In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot captured 19 percent of the presidential vote from people who otherwise would have likely voted Republican and enabled Bill Clinton to trip into the presidency. The young Democrat immediately set about trying to nationalize health care, allow gays to serve openly in the military and raise taxes.

He was soundly refuted two years later when Republicans won control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

Is this déjà vu or what?

After Barack Obama won the presidency two years ago and brought a bunch of Clinton has-beens back into important government positions, many assumed they had learned from experience.

Maybe that wasn’t necessary. As President Obama explained to Arkansas congressman Marion Berry in January, “The big difference here and in ‘94 was you’ve got me.”

A big difference indeed. Republicans picked up at least 63 seats in the House on Tuesday, nine more than they gained in 1994.

But hey, don’t blame President Obama. He was still community organizing back in 1994, so maybe he didn’t realize what was at stake in this whole midterm election thing.

Obama recently explained the public’s discontent with Democrats by saying that people are “scared,” and “we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.” After all, how could clearly thinking people throw the Democrats out of the majority?

Unless, of course, some of them did get “scared,” as Obama spent his first two years in office on health care reform, trying to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and insisting the top income tax bracket be allowed to climb back to the “Clinton rate” of 39.6 percent.

Democrats are like spoiled children who can’t take no for an answer. Regardless of how many times the public rejects their agenda, they convince themselves that their suffering is merely a result of miscommunication or Republican opposition and try again.

In 2008, their presidential candidate managed to get a majority for the first time in 34 years, and they declared the end of the Republican Party. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, even penned a book titled “The Death of Conservatism.”

Democrats winning elections is like South Carolina beating Alabama; it so rarely happens, they go haywire and overreact. The inevitable result is public revulsion over their agenda.

Republicans have won seven of the last 11 presidential contests; every Democratic victory since 1964 has been the result of some strange historical aberration unrelated to their ideological agenda.

Carter won in 1976 as a result of the aftermath of Watergate and President Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon, and was tossed out four years later. Clinton won because of Perot, and was re-elected when Colin Powell decided not to run for president. (In hindsight, we were better off.)

Obama won because a global financial meltdown unfolded in the middle of the campaign.

Carter, Clinton and Obama all misinterpreted their victories as a mandate for their policies, and all suffered for it at the polls.

Republicans, who can handle victory because they are more accustomed to it, somberly responded to their stunning gains in Tuesday’s election with a level of humility rarely seen from Democrats in 2006 and 2008.

“Let us be under no illusion — many of those who cast their vote for Republicans yesterday have their share of doubts about whether we are up to the task of governing; about whether congressional Republicans have learned our lesson,” said Congressman Eric Cantor, the second ranking Republican in the House, in response to the results.

Cantor’s caution was recognition that America still has two very alive and dynamic political parties; over-interpreting the results of one election as a permanent political realignment leads to a self-defeating and false sense of confidence. Hopefully Democrats now realize this as well, and will end their foolish speculation about the demise of the GOP.

Still, one party does stand out as the consistent preference of the nation’s center-right majority. That preference was made clear again Tuesday.

Tray Smith is the opinions editor of The Crimson White. His column runs on Fridays.