Time reports that there’s a sinking feeling now on the part of Republicans. Its sub-headline says it all:
If the midterm elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives.
How bad is it? According to Time, there’s even a slim chance — versus the remote, no-way Jose, you’ve gotta be kidding chance analysts diagnosed a short time ago – that the Demmies can take over the Senate, too:
The midterm contests in a President’s second term are almost always treacherous, but this time around, Republicans thought it would be different. The 2006 elections, coming on top of their gains in 2002 and 2004, would make history and perhaps even cement a g.o.p. majority in Congress for a generation. George W. Bush’s credibility on national security and the states’ aggressive gerrymandering, they believed, had turned the vast majority of districts into fortresses for incumbents. But that’s not turning out to be the case.
In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told Time that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: “Had enough?”
That Time quote underscores a political fact. The Democrats now have two brass rings in front of them. One is within the grasp and the other is further away but still attainable. Why? Because many people — and we have noted repeatedly the erosion in GOP/Bush support among many independent and centrist voters (who were previously split) — are fed up or troubled by the GOP record, style, tilt towards social conservatives and the scandals. If the Democrats keep the focus on that, their task is easier. If they put the focus on their intra-party warring or make themselves the issue, the GOP has a chance to turn this around. Time reports that the key sticking point remains the war in Iraq.
The signs suggest an anti-Republican wave is building, says nonpartisan electoral handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, whose Rothenberg Political Report is closely followed in Washington. “The only question is how high, how big, how much force it will have. I think it will be considerable.” The danger signs for Republicans show up across the electoral map but nowhere more clearly than in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where the hottest Senate race in the country is being fought and where Republican strategists say as many as five g.o.p. congressional seats are in play, out of a total 19.
The Demmies are now reportedly competitive with the GOP on the fundraising front. But, the piece notes, Republicans can take some relief that the elections are still relatively far off and the magazine quotes some Republicans who believe they can turn the situation at least partly around.
On the other hand, both sides and pundits (in the media and particularly on blogs) need to never forget that much of what determines an election are unforeseen events and developments beyond anyone’s control. Some things could happen to worsen Bush administration public support; some things could happen that help it shine and regain support.
So, what’s the Democratic strategy? It sounds like it hearkens back to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign where a well-oiled political “war room” is ready to leap on any attack within seconds plus a “all politics is local” candidate recruitment strategy:
“If they want to have a negative campaign not about the issues, they will be met on the campaign field,” says Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, the former Clinton White House aide who heads the Democrats’ campaign committee for House races. Theirs has been a shifting line of attack. January’s mantra about the g.o.p.’s “culture of corruption” became February’s lament about the “rubber-stamp Congress.” The latest slogan they are hurling against the Republicans is “dangerously incompetent.”
The most appealing argument the Democrats are offering may be their candidates, who were recruited more for how they fit the districts in which they are running than for how they match the party’s national ideology.
Part of the problem, though, is that it’s hard for voters to get a handle on precisely what the Democratic Party’s national ideology is due to warring or uneasily-allianced factions and a clear perception from Democrats that on many issues they don’t want to lose support so when they make a move it’s as if they are walking on eggshells. This is a reality — and a dilemma…particularly with so much at stake. Time notes:
Meanwhile, although there is no doubt that Americans are unhappy with the Republicans who run the country, Democratic strategists acknowledge that they have yet to sell voters on their party. In the Time poll, approval for congressional Democrats is no higher (39%) than for Republicans, and 56% of voters said they don’t believe the Democrats offer a clear set of alternative policies. Democratic activists and fund raisers are putting pressure on their leaders to come up with a program to tout as an option different from the Republican agenda, the way Gingrich and g.o.p. candidates did in 1994 with their 10-point Contract with America.
Top Democrats, Time says, are already preparing plans for what they’d focus on if they should regain some Congressional power, so they can hit the ground running.
And the magazine’s piece has a passage that again underscores the GOP’s biggest fear about losing the House: it would mean INVESTIGATIONS.
Administration officials say they fear that losing even one house of Congress would mean subpoenas and investigations–a taste of the medicine House Republicans gave Bill Clinton. “Everything will grind to a halt,” one said. That prediction could be a scare tactic designed to get out the g.o.p. vote. But Democrats say that if they are victorious in November, they plan to force Bush to be more accountable, and they intend to dig through records of contracts in Iraq, for homeland security and for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
So the Republican argument may be that, if they lose control of the House, there could be gridlock.
But many Americans who are fed up could this time ask themselves whether gridlock in divided government — which partly stems from when the second party exercises a check on the other party and conducts vigorous oversight — isn’t better than one-party government that essentially has negated checks-and-balances on issues involving executive powers, undermined previous Congressional mechanisms to crack down on ethics violations and helped smooth the way to a slew of scandals. In a year when voters clearly want change, many voters will want to cast a protest vote. Who will benefit from that?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.