Pajamas Putziness.

VDH, concern troll extraordinaire, busts out the "Vietnam killed the Democratic party" myth:

In the manner of a broken record, for over a year now, I have been warning that the Democrats should be wary about their Pavlovian opposition to our efforts in Iraq—after a majority of their own legislators authorized the war—since the rhetoric might come back to haunt them. And it may be beginning to, since they have boxed themselves into a position in which any good news is de facto bad news to their announced anti-war policies and candidacies—regardless of the national security interests of their country. The last time this occurred—1974-5—Democrats later suffered for their rhetoric and cut-offs, and for a quarter-century.

Er, no they didn't.

For the record, in the 1974 election, before the full end of the war but certainly after the Democrats had become tainted by antiwarness the democrats picked up 49 seats in the House, increasing their majority to 291-144. In the Senate they picked up 3, for a total of 61.

This did follow the 1972 election where, yes, they lost 13 whole seats in the House, leaving them with only 242 seats. That year they gained 2 seats in the Senate, giving them a total of 56.

And then came the 1976 election, post-war, where Democrats picked up the presidency, 1 House seat, and stayed even in the Senate.

True, in 1978 they lost 15 seats in the House, leaving them with a meager 277, and 3 in the Senate, leaving them with only 58.

And then along came Reagan, though his election had little to do with Vietnam, and those Vietnam-scarred Democrats managed to maintain control of the House until 1995, with Senate control flipping back and forth.

Democrats did ok in '68 and '70 too. So, maybe Vietnam gave us Nixon. That's it.