Democrats lost 47 House seats in the 1966 midterm elections, and that result still “haunts” them, wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Lane recently. But should it?
After noting President Joe Biden’s solid job approval numbers and widespread predictions of a strong economic recovery over the next year and a half, Lane listed a few developments that unnerved voters prior to the 1966 midterms and could do so again next year, including a surge in inflation, a spike in crime (especially the homicide rate), and a “backlash against the racial-justice achievements of the Johnson administration by White voters who often blamed the civil rights movement for urban uprisings in Watts in 1965 and Cleveland in 1966.” …
Those same controversies are in the news today, and, while we don’t yet know what the 2022 political environment will be like, Republicans are likely to use them as the party did in 1966 in trying to define next year’s midterms. CONTINUED
Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call