Since 2006, I have covered four midterm elections in which majorities changed hands in the House or Senate. In 2006, Republicans paid the price for George W. Bush’s wars and his response to Hurricane Katrina. In 2010, Democrats lost in response to the massive overreach of healthcare and climate change legislation they passed. In 2014, Democrats lost nine Senate seats because they still never corrected their overreach problem. In 2018, Republicans lost primarily because of then-President Donald Trump’s comportment.
Each time it happens, I have written that voters sent the party in power a message by voting against them. That message usually wasn’t that they liked the other party more but simply that they were upset at the ruling party and wanted a change.
Each time, it also seemed that the winning party took only a few days to miss the whole point. They would typically start believing their own hype and misreading the meaning of their mandate. They often came to believe that they won because people really liked them, an attitude for which they would later pay a price.
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