the beltway lost its mind in 1994 when tom foley lost his seat when he was speaker of the house. did anybody cry? we don t know. benefit of the doubt, we re guessing that nobody cried. that same year in 1994, recognize this guy? new york state governor s race. mario cuomo was defending his throne, basically, and it did kind of feel like a throne in new york. not only did he seem like he was governor for life in new york state, but it felt like the only thing that might actually pry mario cuomo out of the office of governor of new york state in albany was is if he agreed to accept the democratic nomination for president. and everybody was pretty sure the democrats would be eager to hand him that nomination, even though he twice turned them down. turned them down in 1998, in 92, and in 1994, when he was running for election, mar quoe cuomo was one of the most recognizable, most powerful, most popular democrats in the whole country. and in 1994, at the height of his power, he lost to a g
nobody had ever heard of, called george pataki. and that was a republican wave year in 1994. and this wasn t a federal election. this was just in new york state. so the beltway actually didn t lose its mind very much over mario cuomo, losing that election. so he doesn t get a check mark there, but that s mostly because the beltway was losing its mind about everything else that was happening in 1994. he gets some of those check marks, but not beltway losing its mind and i don t think anybody cried. four years later, this was a great one, 1998 in vermont, this was pat leahy s senate seat from vermont. but the big shocker here was in the republican primary for that seat. 1998, a guy named jack mcmullen was a zillionary who moved from massachusetts to vermont, expecting that basically his welcome gift for arriving in the state would be that he d be handed the wide-open republican nomination in the senate race to
they don t have elections on a regular schedule, you have to decide when you re going to have one, and churchill looked around at the end of world war ii and says, yeah, now seems like a good idea to have one. this seems like a good time. take his popularity, right? take the thanks of a grateful nation and lock in the gains, politically, for himself and for his conservative party. victory in europe, v.e. day, was in may. the election that he called was held in july. and in that election, winston churchill got clobbered. it was amazing. churchill s conservative party lost 160 seats in parliament. churchill lost his job as prime minister. the labor party, instead, won a majority in parliament. clement atly was installed as a new prime minister, replacing churchill. it was the first time the labor party had ever gained a majority in the british parliament, and it happened right after the end of world war ii. you want to talk political shock. that was a political shock.
establishment republicans have taken charge again. when mitch mcconnell won, that meant the narrative became again, they ve the establishment has seized it back from these insurgents, but it s just not true. the right in the republican party, in the united states, as a whole, has kept coming back. when goldwater 50 years ago this year lost in landmark defeat to lyndon johnson, the whole republican party was thought to be dead and buried and certainly the conservative movement. but soon after, the reagan revolution began. so we have to stop falling for this same narrative. this group is here to stay. they may not ever run the country or win a national election, but they re a big factor and they re very much empowered now in the current gop. and i wonder if the error was watching to see if there was going to be a tea party revolution inside the right and it turns out there wasn t. there was a lot of people trying, and every time they
everybody made last night and in this morning s papers, explaining what happened in virginia, i think it was an easy mistake to make, because the candidate who beat eric cantor in virginia last night, he did run a one-issue campaign against him. david brat s whole campaign against eric cantor was focused on immigration. that eric cantor wasn t tough enough on immigrants. now, this wasn t a very closely watched race, right? nobody anticipated that this was going to be something that changed the course of modern american politics in a huge way. most of the national press, if they knew anything at all about dave brat versus eric cantor, the only thing they knew was that dave brat was running a campaign based on opposing immigration. so, right, the result, when it came in, the one thing that everybody knew about the race, people just decided, oh, okay, that must be what explains what happened. that must explain it. dave brat, the only thing we know about him that he was running on immigrat