The Democratic Wipeout of 2010

ThinkProgress blogger Matthew Yglesias makes this point: "If Democrats secure unified political control amidst an economic downturn, the outcome of the 2010 and 2012 elections will be mostly determined by whether or not the new administration and new Congress manage to produce a return to strong economic growth and avoid noteworthy foreign policy disasters."

If that is true, the Democrats may already be cooked in 2010. Even after an economy picks up GDP-wise, people still tend to be gloomy until unemployment starts to drop considerably. The classic example is 1992. The unemployment rate was 7.4 percent, still close to the cyclical high of 7.8 percent, even though the economy had been expanding steadily since the second quarter of 1991.

So, what might the economy look like on Election Day 2010, the midterms? Global Insight, for instance, thinks that although the economy will expand at a 2.4 percent pace in 2010 vs. 0.2 percent in 2009, unemployment will actually be higher in 2010 at 7.4 percent vs. 7. 2 percent next year. If 2008 is 1980 in terms of a big presidential win for the challenging party, 2010 might be like 1982, when Democrats won 27 house seats or even 1994 when Democrats lost control of Congress.