When people suggest that one election will be exactly like another, I recall a lesson my good friend, political economist Tom Gallagher, taught me about historical parallels. Tom would often quote Mark Twain’s line that “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The truth is that while no two elections are truly alike, they can share some similarities, particularly if you don’t look too closely at the details.
President Obama’s job-approval rating—generally bouncing around between 43 percent and 45 percent—is about where it was going into the 2010 midterms, when Democrats suffered devastating losses of 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. But many other current circumstances aren’t quite like 2010. CONT.
Charlie Cook