https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/30/for_both_parties_1998_midterms_offer_a_lesson_for_18_137939.html
There are many similarities between the 1998 midterm election and this one 20 years later. As philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For both parties, the parallel situations — and pitfalls to possibly avoid – are worth studying.
Two decades ago, as is the case today, the president was being dogged by a special prosecutor and talk of impeachment was in the air, even as Americans enjoyed the benefits of a growing economy.
Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich built up expectations of a red wave in which the GOP would pick up between 10 to 40 seats, based heavily on Bill Clinton’s burgeoning scandals. In the end, however, Republicans lost five seats, narrowing their already slim majority to a 223-211 advantage. This was the first midterm since 1932 when the party controlling the White House added seats in the House. For several reasons, including the poor election results, Gingrich resigned from Congress less than a week after the election. By December 1998, the House Republicans went forward with the impeachment of Clinton and the Senate tried him on obstruction of justice and perjury charges.
The analogy is not exact since Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the presidency. But a key lesson from the 1998 election is that impeaching the president was not a decisive issue with most voters, one way or the other. In that booming economic climate, Clinton’s inappropriate behavior with a White House intern was secondary. Republicans who pushed scandal as a rationale for earning votes instead of a platform of ideas were misreading the public mood. And if anyone should have known better, it was that group of GOP members in Congress: What had propelled them into the majority in 1994 was a 10-point plan Gingrich had pushed called the “Contract With America.”
