Michael Barone gives us this historical review of 6th-year elections from Reconstruction to the present in the Wall Street Journal (free site). The 1874 election was particularly disastrous. "[M]y reading of history tells me that this was a revolt against Grant's policy of stationing troops in the South to enforce civil rights for blacks. Americans had been growing weary of this strife ... and wanted the troops sent home. They were, and Democrats held the House for 16 of the next 20 years--and Southern blacks were left to the mercies of segregation laws and lynch mobs."

Barone concludes, "I don't know what the results of the midterm elections of 2006 will be. But I doubt that they will have the sweeping partisan or policy consequences of the midterm elections of 1874 and 1894, or 1938 and 1994." For the sake of law-abiding people and victims of crime, I hope he is right. The possibility that 2006 may be for criminals what 1874 was for the Klan is a spooky thought for Halloween.