>It is generally conventional wisdom that the party controlling the White House will lose seats in the midterm elections and since the Civil War this has been true in all midterms other than 1934, 1998, and 2002. For the 1986 elections it was no exception. The Democrat Party held onto the House, as it had done for all but four years since 1933, and gained five seats. More significantly, the Democrats regained the Senate which they lose in the 1980 Republican landslide and many of the "Class of '80" freshman Republican Senators went down to defeat. However, the GOP won eight gubernatorial races which was the last midterm until 2022 that the party controlling the White House gained governorships.>A Democrat House+Senate largely rendered President Ronald Reagan a lame duck his final two years but prior to the elections in November, he managed a significant bipartisan overhaul of the tax code which eliminated loopholes and lowered the top marginal tax rate to 30%. Another significant 1986 legislative accomplishment was an overhaul of the US immigration code which gave amnesty to some immigrants, penalized businesses for hiring illegals, and increased funds for border enforcement. That wasn't to say the president's last two years were without accomplishments--the Iran-Contra Scandal which overshadowed 1987 and Reagan's attempt at appointing Robert Bork to the Supreme Court was a fiasco, but he did manage to appoint Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, a moderate and a staunch conservative. In addition Congress that year repealed the ancient Fairness Doctrine in Broadcasting which had regulated news content since the 1940s and required news shows to represent both sides of a political argument equally.
>>16881663American politics were completely different in the 80s. they operated on a different paradigm. party affiliation was more ethnic and regional than ideological and the average person was much less political back then. it's a modern development to view politics as a zero sum game and your party as a religion where you launch a holy war against the other party and bipartisanship is seen as heresy.
>>16881674for that you can blame the tards who repealed the Fairness Doctrine which made possible to have people like Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity where you're basically screaming about wanting to kill the other party's supporters every night. that didn't used to exist pre-90s. it made American politics increasingly violent and insane.
>>16881663>>16881674I do find it telling that Reagan was able to secure tax cut bills twice in his administration with bipartisan support when one can find it hard to imagine any Democrats agreeing to that now.
>>16881707> the Fairness DoctrineCan you explain this in more detail? I’ve never heard of it.
>>16881712nta but basically during the 1930s there were a couple of notorious /pol/ cranks like Father Charles Coughlin who got big on the radio so they passed the Fairness Doctrine in 1941 which was FCC regulation that broadcast news shows had to present both sides of an argument equally. it was repealed in 1987 which then allowed the rise of talking heads like Hannity or the MSNBC faggots who exist to propagandize the party faithful and not give you an objective assessment of the news or politics.
>>16881707>it made American politics increasingly violent and insaneFor fuck's sake, we had the Civil War, race riots, everything in the fucking 1960s long before Fox News existed.
>>16881723Most of those were ethnic or region-driven violence. Treating your political party itself as a religion is a rather more modern development.
>>16881663I find it bizarre that everyone shit their pants over Bork but the Senate passed Scalia who had 90% identical beliefs with nary a whisper.
>>16881754Scalia just looked like a normal guy while Bork looked weird and alien-like.
>>16881663>Another significant 1986 legislative accomplishment was an overhaul of the US immigration code which gave amnesty to some immigrants, penalized businesses for hiring illegals, and increased funds for border enforcementfor some reason /pol/tard often scream about 86 amnestry bill without actually bothering to research it
>>16882673It's criticized because the concessions promised in exchange for amnesty were seen as short-lived or toothless.
>>16883065>>16882673the courts gutted a lot of provisions in that thing, it would have been stricter as it was originally written
>>16881711>I do find it telling that Reagan was able to secure tax cut bills twice in his administration with bipartisan support when one can find it hard to imagine any Democrats agreeing to that now.That was at a time when the old Southern and union worker Democrat blocs were still a thing. They started disappearing in the 90s so the party was only left with insane Berkeley classroom people for a voter base. That's the entire party along with a couple of onions tech bros now.
>>16881711>>16883214Jimmy Carter began the shift away from New Deal socdem in favor of neoliberalism, so it makes sense why they became open to Reagan's tax cuts. The party in the 90s and onwards was dominated New Way neolib Democrats like Bill Clinton (and later Obama), the middle class college types and tech bros were the types who benefited from the neoliberal reforms of both types (Great Recession aside)>>16881663Back in the 60s-70s people like Reagan were on the right side of the GOP (I would consider Reagan to be centre-right but a neoliberal unlike Nixon and Eisenhower being centre-right Keynesian).Bush Sr himself was similar to a Rockefeller Republican.It's strange how the Reagan presidency resulted in the party shifting further and further right, I dislike him but he was more moderate compared to the Tea Party types that think anti-pollution regulations are socialist (Reagan hated the Great Society but was pro-New Deal).
>>16883914>Jimmy Carter began the shift away from New Deal socdem in favor of neoliberalism, so it makes sense why they became open to Reagan's tax cutsIn all fairness Kennedy first proposed tax cuts which LBJ then passed.
>>16883941IMO the high tax rates were more a product of FDR's desires to fund the recovery programs as well as the New Deal,combating progressives Dems like Henry Wallace and Huey Long and leftists,WW2,and FDR needing funding for the future programs the 2nd Bill of Rights would entail (only for said 2nd Bill of Rights being abandoned with his death). Truman failed to override GOP tax cuts, and while Eisenhower avoided tax cuts in favor of budget balancing, both many Dems and Repubs became more open to tax cuts without the conditions of the 30s-40s and FDR's powerful calculating personality.
>>16884003It was done mainly to pay for the cost of the war and Eisenhower was a budget hawk who wanted to pay off the government's debts so he kept taxes high and pursued a tight monetary policy. Nixon thought this was a mistake and he should have opened things up a bit. During the Civil War there had also been a wartime income tax which was ended afterwards.
>>16883914>I dislike him but he was more moderate compared to the Tea Party types that think anti-pollution regulations are socialist (Reagan hated the Great Society but was pro-New Deal)I'm not anti-environmental regulation, I just believe they should be left to the states per the 10th Amendment and also like most Federal agencies the EPA is a total clusterfuck of fail and retardation and always has been. That aside I'm also a realist that you can't legislate pollution out of existence, the most you can do is move it to China like we have done.
>>16884025I am genuinely curious on how things would change if FDR lived on another term at least and got his 2nd Bill of Rights passed with whatever entailed. The GOP would likely become more akin to the Tories and Nixon style conservatism would prevail in the GOP regardless if Watergate happened (his proposed healthcare reforms were more interventionist and expansive than Clinton/Obama's proposals but to the right of New Deal Dems). Even with the neoliberal reforms in Europe, most neoliberal politicians weren't able to do the full on deregulation that is popular with American conservatives (UKIP/Reform and AFD types tend to have similar fiscal conservative views to the American right than the Tories and German CDU). But then again the GOP failed to destroy the New Deal.
>>16884067it's just as well anyway since a bunch of states especially Southern shitholes refuse to enforce EPA regulations
>>16884082>But then again the GOP failed to destroy the New Dealbeg pardon? New Deal centralization was mostly ended by the Republican 80th Congress after the war because everyone was finally tired of it and wanted a return to normalcy.
>>16884094True but Reagan actively tried to preserve most of the New Deal, he mainly hated the Great Society and felt the 60s Dems were going way too far. Lowering birthrates and aging demographics are fucking over Social Security though.
>>16881663Midterms always go against the party controlling the White House because it's an opportunity for everyone who has a beef with the president for some reason or another to go out and vote.
>>16884067do you really want Cuckifornia dictating environmental standards for the whole country?
