Column: Democrats In Midst of Historic Presidential Run

Last week US News and World Report  published Simon's third column, "Democrats Will Dominate," in his weekly Op-Ed series that will every Thursday or Friday through the end of the year.

Be sure to also read his recent column, "Calling all Patriots," which argues it is time for Republicans to once again find their inner patriot and work with the Democrats to keep the Russians from intervening in our election, and to make it easier for Americans to vote.  

An Excerpt from "Democrats Will Dominate"

If the polls are right, and Hillary Clinton wins on Nov. 8, Democrats will have won more votes in six of the past seven presidential elections. This successful run is among the most significant periods of dominance by an American political party in U.S. history. Perhaps the only run that has topped this was Thomas Jefferson's Democrat-Republican Party, which won six consecutive elections beginning in 1800, or FDR and Harry Truman's run in the mid-20th century. But nothing else really compares.

Acknowledging the historic success of the modern Democrats matters, for it unlocks a deeper and perhaps inconvenient truth about our politics often obscured in the daily chatter – there is a vast difference between the two American political parties today. A Bloomberg poll released Tuesday does a good job capturing these differences:

48 percent see the Democratic Party favorably, 47 percent unfavorably. 35 percent see the GOP favorably, 61 percent unfavorably.

45 percent of Americans identify as Democrats, just 38 percent as Republican.

In a recent U.S. News column, I offered an explanation for why the Democrats have been so successful. Since the end of the Cold War, when the world did indeed begin to go through profound change, each party has had control of the White House twice. Both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will have left America better than they found it, leaving behind lower unemployment rates and annual deficits, rising incomes and soaring stock markets. Over their presidencies you can point to many other policy successes too – improvements in our health care system, welfare reform, the expansion of the earned income tax credit, establishment of the modern global trading system, Obama's all-of-the-above energy strategy and his progress on tackling climate change, the ending of al-Qaida, and a series of decisions that helped the global internet develop and flourish.

Finding similar successes during the two Bush presidencies is far more difficult. Each left office with the country in recession, leaving higher unemployment rates, soaring annual deficits, declining incomes and the second Bush even a declining stock market. Credit George W. Bush with the establishment of a Medicare prescription drug benefit and his global AIDS initiatives (neither loved by fellow GOPers) and George H.W. Bush with the successful execution of the first Iraq War (yes, debatable). But that's about it.

To continue reading, please refer to the US News link. You can also find more of Simon's US News articles here.