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I’d heard people say 2026 was the best year for elected democrats since Watergate, but that seems to be underselling it. They’ve already picked up 7 senate seats (probably 8, maybe 9) and 42 house seats, and 50+ still seems completely within reach.
The magnitude of the change is bigger than in 1974 but the Dems will have fewer seats than they did at the start of 1975. In 1974, they gained 4 Senate seats, leaving them with 61 total. In 2027, they will have 54-56 senate seats.
Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alaska all have Republican Senate seats up for reelection in 2028. All five of those states also had Republican Senate seats up for reelection this year and the first four at least, and possibly the fifth, have flipped from red to blue. If 2028 goes like 2026 and Alaska and Mississippi flip this year, Dems will have 61 seats in 2028, enough to break the filibuster for contentious votes along party lines. In terms of the end result of the makeup of the Senate, 2026 is more like 1972 election in which the Dems had 56 seats after the election and 2028 may be more like 1974 depending on how optimistic you are.
Shout out to Wikipedia for documenting all of this.
Democrats picked up 49 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate. This group greatly increased the strength of Northerners and liberals in the House Democratic Caucus. They joined more senior liberals to strike a blow against the seniority system and overthrow three committee chairmen whom they viewed as too conservative and/or too old to represent the caucus: William R. Poage (D-TX), Wright Patman (D-TX), and F. Edward Hébert (D-LA).
But the absence of deference didn’t mean they were hostile to government itself. “The need is not bigger government, but better government,” explained Class member Phil Sharp. They were a “‘new breed’ of legislator,” one commentator wrote, “young, brash, independent of its elders and their system, rejecting cronyism and parochialism, [imposing] a new order of ethics and independence.” “We believed government could be a force for good,” says Jim Blanchard, a Class member from Michigan who later served two terms as governor. Ideologically, “we were the products of the inspiration of JFK more than the Vietnam War.” Their goal, a New York Times reporter summarized, was to open up the legislative process, to “restore Congress to its proper constitutional rank as a co-equal branch of government [and] to staunch the systemic corruption that seemed to be the price of a bloated presidency.”
I can imagine that describing the current cohort of legislators, with the substitution of Iran (or the Middle East at large) for Vietnam and Obama for JFK. I hope it does at least, only without the subsequent conservative media takeover.
Though I do think the social media and meme battleground was already taken early by republicans and the democrats are only now finally catching up. And there are already a bunch of newts Gingrich we’ve been dealing with for the last decade (although one is terminally ineligible for future political roles as of last year).
with the substitution of Iran (or the Middle East at large) for Vietnam
Ford’s granting of a pardon to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, along with soaring inflation caused by the 1973 oil crisis, created a tough environment for the Republican Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_United_States_elections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis#Arab-Israeli_conflict
I’m sure Vietnam played a part, but it was also corruption and high gas prices caused by US involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, same as now. History repeats itself.
Yeah, there are a lot of parallels, I was just responding to the specific quote
I am slightly disappointed this wasn’t a spin-off series along the lines of “Muppet Babies”
Interesting article referenced in the wiki: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/26/congress-broke-american-politics-218544
