LM#85--Is 2026 Another 1974 Or Another 1874?

The Drums Of Liberty Return

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Every so often in American history, the drums of Liberty beat a warning. They beat in 1874. They beat in 1974, and on Tuesday night, they were beating very loudly. So which warning did we just hear? Let's talk about it on this Liberty Minute.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Anger At The Gas Pump

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Hello, I'm David, and welcome back to another Liberty Minute. So picture a man standing at a gas pump, watching the numbers climb faster and faster than he can even stomach. He is angry at the price. He's angry at Washington. And he's angry at the party he voted for. Now what year is it? Well, it could be 1974, or could be 2026. Both times that anger at the pump turned into a wave that wiped out Republicans at the ballot box. And after 1974, conservatives got Ronald Reagan in 1980. Got him in the landslide, even. But a hundred years earlier, in 1874, there was another wave. And after that one, there was no Ronald Reagan coming. So before we go to our book of the day, I want to circle back to something I wrote over on Substack.

Why 1974 Is No Template

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The piece was titled, Watergate Costs Republicans a President. The 2026 defeat could cost them their future. And here's the heart of it. The Republican recovery after Watergate is a historical fact. But the equivalent recovery in 2026 is not. 1974, Republicans suffered a devastating defeat, yet by 1980 they had assembled a winning presidential coalition. They had gained back 12 Senate seats. That's a comeback story everybody loves to remember. But today's party can't simply borrow that ending. Look at the work that's in front of them. It's in front of you and me, especially if you're listening to this podcast, to rebuild credibility in states that we had won comfortably just two years ago, to confront a new crop of empowered democratic governors, some of which are quite radical, and decide how to respond to opposition again that's very radical, that now controls both chambers of Congress. It's going to take more than better advertisements and more than a promise that voters will come back home on their own. It's going to require a hard question. Why were voters who backed Trump in 2024 willing to elect Democrats statewide in 2026? It's a hard question to answer. It's going to require the discipline to tell the ordinary policy disagreement apart from proposals that would fundamentally change the structure of our government. Now, as the dust continues to settle, there will be a full autopsy. Researchers and historians are pouring over data as we speak, as they do after every election, midterm or presidential. And those researchers and historians will give us the full autopsy. But here's what we know right now. The road from 1974 to 1980 was no straight line. It ran through a country that was hurting in many ways. And frankly, in many ways, it had never hurt before. And nobody paints that country more clearly than our book of the day.

Barone’s Portrait Of 1975

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So as usual, let's go to our book of the day. Go on to the book. Americans began 1975 in a world they had never anticipated and would not have recognized just three years earlier. So far as they could tell, the events of 1973 and 1974 had been without precedent in the country's history. A criminal president had been driven from office in a nation which fancied, despite James Buchanan and despite the debacle of Woodrow Wilson, that crises always produced strong leaders, and that the normal operations of the political system always produced decent ones. The economy was being ravaged in ways that were totally unfamiliar. Prices were rising at rates most Americans had never experienced, despite the various systems of controls the Nixon administration kept imposing. At the same time, the economy had not only stopped growing, but was contracting at a sharper rate than any time since the 1930s. Real wages and incomes had gone into decline, and for many Americans, they would not rise again in years. Gasoline, the cheap commodity which fueled Americans' moves to the suburbs, which made possible their continent spanning vacations and weekend jaunts, which enabled them to live any social life and enjoy almost any leisure activities they chose, gasoline was suddenly more expensive and for agonizing months in short supply. And then a 55 mile an hour speed limit was imposed on the interstate highways where Americans were used to driving 75, and all because the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, had lost control of production and supply of crude oil to a bunch of Persian golf sheikhs and monarchs. And that comes to us from our book of the day, Our Country, The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan by Michael Barone.

