It isn't the subject that gets the most attention from political experts, but control of the Congress hangs in the balance in this year's election, along with the next four-year lease on the White House.
Statistically speaking, of course, most people consider it a foregone conclusion that the House will remain in Democratic hands. The Democrats held a 31-seat advantage over the Republicans following the 2006 election.
They gained almost precisely that many seats to capture their current majority, going from a 232-202 deficit (with one seat held by a third party) to a 233-202 lead over the Republicans.
But how often does one party gain that many seats (or more) from the other? Not very often, actually.
- Although House members have to run for office every two years, the last time a shift of that many seats (or more) occurred in the House was in 1994, when the Republicans took 54 seats from the Democrats. The GOP won a majority that held up (by varying margins) for a dozen years.
- Before that, you'd have to go back to 1980, when the Reagan landslide produced a net gain of 34 seats (but not a House majority) for the Republicans.
- The backlash of Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation allowed the Democrats to increase their majority with a 49-seat gain in 1974.
- And frustration over Vietnam helped Republicans gain 47 seats (but still not a majority) in 1966.
In 50 years (including the 1958 midterm elections and a 49-seat gain for the Democrats), one party has gained 30 seats or more from the other in the House six times.
Approximately one-fifth of the time.
In modern times, such elections never occur consecutively.
Of course, Republicans don't need to win 30 seats to have a majority. Realistically, they can have a bare-bones majority in the House if they can gain about 16 seats.
But even that more modest goal seems extremely unlikely. In fact, any sort of Republican gain in the House seems unlikely.
With President Bush's disapproval rating at an all-time high, gas prices rocketing past $4/gallon, unemployment rising by 0.5% in a month's time and an unpopular war that shows no apparent sign of ending any time soon, conditions are favorable for Democrats.
In many districts this year, winning the Democratic nomination is about the same as being elected.
Besides, in that list of seismic shifts in the House, how many of them occurred in a presidential election year? Only one (1980). The rest of the time, voters seem to have treated the presidential and congressional races as entirely separate events.
Even when nominees were losing the presidency by wide margins, voters seemed content to retain their own representatives at a pretty consistent rate -- regardless of party affiliation.
The Barry Goldwaters, George McGoverns and Walter Mondales didn't seem to affect their parties' performances in House races, and relatively few shifts occurred.
It seems to me that a year in which the same party loses both the presidency and more than two dozen seats in the House is the political equivalent of the perfect storm. It's virtually unheard of -- almost entirely theoretical.
Things are a little different on the Senate side.
Since the aforementioned 1994 election, in which the Democrats' 57-43 advantage dissolved into a 52-48 seat deficit, the Democrats' only Senate majorities have occurred under somewhat odd circumstances.
In 2001, Vermont Sen. James Jeffords left the Republican Party in response to the arrogance of the Bush administration. Jeffords decided to become an independent (which was fine with Vermont voters, who had been electing a Socialist to the House for a decade).
His decision broke a 50-50 tie and gave control of the chamber to the Democrats for a year and a half. Then, in 2002, the Republicans' steady drumbeat in favor of invading Iraq gave them a rare midterm triumph for the party occupying the White House -- and control of the Senate for, ultimately, the next four years.
By 2006, the public had turned sour on the war, but although Democrats made gains in the Senate, they still needed the support of Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman and Jeffords' just-elected replacement, independent/Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, to forge a working majority.
(By the way, if you think you know all there is to know about Lieberman, read Jonathan Chait's article, "Irregular Joe," in The New Republic.)
Democrats haven't enjoyed a clear duly elected majority in the Senate since Bill Clinton was in his first two years in the White House, and they hunger for it, just as they hunger to retake the presidency.
But Republicans are paying the price this year for the success they enjoyed in 2002. Only about one-third of the Senate is up for election in a given year, and this is the year that the voters render their judgment on the performance of the class of '02 -- two-thirds of whom are Republicans.
Democrats have to defend only a dozen Senate seats. Most seem to be cruising to re-election; only one appears to be in jeopardy.
Meanwhile, Republicans have several members retiring, leaving vacated seats in which the party's nominees can't take advantage of incumbency. Some of those seats seem to be ripe for Democrats to pick off in the fall.
Based on what John Gizzi has to say in Human Events, it's inevitable that Democrats are going to make gains in the chamber this year.
According to Gizzi, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean and Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. John Ensign of Nevada spoke at sessions hosted by the Christian Science Monitor recently and "differed only in the number of seats they anticipated Democrats will have after the ’08 elections."
Dean projects his party will pick up 5-7 seats, Gizzi says. "Sen. Ensign told reporters that for his party to lose no more than three seats this fall 'would be a terrific night for us. I don’t want to slip below the four-seat loss.'”
So, by even the most conservative of estimates (in this case, Ensign's), Democrats will gain at least four seats and move past a true majority. It wouldn't be a "veto-proof" majority -- but, if Barack Obama turns out to be as successful as many Democrats say he will be, being veto-proof won't be a problem.
On the other hand, if John McCain wins, Democrats will have more freedom to apply pressure to end the war than they've had under George W. Bush.
They won't need the help of Iraq War (and McCain) supporter Lieberman to have the majority they need to set the Senate's agenda.
In fact, some Senate Democrats might even feel inclined to punish Lieberman, to ostracize him for supporting the war -- even though his voting record on other issues is more Democratic than Republican.
But they'll run into problems if McCain vetoes any Senate legislation -- whether they cultivate Lieberman's support or not.
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