Watch Reagan and the GOP get crushed in a midterm ...

Watch Reagan and the GOP get crushed in a midterm

[Here is] a video of CBS News’ Election Night coverage from 1982, edited together by an evidently sharp YouTube user. Included in the 7½ minute clip is CBS’ projection that the Democrats would pick up between 24 and 34 House seats (they ended up with 26). I know: This is smaller than the number Democrats are expected to lose next week, but remember that the GOP only had 191 seats heading into the ‘82 midterms. As Walter Cronkite, who briefly appears, puts it, the GOP’s losses in ‘82 were “far more than were being predicted by most pollsters in the last couple of days of the campaign.”

Also pay attention for Walter Mondale, who was the Mitt Romney of ‘82 — one of the opposition party’s presumed front-runners for the ‘84 presidential campaign. He tells Cronkite:

I think the public is voting rather decisively today to change that course. I think I’ve traveled this country more than anybody in the last two years, and it was clear to me that people were suffering, that they didn’t think this policy was working, that they cared about other issues, like the environment and Social Security, and that they wanted a change

Take out the environment and Social Security and can’t you imagine Romney — or Huckabee or Gingrich or Pawlenty or Barbour — sitting for an interview on a major network next Tuesday night and saying the exact same thing?

Also worth noting is Bill Moyers, then a CBS News analyst, making this point to Dan Rather:

Do you remember, Dan, just two years ago the people were saying, “The Democrats can’t govern. Get rid of Jimmy Carter! Give us a Republican Senate!” Because people were really unhappy. Two years later, they’re still unhappy, but at a different party and a different president

Again, just imagine next Tuesday night, when Howard Fineman pops up on MSNBC and declares:

Do you remember, Keith, just two years ago the people were saying, “The Republicans can’t govern. Get rid of George W. Bush! Give us a Democratic Congress!” Because people were really unhappy. Two years later, they’re still unhappy, but at a different party and a different president.