WSJ Editorial: There They Went Again
...Far from being a unique historical event, a GOP victory on Tuesday will repeat the pattern we have seen since the 1960s. Four times Democrats have won control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and four times they have attempted to govern from the left. Each time Americans saw that agenda and its results, and they rejected it at an early opportunity. Maybe there's a lesson here.
We cite the 1960s as a watershed because it marked the creation of the modern Democratic Party. The Southern conservatives who had checked the left since the de facto end of the New Deal in 1938 were swept away by LBJ's 1964 landslide. Democrats implemented their fondest ambitions—the Great Society, Medicare and Medicaid—only to lose 47 House seats in 1966 and the White House two years later, as the Democratic coalition split over Vietnam and flower power.
Thanks to Watergate, Democrats returned to overwhelming dominance in 1976. Jimmy Carter had run as a centrist—he favored regulatory reform and sun-setting programs—but he quickly ran afoul of young liberals on Capitol Hill who had flooded into the House in 1974. They overrode Mr. Carter's spending vetoes and ran his budget director out of town. Democrats avoided major losses in 1978 only to lose both the Senate and White House in the first Reagan landslide amid inflation and gasoline lines....
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We cite the 1960s as a watershed because it marked the creation of the modern Democratic Party. The Southern conservatives who had checked the left since the de facto end of the New Deal in 1938 were swept away by LBJ's 1964 landslide. Democrats implemented their fondest ambitions—the Great Society, Medicare and Medicaid—only to lose 47 House seats in 1966 and the White House two years later, as the Democratic coalition split over Vietnam and flower power.
Thanks to Watergate, Democrats returned to overwhelming dominance in 1976. Jimmy Carter had run as a centrist—he favored regulatory reform and sun-setting programs—but he quickly ran afoul of young liberals on Capitol Hill who had flooded into the House in 1974. They overrode Mr. Carter's spending vetoes and ran his budget director out of town. Democrats avoided major losses in 1978 only to lose both the Senate and White House in the first Reagan landslide amid inflation and gasoline lines....