Will is Right and the Eggheads are Wrong: History

We don't use data.

We don't trust data.

We trust history.

Let's look at recent wave elections:

-1994 the GOP won 53 house seats and 8 senate seats
-2006 the Dems won 33 house seats and 8 senate seats
-2010 the GOP won 64 house seats and 6 senate seats
-2014 the GOP won 13 house seats and 9 senate seats

In all of these cases these were parties out of power whose base was fired up. At the same time the ruling party's base was demoralized.

Now let's look at a peculiar fact. The Dem wave in the house is only half the strength of the GOP wave in the house, isn't it?

Let's look at the circumstances of the 2006 Blue Wave:

-6th year of a presidency
-unpopular president
-really unpopular war
-corrupt party in power (anyone else remember Jack Abramoff?)
-the Dems recruited lots of good, moderate candidates, like Heath Shuler in South Carolina
-yuuge Dem motivation
-GOP base demoralized 
-Dems had a message 'had enough?'

The Dems had circumstances, ideas and candidates. That's the Will Stroock election trifecta.

Look at all the things that had to go right for in order for the Dems to win 33 seats.

This year the Dems need 23 seats to win the house.  Do they have good candidates? Do they have good ideas? Is the GOP base demoralized? 

[Narrator: No, it isn't]

One last bit.

In 2000 we were writing direct-mail fundraising letters and subscribing to something called the Six Seat Sentinel. This was the  newsletter of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. They needed 6 seats - 6 lousy seats - to win the house, and they still couldn't do it.