(01-08-2017, 07:48 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Is that why FDR lost the 1940 election? After all, the 1937 recession occurred under his watch, and they had never fully recovered from 1929. .
And Democrats were hammered in the 1938 election losing 80 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate. By the 1940 election recovery was underway and memories of Hoover were still fresh; Willkie was easily defeated though Republicans still managed to gain 5 more seats in the Senate. FDR suffered similar losses in his second term as Obama did in both of his terms. The difference is FDR got to build a head of steam by two more big victories in 1934 and 1936 that he got because he came in at the bottom. From the 1928 to 1936 election Republicans lost nearly 40 Senate seats (56->17) and nearly 200 House seats (287 ->89). Timing matters.
The collapse begun under Bush became Obama's problem. This did not happen to FDR because recovery began in the very month he took office. There was no decline under FDR at all until 1937, by which he had accumulated enormous political capital (see above). Neither Obama, nor Johnson got remotely close to the mandate FDR got.
THe guy who did get such a mandate was Lincoln and Grant, the Civil War heroes. From the 1858 to 1868 elections Dems when from 41 to 9 Senate seats and 131 to 46 House seats. I note both of these cases were in 4Ts. Such huge swings are part of what makes a 4T a 4T. Nothing like that has happened so far.