Democrats Predict a Big Win in November

Encouraged by the controversial presidency of Donald Trump, Democrats are predicting a rout in November’s midterm elections. If they are fortunate, that electoral wave could be as large as the one that swept across the country in the fall of 1974, when Dems took 49 seats in the House and five in the Senate from Republicans.

Those Democrats were liberals, and they were young, like many of the candidates hoping to win a seat in Congress later this year. “I literally looked up the word Democrat in the phone book to find the local headquarters,” said Bob Edgar, who came to Congress in 1974 from Pennsylvania. Back then, idealism whisked newcomers like Edgar into the U.S. Capitol. But once there, the class of ’74 discovered that politics is the art of the possible, and that what is possible is often far less than what was promised. Today’s hopefuls, primed for an auspicious November, may wind up learning the same lesson.

“We were a conquering army,” recalled George Miller, who was elected to the House from