As I’ve mentioned before, the 1994 election cycle was my first as a political professional — or at least semi-professional. I woke up in shock the morning after the election, surveying the scorched landscape of Democratic politics. Even the Democratic Speaker of the US House, Tom Foley, lost his seat. The future seemed bleak.
The candidate I helped lost by only 98 votes in a race for state Senate, but seemingly safe Congressional seats across North Carolina fell to Republicans. The Congressional delegation flipped from 8-4 Democrat to 8-4 Republican as the GOP took control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in more than 40 years.
Republicans also gained control of the North Carolina House for the first time since Reconstruction. They won 67 seats to Democrats’ 53, defeating a Democratic supermajority that totaled 78 seats. Democrats barely held onto the state Senate with a narrow 26-24 majority.
Democrats felt like they were in the wilderness as Republicans took power. However, in both Washington and Raleigh, President Bill Clinton and Governor Jim Hunt started rebuilding. In some places, like welfare reform, they moderated, but in others — the budget in Washington and public schools in North Carolina — they stood their ground and prepared to set the terms of the debate in the 1996 presidential cycle.
Democratic legislative and Congressional campaign organizations modernized and retooled. Within two years, the Democrats who seemed down and out won big in 1996. They cut into Republican majorities in Congress and legislatures across the country.
At the time, 1994 was the biggest wave since 1946. While Democrats were able to stem the flow in just two years, they couldn’t claw back all their losses. Republicans permanently reshaped legislative and Congressional power and made states like North Carolina perpetually competitive.
Twelve years later, Democrats had their turn. After years of unpopular wars, scandals, and executive branch incompetence, Democrats took both the US House and Senate in the 2006 blue wave. The last half of George W. Bush’s second term was defined by a failing economy with the country entrenched in two wars that weren’t going well. Voters stayed soured on his administration and delivered Republicans another blow in 2008, overwhelmingly electing the country’s first Black president.
The one-two punches from 2006 and 2008 resulted in the backlash that created the wave of 2010. Republicans took the US House and legislative chambers across the nation just in time for the 2011 redistricting. The GOP protected their majorities with extreme gerrymanders, especially here in North Carolina, but they couldn’t gerrymander the states. Like his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton, Obama maneuvered his way into a second term in 2012.
We saw big swings in the 2014 and 2018 midterms, but not waves like 1994, 2006, and 2010, when the party in the White House saw their support drop by five points or more compared to the previous presidential cycle.
This year, Democrats will realize their biggest win since 1974 and the second largest popular vote margin since World War II. Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. In North Carolina, the swing looks remarkably like the one that favored Republicans in 1994. The GOP will go from a 71-49 majority to a 70-49 minority with an unaffiliated member who defeated a Republican. They will likely narrowly hold the state Senate 26-24. And the Congressional delegation will flip from 10-4 Republican to 10-4 Democrat.
So what does all this mean for the future of politics, particularly here in North Carolina? Republican political strategist Paul Shumaker believes Democratic gains will disappear in 2028. He says the state has not changed ideologically and Republicans will regain their gerrymandered majorities next cycle.
I don’t think so. Republicans seem to believe their problems are as simple as the Iran war and gas prices, but voters don’t reject a party at the level they did on Tuesday for just a couple of issues. I think Donald Trump has burned the Republican brand.
Trump embarrassed the country and alienated our allies with threats and insults. He profited from his office with crypto scams while his family made billion-dollar business deals with foreign countries. He got us into another endless war after pledging “no new wars.” He drove up prices with tariff-driven trade wars after promising to bring prices down on day one of his presidency.
All the while, the Republican Congress watched like captives suffering from Stockholm Syndrome instead of leaders of a co-equal branch of government. They lost both the trust and respect of voters. It will take more than a cycle to earn it back.
While Democrats recovered fairly quickly after the 1994 and 2010 waves, retaining the presidency in the following cycles, the lame-duck period of George W. Bush after 2006 proved more difficult to overcome. Not only did the economy tank, the stench of corruption from the Abramoff and other scandals lingered over the GOP. People also believed they had been misled about the war in Iraq and the country was involved in a quagmire instead of the quick engagement the Bush administration had promised. The 2008 cycle showed they weren’t finished punishing Republicans.
I think 2028 will be more like 2008. Donald Trump lacks the skills, self-awareness, or concern to pull his party out of the hole he’s dug. People are over his corruption and will hold Republicans accountable for not holding Trump accountable. If the economy improves over the next two years, voters will more likely give themselves credit for electing Democrats to fix things than give Trump or Republicans credit for learning their lessons.
I also think the 2026 election is a tipping point. It will be the year that the Obama generation finally became regular voters. The young people who came of age during the Obama years are largely Democratic voters but have also been very sporadic voters. Now, they are in their late thirties and early forties, the time in life when most people start voting more regularly. They will shape the next twenty years of elections.
In contrast, the voters who came of age during the Reagan Revolution are aging out of the electorate. Their numbers will continue to shrink in coming years. They are my generation, people between about 55 and 75 years old. We were shaped by conservative principles like free markets and less regulation, but also by a social conservatism that resisted the cultural changes set in motion by a more diverse society. Trumpism was the ugly, populist endpoint of that resistance and the last gasp of a waning movement. Now, the Obama generation is ascendant.
In North Carolina, add the newcomers to suburban areas like Cabarrus and Johnston Counties to those Obama voters and you’ve got an electorate very different from the one that fueled the 2010 red wave. Republicans will claw back some of their losses in 2028, but they won’t likely take control of the North Carolina House. Democrats will sustain a lot of their gains and in statewide races, Republicans will struggle for the foreseeable future. They will certainly win some elections in the coming years but their road is tougher today than it was last week.
I agree with your solid analysis!!! 🤗🤗🤗
The stench of the Bush Era corruption is practically perfume compared to the current version. But there's a lot that can be done about that, if the newly elected majorities have the sack for it. For every one of these crimes that were committed to enrich the inner circle, there's the potential for civil forfeiture, and a means to do it without tanking (a) the economy or (b) the shares that innocent investors hold (especial those invested through their retirement plans). The laws are already on the books. What remains to be seen is if the will to enforce them is there e as well. And pardons don't reach every corner, no matter what Fatbert might think.
What keeps me up at night now that the election is done is whether the Jefferies-Schumer Clown Show will squander every gain we've made -- as they usually do.