Who Michael Barone Is

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And Michael Barone has been watching American politics from inside of our country for over half a century. He's best known as the principal author for The Almanac of American Politics, the reference work on Congress and state politics that the National Journal has published every two years since 1972. Insiders in Washington call it the Bible of the trade. Barone's resume is exquisite. Graduated from Harvard College in 1966, when that was important, and from Yale Law School in 1969, again, when that was important, where he was the editor of the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Law Review. He clerked for a federal appeals judge, and then he served as vice president of a polling firm, Peter Hart Research Associates from 1974 to 1981. And then he became senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the longtime Fox News contributor. I picked him up when he was writing at the Washington Examiner and as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and has been following his work ever since. Now on the ground, he Barone has traveled to all 435 congressional districts. So he knows the train of which he speaks. And I think what's important is when Barone tells us, me and you, what 1975 felt like, he isn't guessing. He was polling Americans that very year. Even though the most recent looks like first blush, the most recent 2026 polling was actually understated on how big the blue wave was going to be. So you also have that. But again, in 1975, when Michael Barone was polling, it was a unique science. People actually picked up the phone because you there was no cell phones, and you actually called people on in their house, and people picked up. They had one phone, so it's much more accurate. And Michael Barone was getting the tenor, the culture, and the pulse of the country. Now, Barone doesn't just stop at Washington in this book, he goes state by state, and that's I think where the real damage shows

The Hidden Damage In The States

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up. So listen how he sums up the 1974 wave. As for governorships, Democrats Jerry Brown and Hugh Carey were elected to succeed Republicans in California and New York. Democrats won in almost every other major state, with the exceptions of Michigan and Ohio, where William Milliken and James Rhodes James Rhodes won narrow victories. These Democrat victories seemed likely to have more consequences for government than similar Democratic victories in the 1950s, because now most of the legislatures were controlled by Democrats too. In the South, the only Republican governor left was Mills Godwin, elected only narrowly in 1973 over populist Democrat Henry Howe, who ran as an independent. And here's our nugget. Even more than in Washington around the country, Americans had turned to the Democrats. Judging just by the roster of office holders, six years after the Democrats' disastrous year of 1968, the country was far more Democratic than it had ever been. More Democrat than in the presidential landslide years of 1936 or 1964. More Democratic than in the recession years of 1948 and 1958, and more democratic, at least for the moment, than when it was led by its paladins, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. And again, that was from Michael Barone's Our Country, fantastic book from Roosevelt to Reagan, a great narrative summing up of how the country reacted publicly and politically. And you see that this is the part that most people forget. Watergate didn't just cost Republicans at the White House and seats in Congress, it cost them in the states. Again, let's go through that score scoreboard that Baron just laid out. California and New York flipped to Democratic governors, Jerry Brown and Hugh Carey. Michigan and Ohio were the only big state Republican holds. Both were very narrow. The South was left with exactly one Republican governor. The legislatures went Democratic too. And that's the key difference from the 1950s. And that point carries the weight. A governor with a friendly legislature behind him or her can redraw maps, write budgets, set policy for a decade or more. We saw that in 2010 with Texas. We've been benefiting, Republicans have, from the Texas turn from 2010 onward. That's gone. By Barrone's measure, America 1974 was more Democratic than it had ever been under FDR or JFK. But don't miss his four quiet words, too, at least for the moment. Six years later, Ronald Reagan won the White House. He won the White House in big fashion.

Waves Recede Only If Built

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So Barone's passage carries a warning for both parties. Waves recede, and the comeback after wave doesn't happen on its own. That comeback has to be built upon something or somebody. Now, if you read those two passages again and you listen for the mood underneath them, prices climbing, paychecks shrinking, gas lines around the block, a president running out of office, then a wave that swept Democrats into state houses and legislatures from Sacramento to Albany. If you were a conservative in November of 1974, there was despair. Real despair. And six years later it elected Ronald Reagan. It would go on to elect him in landslides in 80, in 84. He would be vindicated by his successor winning in 1988. But let's not fool ourselves right now. The 2026 debacle may not be 1974, which all these pundits continue to reference. Not so fast. The 2026 debacle may not be 1974. There's another year. It could be 1874. Where there was no Ronald Reagan on the horizon. Yep, a hundred years difference.

