Midterm elections are traditionally nightmares for the party of a sitting president. Just ask former president Bill Clinton, who suffered the humiliation of seeing his Democratic Party lose 54 seats during Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican Revolution. Ask George W. Bush, whose blunders in Iraq cost the GOP control of both chambers of Congress in 2006. Or maybe ask Barack Obama, who candidly admitted after the electoral disaster of 2010 (in which the GOP picked up 63 seats on their way to capturing the House) that he needed to do a better job presiding over America’s economic recovery.
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Martin Narey
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Democrats and the thousands of hungry progressives who canvassed for them certainly hoped the 2018 midterm election would be as humbling an experience for Donald Trump as the 2010 elections were for Obama. Flipping a chamber of Congress from one party to another, particularly when the president’s party is on the losing end, would give any White House second thoughts about their record.
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