Ed Kilgore writes:
bq. …one talking point heard often in denunciations of Democratic foot-draggers on health care is that as “everyone knows,” the failure to enact health reform in Bill Clinton’s first two years caused the Democratic midterm debacle of 1994.
bq. …I have to say that no, it’s not at all self-evident that the failure of a Democratic-controlled Congress to enact universal health coverage was the primary cause. For one thing, there was a lot going on in November of 1994–a vast number of Democratic retirements, the final stage of the ideological realignment of the South (exacerbated by racial gerrymandering in the House), and residual resentment of a Democratic majority in the House that had been in place since 1954.
I agree that the failure of health care reform wasn’t really important to the Republican takeover. We should remember the broader climate in the country in 1994. I’ll quote from Gary Jacobson:
bq. In 1992, 79 percent of the voters in the national exit poll thought the economy was in bad shape, and 62 percent of them voted for a Democrat for the House. In 1994, 75 percent said they were no better off financially than they had been two years ago; 57 percent thought the economy was still in bad shape, and 62 percent of this group voted for the Republican.
In addition, he notes that 57% of exit poll respondents thought the country was on the wrong track, and they tended to vote Republican.
Of course, it wasn’t just national issues that mattered. Local dynamics were also important. Jacobson again:
bq. In sum, although all politics was not local in 1994, the electoral effect of national issues varied across districts and regions, depending on incumbency, the quality of candidates, the level of campaign spending, the partisan makeup of the district, and the behavior of the incumbent. Wielding potent campaign themes drawn from national issues, Republicans needed only reasonably attractive and well financed candidates to take seats from Democrats in districts that leaned Republican in presidential elections. Democratic retirements from such districts created a host of open-seat opportunities that well funded Republican candidates exploited to the hilt. Against incumbent Democrats, Republicans did best where they fielded experienced, well financed challengers against Democrats whose votes tied them to the Clinton administration in districts where the president (and his party more generally) were relatively unpopular-where, in other words, the local campaign could give their national themes the most extensive publicity, and the local context gave these themes their greatest resonance. Poorly funded Republican challengers were largely unsuccessful, even in districts where the Democrat should have been vulnerable. The central issues in the 1994 House elections may have been national, but how they played out depended strongly on local circumstances.
To the extent that we can attribute the Republican takeover to national issues rather than local dynamics, it’s more about the economy and the accompanying generalized dissatisfaction than any specific policy failure of Clinton’s first 2 years. The same will be true for Obama and the Democrats in 2006.