The five most consequential midterm elections in U.S. history

Why should we care about midterm elections? Midterm elections are really the feature of the American system. Who's mid? I'm mid-beat. I mean, Mr. Beat to you punks. Anyway, what the heck is a midterm election, huh? In the United States, a midterm election is a general election that takes place in the middle of a president's four-year term. Middle term. Midterm. Darn right, Virgil. The United States has national elections every two years, not four. While, you know, the President gets all the attention during presidential election years, when people vote for President, they're also often voting for a United States Senator, a United States Representative, a Governor, and a bunch of state and local public offices. And these elections probably have way more effect on your day-to-day life. And if you think midterm elections don't matter that much, big yikes. They're so tiny but We have a separated power system in the United States. We are not a parliamentary system. So we have independent branches of government. That was done on purpose from the framers in order to stagger our elections, to always be having elections every two years, that every member of the House would be elected every two years, And a third of the Senate would be up every two years. So that body, the legislature, would be constantly reinventing itself. Presidents have four years, but the Congress is always changing. So that Americans, if they have elected someone and they feel the country is off course in the presidency, they have the opportunity in the midterm to make their feelings known in who they select to be in the other branch of government in Congress. So this is, you know, a very, very deliberate feature. In midterms, the president's party almost always loses seats. Voters often show up mad. And midterm elections have not just changed who controls Congress and swapped out committee chairs, they've completely stopped presidents in their tracks. And in this video, we'll see how sometimes they've led to the Constitution being rewritten and the political landscape completely changing. Here are the five most important midterm elections in United States history. In my opinion, what the heck do I know? The midterm election of 1974. These took place on November 5, 1974. Just three months prior to them, Richard Nixon became the first and only president in American history to straight up quit the job. Yep, he resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. Did you do your homework? So Gerald Ford took over as the next president, and almost immediately pardoned Nixon, and voters were like, nope. In the fall of 1974, Americans were furious. No, not fast. Just furious. They felt like they couldn't trust their government anymore. Because Nixon belonged to the Republican Party, voters took out their frustration on other Republicans, and they voted for babies. Seriously. Well, Watergate babies. That's what the media nicknamed these young, energetic, reformist Democrats that all ran for Congress in 1974. Democrats gained 49 House seats and expanded their Senate majority by 4 seats. And these babies didn't wait their turn, baby. They marched right in and dismantled the antiquated congressional seniority system, stripping power away from old committee chairmen who had ruled like feudal lords for decades. They opened up committee meetings to the press, empowered subcommittees, passed the National Emergencies Act, passed the Ethics in Government Act, established inspector general offices and federal departments to conduct independent audits, and dramatically beefed up the Freedom of Information Act and campaign finance laws. They will become very pivotal leaders in Congress for the years to come. Modern congressional rules exist pretty much because of the 1974 midterm. The midterm election of 1938. These took place on November 8, 1938, halfway through Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's second term. Wait, halfway through his second term? Uh-oh. Absolutely. I am responsible for the six-year curse because everybody was calling it the six-year itch, which was typically the idea that two-term presidents in their sixth year in that midterm election lose a lot of seats in both the House and Senate. They either lose control or they lose the coalitions that they have built. What I said was it's not just an itch, it's a curse. And why is it a curse? Well, I think there's a couple of reasons for that. There's a prevalence of political scandals that happen, and presidents have to deal with that. There is also the fracturing of the political coalitions that these presidents have put together. And I would summarize both of those things by saying that people just simply start to grow tired of a president by the sixth year. Yeah, Democrats struggled. While Roosevelt won re-election in 1936, and one of the biggest landslides ever, a series of events followed that really hurt his popularity. First, in response to a more conservative Supreme Court consistently saying his New Deal programs were whack, unconstitutional, Roosevelt proposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill, which would have increased the size of the Supreme Court by adding a justice for each incumbent justice who had reached the age of 70 and a half years old and refused retirement. The bill also said appointments of new justices could continue until the court reached a maximum size of 15 justices. Well, this got bipartisan backlash, with opponents accusing Roosevelt of trying to pack the court. And then the Great Depression got worse again. A recession within a depression. Unemployment jumped from 14% to 19%. Industrial production fell by almost 30%. Not only that, Roosevelt actively campaigned against more conservative Southern Democrats in primary elections, which backfired big time. For many, many decades after this, This is why presidents will not get involved in primaries because of the example of FDR. In 1938, Republicans gained 81 House seats and 8 Senate seats. More importantly, Southern Democrats teamed up with Northern Republicans to form the Conservative Coalition. This team would dramatically slow down domestic New Deal legislation. After this, Roosevelt had to pivot away from domestic policy and focus almost entirely on foreign affairs, and soon enough, yep, the country would get caught up in World War II. 1938 showed us that the New Deal wasn't dead, but its days of easy victories were over. This is a mid-roll ad midway through a mid-video about midterms. A few years ago, I had to find a new primary doctor, and one of the least fun things about being an adult is Phone Tag. 