{"id":8985,"date":"2006-11-07T12:27:29","date_gmt":"2006-11-07T17:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8985.html"},"modified":"2006-11-07T12:27:29","modified_gmt":"2006-11-07T17:27:29","slug":"its-all-about-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-all-about-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s all about expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now here’s a GOP-friendly headline in the New York Times<\/a> this morning: “For Democrats, Even a Gain May Feel Like a Failure.” It’s about setting expectations, and as the NYT’s Adam Nagourney sees it, Election Day is a good time to dampen hopes.<\/p>\n

In most midterm elections, an out-of-power party picking up, say, 14 seats in the House and five seats in the Senate could call it a pretty good night.<\/p>\n

But for Democrats in 2006, that showing would mean coming up one seat shy of taking control of both the Senate and the House. And it would probably be branded a loss — in the case of the House, a big one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Will Bunch put it<\/a>, “Really, is there some program that automatically inserts the word “failure” in any story about Democrats…like if the Dems win 431 House seats, will the headline say ‘2006 Sweep Thwarted by Democratic Failure in 4 Races’?”<\/p>\n

Indeed, one starts to get the sense that anything short of 35-seat gains will immediately be branded “Dems fall short again.” As Kevin noted<\/a> the other day, it’s become increasingly common for conservatives to downplay, well in advance, anything short of an overwhelming Democratic tide. Charles Krauthammer noted<\/a>, “Since the end of World War II, the average loss for a second-term presidency in its sixth year has been 29 House seats.” Ann Coulter added, “The average sixth-year midterm election, like this year, is much worse for the president’s party, which typically loses 34 seats in the House.”<\/p>\n

It’s a nice try, of course, and I don’t doubt that plenty of media personalities will buy into this, but to set the bar that high is ridiculous.
\n
\nNational Journal added some much-needed context to this discussion by looking at the net pickups since 1970<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1970: +12D
\n1972: +12R
\n1974: +49D
\n1976: +1D
\n1978: +15R
\n1980: +34R
\n1982: +26D
\n1984: +14R
\n1986: +5D
\n1988: +2D
\n1990: +9D
\n1992: +10R
\n1994: +52R
\n1996: +3D
\n1998: +4D
\n2000: +2D
\n2002: +5R
\n2004: +6R<\/p>\n

In other words, since the GOP takeover in ’94, the average change per cycle has been five seats. If Dems gain 15 today, that’ll be triple the recent average and the second most for either party in 24 years.<\/p>\n

But what about elections in a president’s sixth-year? Kevin tackled<\/a> that one as well.<\/p>\n

1958: 49 seats
\n1966: 47 seats
\n1974: 49 seats
\n1986: 5 seats
\n1998: 5 seats<\/p>\n

It’s obviously way too early to know what’s going to happen today, but the notion that double-digit Democratic gains is a failure is just wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now here’s a GOP-friendly headline in the New York Times this morning: “For Democrats, Even a Gain May Feel Like a Failure.” It’s about setting expectations, and as the NYT’s Adam Nagourney sees it, Election Day is a good time to dampen hopes. In most midterm elections, an out-of-power party picking up, say, 14 seats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}