Steve Kornacki: Watch Reagan and the GOP Get Crushed in a Midterm
[Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor.]
I've written an awful lot this year about the parallels between 2010 and the midterm election of 1982, when Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party suffered a drubbing not unlike the one Barack Obama and the Democrats are likely to face next week. I've done this because so much of today's political analysis focuses on Barack Obama's supposed strategic, tactical and communication flaws -- the idea that he wouldn't be stuck with a 44 percent approval rating if only he'd show more empathy, or say the word "jobs" more, or emote like Bill Clinton, or channel Reagan's charm, or stop pursuing an agenda that's too liberal, or too moderate, or ... whatever. Everyone has a theory.
But we don't need these theories. Joblessness is stalled near 10 percent and economic anxiety is off the charts. That's the recipe for a midterm disaster for the Democrats now, and it was the recipe for a midterm disaster for the Republicans in 1982. Of course, our memories aren't always that good. Pundits today tend to figure that whatever happened in the first half of Reagan's first term couldn't have been that serious; after all, he came back and won 49 states in 1984 and now he's recalled by many as a beloved president. So they either ignore the glaring and obvious parallels between Obama's first two years in office and his, or they invent flimsy, baseless distinctions between the two presidents....
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I've written an awful lot this year about the parallels between 2010 and the midterm election of 1982, when Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party suffered a drubbing not unlike the one Barack Obama and the Democrats are likely to face next week. I've done this because so much of today's political analysis focuses on Barack Obama's supposed strategic, tactical and communication flaws -- the idea that he wouldn't be stuck with a 44 percent approval rating if only he'd show more empathy, or say the word "jobs" more, or emote like Bill Clinton, or channel Reagan's charm, or stop pursuing an agenda that's too liberal, or too moderate, or ... whatever. Everyone has a theory.
But we don't need these theories. Joblessness is stalled near 10 percent and economic anxiety is off the charts. That's the recipe for a midterm disaster for the Democrats now, and it was the recipe for a midterm disaster for the Republicans in 1982. Of course, our memories aren't always that good. Pundits today tend to figure that whatever happened in the first half of Reagan's first term couldn't have been that serious; after all, he came back and won 49 states in 1984 and now he's recalled by many as a beloved president. So they either ignore the glaring and obvious parallels between Obama's first two years in office and his, or they invent flimsy, baseless distinctions between the two presidents....