Today’s Democrats Have Faced Similar Problems in the Past

One year ago this month, the 2020 presidential election was called for Joe Biden, leaving most Democrats elated over the impending end of Donald Trump’s presidency. It hasn’t even been a full year since Democrats achieved what once seemed like an even more impossible dream: seizing trifecta control of the federal government via two victories in Senate runoffs.

But wow, has the sweet taste of victory curdled for the Donkey Party! For months now, it has been rare to read a story about the state of affairs in Washington that did not prominently feature the “Democrats in disarray” trope; the party is said to be divided over the agenda of a president with steadily falling job-approval ratings, doomed to a midterm defeat that might also usher Trump back to the brink of power. From hot takes to data-driven assessments of hard cold electoral facts, everyone pretty much agrees the future for this recently triumphant party is dim, and fingers of blame are being pointed in every direction.

There is one positive thought that Democrats can focus on as we head into this season of hope: This is far from the worst they’ve had it. For all their struggles, Democrats remain the oldest continuously operating political party in the country, dating back to the 1820s. As the comedian Henry Gibson sang in the bicentennial satire film Nashville: “We must be doing something right to last 200 years!”

Here’s a look back at some similarly sticky situations from the Democratic Party’s past, which it managed to survive.

Joe Biden is the seventh Democrat to serve as president since the end of World War II. His current job-approval rating from Gallup is 42 percent. Of the other six, five (all but JFK) had Gallup job-approval ratings quite a bit lower than that. (Truman: 22 percent; LBJ: 35 percent; Carter: 28 percent; Clinton: 37 percent; Obama: 38 percent). Clinton and Obama were reelected after posting these abysmal numbers. And while Truman’s nadir in popularity was achieved near the end of his presidency, he, too, was reelected in 1948 after receiving a job-approval rating of 36 percent in April of that same year.

By these standards, it is extremely premature to treat Biden as a failed president, or as any sort of convincing underdog for reelection, for that matter.

The loss of Virginia’s governorship earlier this month combined with a close brush with defeat in New Jersey has been the latest apocalyptic sign of Democratic decline, by some accounts. It’s true that both states were adjudged as “blue” going into these elections. But still, Democrats have done poorly in these off-year elections…