1874 Vs 1974 Vs 2026

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But let's examine and put these three elections side by side. Let's start with a guy in the White House, 1974, 1874, rather, Ulysses S. Grant. Elected in 1868 and re-elected again in 1872. He was the principal general to win the Civil War. If you were living back then and you were for the North, this was monumental. He is our general, he was our leader, he was the victor of a civil war in the United States. Nobody thought we would even get into a civil war, and once we were in the middle of it, it was harrowing and heartbreaking. He was our general. 1974, we had Gerald Ford. Only three months after Nixon had resigned in August. And obviously in 2026, we have Donald Trump. Three Republican presidents each left watching a wave hit the party. Now let's check out the economy during both. This is where the pattern gets harder to ignore. In 1874, the country was struck in a depression. After the panic of 1873, businesses were failing, and men were out of work. In 1974, we had inflation and the oil crisis. And you heard but Barone describe it gas suddenly costly and scarce, a 55 mile an hour speed limit, and a superpower that had lost control of its own fuel. And in 2026, again, high living cost. Once again, gasoline. On election night, prices were above four dollars a gallon, up from three when the Iran conflict began. Now think about that. Fifty-two years apart in voters' anger still starts at the gas pump. It's an important metric, and one that was too easily discounted by Republicans, including myself. Next, let's look at why voters turned. In 1874, it was economic distress, corruption scandals, and the fight over reconstruction. More to come on that later. In 1974, it was Watergate, obviously, and Ford's pardon of Nixon, man. He thought he was doing the country a service, and boy, did it boomerang on him. And then again, economic frustration. And in 2026, frustration over the cost of living, how the economy was being managed, most likely the war. That seems to be number one. But more importantly, why the war was driving in gas or driving up gas prices. So in every case, the voters weren't pushing a theory, they were pushing what they felt at their kitchen table. Let's look at the results. In 1874, Republicans lost more than 90 house seats. Again, this isn't a 435-seat Congress in 1874. So 90 house seats, it's a big deal. Democrats took the House for the first time, listen to this, since before the Civil War. Republicans, thankfully, held the Senate. In 1974, Democrats gained 49 seats and pushed their majority even higher to 291 seats. They grew the Senate majority too. Now in 2026, Democrats won both chambers. The final seat totals are still being counted, but we're probably at 258 seats for Democrats in the House and 56 in the Senate. So then you have to ask the question of what came next. Can we see any historical parallels? Every one of these waves produced the same thing right away, divide a government with a Democratic Congress facing a Republican president. But the long-term meeting was and possibly is completely different. In 1874, the Democrats winning sped up the retreat from Reconstruction. Republicans lost the South for generations. Generations. 1974. That brought congressional reform after Watergate. But within six years, Reagan had rebuilt the party. Now 2026, it's far too early to judge. That's the whole point. The last row.

The Slow Work After The Wave

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What is our reaction in 2026? After 1974, there was a movement ready with ideas, institutions, a leader who had spent a decade making the case. Reagan had been building since 1964 with his speech Time for a Choosing. But you look back in 1874 and there was nobody. Rutherford B. Hayes would run in the 1876 election. He would win. It would be a complete crap show. We'll have to study the 1876 election, but just suffice to say there was no mandate. It was a crap show. The South was in peril. It would be for decades. Republicans were lost. It was just government by default. No one advanced anything worthwhile. Time kept clicking on, and nothing was done of substance. When you read the history books, you just shake your head, page after page after page. So what will twenty twenty six and twenty twenty-seven bring us? That all depends on the work we do next. So this isn't doom, it's it's trying to search for some optimism. But it also comes with a warning. America has recovered from both kinds of waves. But the recovery after 1974 came because people did the real work, the slow work, long before the votes were counted. They wrote the books, they built the institutions, they made the argument when nobody was listening. Hope we know is not a strategy. A comeback has to be built. So maybe we should read history deeper and wider. I'd encourage you to pick up Barone's book, Our Country, find it on Amazon, read those chapters on the years from 1974 to 1980, watch how the comeback was built one argument at a time. You can read M Stephen Hayward's The Age of Reagan, Volume 1, see what Reagan was doing up close, crafting his policies, crafting his arguments, understanding what the left was going to do, and having rebuttals to it. How was it going to help everyday Americans? And then ask the hard questions. Talk with the one person who voted for Trump in 2024 and then for a Democrat this week. Don't argue. Listen. Find out why. Do the slow work. Show up somewhere local, your school board, your county party, your church committee, a book club. Movements often aren't built in Washington. They're built where you and I live, out in the hinterlands. If you live in a city, I'm sorry. Get to a suburb. Get to Middle America, where most of the same people live.

Read More And Get Involved

SPEAKER_00 25:02

If this episode got you thinking, head over to Substack. Check out the full piece I wrote earlier after the debacle. Watergate costs Republicans a president. The 2026 defeat could cost them the future. The drums are beating. So let's not sleep through the warning.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.