Democratic President Harry Truman popularized the term “do-nothing Congress” and rode that taunt to an unexpected victory in 1948.

Truman, a vice president who rose to commander in chief after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, didn’t simply beat his Republican opponent, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, that year. His party also came roaring back to control Congress. Democrats took 75 seats in the House that year and nine Senate seats, regaining majorities in both chambers and ending their sojourn in the political wilderness after Republicans had won joint control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections.