It’s little wonder the Republicans are always so anxious about midterm elections. They lost ground in the very first one — when Abraham Lincoln was in the White House, in 1862. The Democrats picked up 38 House seats in that election, and they might have won more if President Lincoln hadn’t used federal troops to intimidate the opposition in some of the border-state contests. Democrats even won a majority of the House seats from Lincoln’s home state of Illinois. Was it a signal to Washington that Lincolnomics had failed? Not at all.