Reason 4: The midterm elections can be cathartic. It’s clear that Democrats in Congress are dragging Obama down a bit — and that they are also paying a price for some of the disillusionment with the president. It’s a mutually reinforcing problem like the drowning guy who grabs the lifeguard around the neck pulling them both toward the bottom of the lake. But nature often has a solution for this problem: There’s a possibility that Obama won’t have Nancy Pelosi to carry on his back after November.
If that turnaround occurred — if the House (or the Senate) goes Republican in this year’s midterms — the Republicans would smell blood in the water. They would do well to make sure it isn’t their own before letting the sharks loose. In 1954, Republicans lost both houses of Congress even though their party standard-bearer was in the White House. As it happened, this didn’t do much to derail Dwight Eisenhower. It turned out that Ike could do just fine negotiating with fellow native Texans Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, and he was re-elected easily in 1956. Likewise, that GOP takeover in 1994-95 actually enhanced Clinton’s political prospects: He was always best in full-throated campaign mode, and he outfoxed then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and the other GOP leaders on issues ranging from the budget to impeachment.
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