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That's a tongue twister. Or just go to the link in the top of the description there. You see it. Yeah. You see it. Right there. Yeah. Yeah. The midterm election of 1894. These took place on November 6, 1894. Hey, my birthday! No I wasn't born yet. I'm not that old. Halfway through Democratic President Grover Cleveland's second term. Non-consecutive term, I might add. And if you want to talk about an electoral blowout, this was the granddaddy of them all. Americans were desperate for dramatic change. country was in the middle of the Panic of 1893, one of the worst economic depressions the country has ever experienced. Banks collapsed. Railroads went bankrupt. Unemployment spiked to around 20%. And yeah, Americans were pretty mad, bro. They also just did not think that Cleveland was doing anything to make the crisis any better. And then came the Pullman Strike, a massive railroad strike that shut down transportation across much of the country. In response, voters unleashed the biggest single-party seat swing in the history of the United States House of Representatives. Republicans gained a mind-boggling 130 seats in the House. That's a swing of more than 250 seats between the two major political parties. Democrats also lost four senators on top of that. This wasn't just a bad day at the office for Democrats. It completely killed their coalition. The midterm election of 1894 was a political earthquake that set up the realignment of what political historians often call the Fourth Party System. It also signaled that what we now call the Progressive Era was here to stay. After this, Democrats got more committed to populism and progressive ideals, and related to this, they went with a wildly different presidential candidate for multiple elections, William Jennings Bryan. The Midterm Election of 1866 Yeah, this midterm was weird. Since they happened not that long after the American Civil War, they took place over a period of 15 months, from June 4, 1866 all the way to September 6, 1867. Part of the delay came from former Confederate states holding elections after rejoining the Union. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the new president, Andrew Johnson, wanted to go very easy on the Southern states that had rebelled, letting them rejoin the country quickly even though they were passing unfair laws to control formerly enslaved folks. But the so-called radical Republicans in Congress were like, They wanted full civil rights and voting rights for the newly freed African Americans, plus real, more severe punishments for Confederate leaders. Johnson went on a disastrous nationwide speaking tour called The Swing Around the Circle to basically TALK TRASH about Congress. Yeah, it went horribly. Johnson had no riz. He yelled at hecklers, and often came across as unhinged and even drunk. Johnson's giving a lot of incendiary speeches, which is not common back in the 1860s and 1870s in that timeframe for presidents to go around doing that. Voters responded by giving the radical Republicans a massive, veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in both chambers of Congress. Over the next few years, Congress would pass the Military Reconstruction Acts, the Enforcement Acts, push through the highly influential 14th and 15th Amendments, and even impeach Johnson, only not removing him from office by one single vote. It was a quick period of reform that dramatically changed the country. I mean, the 14th Amendment alone was huge. Huge. The Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, the Citizenship Clause. I mean, the 14th Amendment was based. It dramatically expanded our civil rights and civil liberties more than you can imagine, bro. Okay, do not, no, don't watch that video. That's a horrible video. Don't make them watch that. I should have unlisted it a long time ago. Nuh-uh. Nope. The midterm election of 1994 These took place on November 8, 1994. Kind of an exception to the norm as this was midway through President Bill Clinton's first term. Hmm. Yeah, he'd go on to win a second term, and the 1998 elections were not nearly as bad for Clinton's Democratic Party. In fact, Democrats actually GAINED seats in the midterm election of 1998, the first time that had happened in a midterm since 1934. But keep in mind, Clinton got only 43% of the popular vote in 1992. He mostly won because so many folks were frustrated with George H.W. Bush at the time, but many voted for Ross Perot instead of Clinton. Almost the entire year was consumed with impeachment and the Lewinsky scandal. Clinton was able to really rewrite a political script showing someone with a lot of political skill and being able to read the moment at the time is actually able to win a few seats. That really is the sixth year midterm that defies some of the rules. Anyway, 1994 marked 40 straight years of Democrat control of the United States House of Representatives. But Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich had a brilliant strategy. Nationalize the election. Instead of candidates running on local issues, Republicans united behind a single, 10-point manifesto called the Contract with America, promising to shrink government and reform Congress, all while relentlessly hammering President Clinton on stuff like health care reform and gun control. Well, this Contract with America worked better than a worker who works really well. Like, totally a worker who works it. All the time. Republicans did well. Republicans gained 54 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate, taking full control of Congress, Nicknamed the Republican Revolution, this transformation completely redefined American politics. It forced Clinton to govern much more like a conservative. It led to a reduction in welfare for struggling Americans, government shutdowns over government spending, and Clinton getting impeached. It also led to this more confrontational, hyper-partisan, polarized era in American politics that tragically continues to this very day. In many ways, the Republican Revolution never really ended. What's the next important midterm election? So what do these five elections teach us? Well, first, the president doesn't need to be on the ballot for a sudden change of national policy. Midterms can quickly swing the pendulum of American politics in a brand new direction. In 1866, a crappy president gave Americans a bunch more equality. In 1894, a massive Republican wave permanently transformed Congress. In 1938, congressional losses constrained FDR's New Deal agenda. In 1974, a corrupt president saw Congress reassert its dominance over the executive branch. In 1994, a bunch of disillusioned Americans were able to end four decades of Democratic control and turned a president into a conservative overnight. So the next time someone tells you that midterm elections don't matter, be the life of the party and tell them about the midterm election of 1974, the midterm election of 1938, of 1894, of 1866, and 1994. They'll think you're so cool. Oh, and shout out to the honorable mentions who barely just missed this list. I'm looking at you, midterm election of 1874, and midterm election of 2010. And remember, the presidency may drive the car, but Congress determines whether or not there's gas in the tank. Or if it's plugged in, if it's an EV, you know. Yeah. I don't know if that metaphor makes any sense. I'm sorry. That's all I could think of. But what do you think? Which midterm election should have made my list but did not? Let me know by finding the nearest tall tree, climbing to the top, and yelling to the heavens. 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