Why the Democrats Won't Win Back the Congress for a Long Long Time
Between 1932 and 1980, Democrats possessed majorities--generally comfortable ones--in both houses of Congress in all but four years (1947-49 and 1953-55). Since the Republicans seized control of the Senate in 1980, however, neither party has possessed a stable majority. Though Republicans' six-year Senate reign ended abruptly in 1986, the Democrats ceded back control of the upper chamber in 1994, only to regain it when Vermont senator Jim Jeffords left the GOP in 2001.
Now, however, the GOP Senate majority seems unlikely to vanish any time soon. This year's contests intensified a trend of an increasing number of states becoming non-competitive for Senate Democrats. The South Dakota election received the most national attention, but the most historically significant contests occurred in Alaska, South Carolina, and Oklahoma.
In Alaska, Republicans were burdened with a candidate, Lisa Murkowski, appointed by her father, the state's unpopular governor, to a Senate vacancy; she trailed in every public poll taken for the campaign's duration. In South Carolina, Republican Jim DeMint ran an openly homophobic campaign; while pro-gay sentiments, obviously, are not popular in the Palmetto State, a Senate nominee openly asserting that gays should not be allowed to teach in the public schools comes across poorly. DeMint also saw his central economic initiative (replacing the income tax with a national sales tax) shredded in Democratic campaign commercials. In Oklahoma, Tom Coburn rivaled Alan Keyes for this year's looniest Senate candidate, capping off his effort with an unsubstantiated claim that Oklahoma principals were forbidding more than one girl at a time from having a bathroom pass, to prevent lesbian activity in the girls' room. A Democratic operative could not have picked more inviting targets against which to run.
Moreover, in all three states, the Democrats nominated appealing centrists with solid track records. And yet, with the Republicans nominating weak candidates (in Oklahoma and Alaska, at least, the weakest possible candidates) and the Democrats offering their strongest conceivable challengers, the Republican prevailed with ease in each state. It's hard to imagine how a Democratic Senate candidate could win a race in Alaska, South Carolina, or Oklahoma in the foreseeable future.
Alaska, South Carolina, and Oklahoma are among the dozen states that now seem out of play for Senate Democrats. They join Kansas, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1932; Wyoming (1970); Utah (1970); Idaho (1974); Mississippi (1982); Texas (1988); Virginia (1988); Alabama (1990); and Georgia, which has moved sharply to the GOP since 2000. Compare that list to the number of states where a Democratic Senate candidate begins as a prohibitive favorite: Hawaii, which last elected a Republican senator in 1970; Massachusetts (1972); New Jersey (1978); Maryland (1980); Connecticut (1982); and, perhaps, Illinois, although it did elect Republican Peter Fitzgerald in 1998.
Republicans therefore start the quest for a Senate majority with 24 unassailable Senate seats, Democrats with only 12. To reach the 51 seats required for a majority, the GOP needs to capture only 27 of the 64 seats (42 percent) in competitive states, while the Democrats require 39 of the 64 (61 percent).
Making those odds even longer for the Democrats: states that lean Democratic are far more likely to elect GOP senators than states that lean Republican are likely to vote for Democratic senators. Maine and Pennsylvania both have voted Democratic for president in the last four elections; both currently have Democratic governors; yet both also have all-Republican Senate delegations. Since Republican Bill Cohen ousted Democrat William Hathaway in 1978, Republicans have won 7 of the 9 Senate contests in Maine. In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, a Democrat hasn't won a regularly scheduled Senate election since 1962. As states like South Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma vote down all Democratic Senate candidates because of their party level, Democrats' inability to win states such as Maine and Pennsylvania becomes an enormous liability to the party's chances to obtain a majority.
The Democrats' unlikelihood of securing a Senate majority forms part of a broader national realignment, in which more and more"Red states" are rejecting the party across the board. Oklahoma Congressman Brad Carson, who lost the Senate race to Coburn, discusses this phenomenon in this week's New Republic.
The party's likely consignment to long-term minority status in the House is more the product of bad luck. As recently as 1992, the Democrats possessed a healthy House majority. Then three events intervened.
- First, a string of Supreme Court decisions held that the Civil Rights Act mandated the creation of majority-minority House districts. As black voters were packed into a fewer number of districts, these rulings produced a large number of overwhelmingly white Southern districts ripe for GOP takeover. Georgia demonstrated the pattern the most clearly: in 1990, the state's House delegation consisted of eight white Democrats, one black Democrat, and one Republican; in 1995, the same delegation included eight Republicans, three black Democrats, and zero white Democrats.
- Second, the legislative difficulties of Bill Clinton's first two years as
president coincided with a surge of voter distrust about Congress (much of
it deliberately fanned by House Republicans) to produce the 1994 GOP rout.
The Republicans consolidated their House control two years later: the combination
of a weak recruiting class and late-campaign revelations about Clinton's fundraising
tactics dampened Democratic gains.
- Third, with Republicans as the majority party in the House, a variety of technical developments--chiefly relating to fundraising and the drawing of district lines--have dramatically decreased the amount of competition in House races around the country, in effect freezing the status quo, to the GOP's advantage.
In the 2004 elections, excluding the Texas gerrymander, three incumbent congressmen (two Republicans, one Democrat) were defeated; three more open seats changed parties (two previously held by a Republican, one by a Democrat). In only 12 other contests (CA 20, CO 4, CT 2, CT 4, IN 2, IN 8, MN 6, MO 3, NY 29, OR 5, SD AL, PA 6) did the winner prevail by less than 10 percentage points. This outcome occurred at a time when a majority of voters believed that the country was on the wrong track and the country is mired in a war (regardless of one's opinions on its merits) that clearly has not gone as the administration promised.
To put these totals in perspective: in 2004, more Senate seats changed party control than House contests.
While broader historical trends and the general advantages of incumbency--press attention, the franking privilege, the ability to outraise most challengers--contributed to this pattern, a new development is the increasingly sophisticated use of technology in House redistricting, which has had the effect of freezing the status quo. California, for instance, which drew its lines in 2002 to protect its incumbents, in 2004 had just one competitive House race among its 55 districts.
The Texas gerrymander demonstrated how the new map-making technology can create a state full of non-competitive House districts: the 2002 results in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states redistricted under the control of GOP governors and legislatures but which have each voted Democratic in the last four presidential elections, did likewise. In 2004, Michigan sustained its party House breakdown of 9 Republicans and 6 Democrats, with the most closely challenged Republican winning by 16 points. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, sustained its party House breakdown of 12 Republicans and 7 Democrats, with only one Republican winning by less than 12 points.
In short, we're increasingly moving toward a system where mapmakers can draw safe House districts impervious to all but the strongest national partisan tide. There's every reason to believe that both parties will follow the example of Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2012--meaning that only a political tidal wave will cause the majority party to lose House control, since so few districts have any possibility of changing hands under normal conditions.
Will this era of GOP congressional dominance last as long as the Democrats' post-New Deal control? Probably not: world and domestic events are too fast-changing, and the major issues of today very likely will seem quaint ten or fifteen years down the road. But as for now, I certainly wouldn't bet on Democrats reclaiming control of either congressional chamber any time soon.