his first term set the stage for a bruising first midterm election in 1994. But what came was beyond bruising. Republicans stormed to their first majority in the House (54 seats net) in 40 years and recaptured the Senate with eight new seats there as well.

The new GOP speaker, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, was a hard-driving partisan who had portrayed the chamber as a House of Ill Repute, the title of a book he and other House Republicans had published.

The use of a "Contract with America" theme promised lower taxes, less corruption and a healthier economy in a compact agenda that had voter appeal as well.

Gingrich explicitly rejected the go-along-get-along attitude of previous GOP leaders in the House and advocated confrontation. The strategy proved less fruitful once he had the Big Gavel, however, and Gingrich spent much of his time as speaker making deals with Clinton. Internal dissatisfaction with him forced him out late in 1998.

In the new century that followed, parties have continued to prosper when their presidential candidates win and give ground in the midterms. George W. Bush was an exception as the president after the terror attacks of September 2001. In his first midterm the following year, the GOP made gains across the board.

But the larger dynamic caught up to him in 2006, when he and his party took what he called "a thumpin'" in elections at all levels. Bush had initially gained popularity with his "War on Terror" and won a second term. But thereafter, his invasion of Iraq had become an albatross. And in 2006 he paid the historic price, losing both his party majorities in the House and Senate. The new majority in the House made Pelosi the first woman speaker in history.

That created an atmosphere of optimism for Democrats, who elected Barack Obama president in 2008 and gave him majorities in the House and Senate (the latter briefly reaching 60 seats). But Obama felt the sting of the midterms early — much as Clinton had. Republicans in 2010 capitalized on an economy still experiencing the recession that had aided Obama's win in 2008. The GOP also capitalized on fears and confusion surrounding the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare," in 2010.

Echoing his predecessor, Obama called this setback "a shellacking," and settled in to work with a much diminished Senate majority and a Republican-dominated House under Speaker John Boehner.

Obama managed to thread the needle well enough to win a second term for himself in 2012, but the House remained Republican and the Senate followed suit in Obama's second midterm election in 2014.

That second midterm revealed continuing GOP strength across the South and Midwest and to some degree augured the Electoral College majorities that would make Donald J. Trump president in 2016 and 2024.

Because this is a decade with three presidential cycles (2020, 2024 and 2028), it is also a decade with just two midterms. One went by in 2022. Some expected at the time that a "big red wave" would sweep then-President Biden's majorities out of Congress.

It did not happen. Democrats held on in the Senate, and the House shifted from barely Democratic to barely Republican. That did bring an end to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's second (and last) turn with the Big Gavel. But the GOP would spend much of the next two years struggling to unite behind a speaker of their own.

Before the Eeyores and defeaticans and freeze-dried food purveyors and BUT DOODLE IT IZ DIFFERENT THIZ THYME crowd do their virtue-signaling, from the top:

1982 - Reagan prevailed.

1986 - Regan prevailed.

1990 - Bush’s fecklessness became bigger.

1994 - Newt et al gave us a shot in the arm. That’s it.

1998 - Bubba made gains but he was spent politically.

2002 - Dubya won bigly on 9/11 strength and frittered it away.

2006 - Dubya lost bigly.

2010 - Obama got crushed and little changed.

2014 - Pubbies made gains; little changed.

2018, 2022, 2026, more of the same.

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