AFF's Doublethink

No, that’s not a serious prediction. My real point is about Republicans getting too excited about thrashing the Democrats in 2010. Sure, that’s what I’d like to see. But remember what happened during Reagan’s first term? That precedent has been on my mind, so I was glad to see that Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts were thinking along the same lines. Here’s their exchange from Sunday morning:

SAM DONALDSON: …[Reagan's] popularity went down to 37 percent, at one point. But guess what, we came out of that recession. Thanks to Paul Volcker, wringing out inflation the old-fashioned way, by jacking up interest race at the Fed. And it was morning in America again. So, I say to people, anyone who thinks that Barack Obama isn’t kind of odds on, for re-election, must not think we’re going to come out of this recession. Because of assuming we do, and I think, we are going to by 2012, it will be morning in America again.

COKIE ROBERTS, ABC NEWS: I think that’s right… I mean, when you look at the — since you did that nice Reagan analogy, 1982 was a terrible year for Republicans. They lost 26 seats in the House, and 4 in the Senate. Everybody was saying, ah, see, the Reagan landslide really wasn’t what it looked like, and all of that. 1984, a very different story. And what we really had in 1980, with that Reagan election, was a realignment that lasted for a generation. And I basically think that despite what happened on Tuesday, and what I think is likely to happen in 2010, I think we probably did see a realignment in 2008.

I don’t really buy into the idea of a realignment in either 1980 or 2008. But that’s another story. Just remember how bad things looked for Republicans after the 1982 elections. Remember that after the Democrats take a beating in 2012, and remember how fast things change.