Every midterm invites comparisons. Robert Showah, writing on the Journal's opinion page, reaches back further than most. He picks 1894. The country had just fallen into a depression. Railroad speculation and doubts about the dollar's link to gold helped cause it. And the party in power paid for it at the polls.
Here's the history as Showah tells it. In 1893 Grover Cleveland returned to the White House for a second term. Early on, the economy fell into a depression. Investors had piled into railroads, and people doubted whether the dollar could still be turned into gold. Cleveland repealed the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act. That cut off the easier money that farmers in debt had hoped for, and it split his own party.
The 1894 midterms came in the middle of it. The economy, in Showah's word, cratered. Cleveland's party gave up more than 100 seats in the House and lost control of the Senate. The years after reshuffled both parties. William Jennings Bryan lost to William McKinley in 1896 and again in 1900. A three-way race in 1912 put Woodrow Wilson in office. And two amendments changed the country's plumbing for good. The 16th Amendment gave Washington the power to tax income. The 17th moved the choice of senators from state legislatures to voters.
What history can and can't tell you
Showah's own argument is political, about where power should sit. We leave that to him and draw no line to any party today. The parts we'd keep are the dates. A speculative boom, a scare about money, a crash, and a midterm in the middle of it. The country got through it. Markets did too, though not quickly and not without pain. Showah's closing line is that "history may not repeat 1894, but the coming years could rhyme with it."
Our read
This is a Behavioral and Investments/Risk · IN04 story. We don't claim 2026 is 1894. Nobody knows that. The lesson is that elections change the rules slowly. The income tax amendment came well after the 1894 vote, once both parties had reorganized. Who pays what tax, and how, moved over a generation. A portfolio built for one election night is built for the wrong clock. Markets have lived through far worse years than this one.
The one thing in your plan this story touches is your tax assumption. Most retirement projections assume today's tax rates run forever. History says they drift. Pull up your plan this week and find the tax rate it uses on your withdrawals. Then ask what your income looks like if that rate is higher. If the answer worries you, that's a case for holding some money in a Roth, where the tax is settled now. You don't fix the roof the night the wind picks up. You check it in calm weather, and the day after a vote is as good a day as any.