If Democrats can’t pass their agenda now, they may not get another chance for years.
Over the past roughly 50 years it has grown much more difficult that it was earlier in the 20th century for either party to achieve, and especially to sustain, simultaneous control of the White House and both congressional chambers. Moreover, since the 1970s, neither party has regained unified control of government faster than 10 years after losing it.
With unified control now typically expiring quickly and returning only slowly, both parties have felt enormous pressure to squeeze as much of their legislative agendas as possible into the brief, and widely separated, windows when they hold all the levers of government.
Among Democrats, there’s a widespread fear that if Manchin and Sinema prevent them from moving these bills into law in the current legislative session, it may be years before they get another chance. The difficulty both parties have faced holding unified control for any sustained period over the past half century suggests that anxiety is entirely justified.
Unified government was more the norm
Divided government — in which one party holds the White House and the other holds one or both chambers of Congress — has become so routine in modern politics that it’s easy to forget what a departure it represents from the dynamics through the heart of the 20th century. For most of those decades, the country’s default instinct was to give one party the keys to government and say, in effect, you drive for a while.
From 1896 to 1968, one party or the other simultaneously controlled the White House and both congressional chambers for 58 of those 72 years. Unified control was not only common, but it also was often extended. Early in that period, Republicans held a governing trifecta for 14 consecutive years (1896 to 1910) under Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft; later Democrats matched that achievement under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman from 1932 to 1946. Republicans controlled all three branches for the entire decade of the 1920s; Democrats controlled all three branches from 1961 through 1968.
Since 1968, the story has been very different. One party or the other has held unified control of government for just 16 of these past 54 years. Neither side has maintained unified control since 1968 for more than four consecutive years. Carter did that throughout his only term (though his congressional majorities depended on very conservative Democrats from what was then still the one-party South who often voted against him.) Bush also had a four-year span of control.
(Bush’s story is complicated: After the razor-thin 2000 election, he came into office with unified control but lost it within months when disaffected GOP Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont quit the Republican caucus and shifted the majority in the previously 50-50 Senate to the Democrats. In the post-9/11 election of 2002, Republicans maintained control of the House and regained the majority in the Senate. Bush defended those majorities in his 2004 reelection, but in 2006, the first time he went into a midterm with unified control, Republicans lost both chambers.)
Bush’s loss of his congressional majorities in the 2006 midterms was typical of the modern experience. Clinton, Obama and Trump all came into office with unified control of government and then lost it in their first midterms, with Obama and Trump surrendering the House and Clinton losing both chambers, to the other party.
Veterans of both the White House and congressional leadership agree that growing awareness of these trends has encouraged each side to front-load as much of its legislative agenda as possible into its first two years. David Axelrod, the top political strategist for Obama, who’s now a CNN senior political commentator, says that administration was “unequivocally” aware of the likelihood it would not preserve unified control past its first midterms.
“Even before we took office, we knew the economic catastrophe we were inheriting, which promised to be long and deep, meant we faced a calamitous midterm,” Axelrod told me in an email. “That meant if we wanted to accomplish anything meaningful, it would have to come in the first two years, when we had large majorities in both chambers. It’s why President Obama moved the Affordable Care Act when he did.”
Brendan Buck, the counselor to House Speaker Paul Ryan when Republicans held unified control under Trump in 2017, likewise says that “we were well aware … that our time was fleeting and the window was closing just as soon as we took over. That shadow of history was hanging over us the entire time. … It made us aware that this was the window we have and we are going to throw everything we have on it.”
“Today, the White House and Democrats rightfully suspect that at least the House will turn in ’22, so this brief moment of one-party control, albeit narrow, offers the last, best hope for the president and members to get big priorities done,” Axelrod says. “That’s why there is such urgent anxiety about loading up the Build Back Better Act with so many planks.”
Does chasing big legislative wins help or hurt?
“I really do think that Democrats across the ideological spectrum feel a historic responsibility and urgency in this moment to protect our democracy and protect our climate,” Green says. “That’s different from maybe during the Clinton years, where it was ‘OK, an earned income tax credit would be nice.’ “
The other camp believes that the way the parties are reacting to the risk of rapid turnover –by squeezing so much of their agendas into early legislative blitzkriegs — paradoxically may be compounding the danger they’re meant to address. Buck, reflecting that view, argues that Biden is courting a big backlash by pursuing so many liberal legislative goals, just as Republicans did in 2017 by seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act as their first major initiative.
“Typically when a new government comes in it is often a rejection of the previous regime and voters tending to vote for checks and balances,” he says. “But politicians tend to interpret that as an affirmation or endorsement of themselves and everything that they believe. … So you end up losing your majority because … you tend to overreach and people reject that.”
Compounding that risk is another dynamic. Since Democrats surrendered their governing trifecta with Jimmy Carter’s defeat in 1980, no party that’s lost unified control has regained it in less than 10 years. That means by the time each party has regained unified control, the wish list of policy demands and aspirations within its coalition has grown to intimidating length. Presidents have often devoted their brief windows of unified control to resuscitating those deferred dreams.
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