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Friday, October 27, 2006

This feeling I have

I haven't taken look recently at who's up and who's down in the various closely-contested House and Senate races, though I may well do that after posting this. But I just want to go on record with this feeling I have.

I don't think the Democrats are going to make the gains that many are expecting in the upcoming midterm elections. My sense is that the GOP will hold on to both houses of Congress. Mind you, I'd be delighted to be wrong about this, but here are some of the things that make me think I won't be:
  • In recent elections, the Democrats have underperformed expectations, notably their own.

  • Although polling shows most voters think the Iraq invasion was a mistake, I'm not confident that this is a major issue for most voters. Yet polling results on this issue seem to be a principal source of the Democrats' confidence. I don't think the average voter is making up his or her mind based on such things as how we may have destabilized a faraway region, or—as the U.S. population tops 300 million—the fewer than 3,000 soldiers who have died in Iraq.

  • Incumbents win more than 95% of elections.

  • "All politics is local." - Tip O'Neill

  • The Virginia senate race is a statistical dead heat, even though you would think George Allen should be done. Granted, it's Virginia.

  • The New Jersey Supreme Court has done (appointed) Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez no favor in a dead-heat race.

  • I don't see people in Montana electing a Democrat to the Senate.

  • I read an article recently in which a reporter asked Nancy Pelosi which suite of offices she would choose if she became Speaker of the House. She reportedly laughed giddily and said something like "I can have any suite I want!"

  • The Democrats still seem to be running against the GOP record rather than articulating a positive program of their own. This is similar to the approach that sank John Kerry. Notably, Kerry misjudged the the importance of the Iraq war as an issue and spent far too much time talking about it.
If the Democrats do significantly worse than they have started to expect—if they fail to capture either house of Congress—it will be interesting to watch the fallout and finger-pointing within the party. I'm not sure which, if any, of the party's potential presidential candidates will benefit if the Democrats underperform. Most anything that shows the party is a mess probably helps Obama, since the more messed up the present is the more people look toward "the future." Obama's decision for 2008 is intruiguing. Does he stay on the sidelines and remain the incredibly facile speaker who is all things to all people, or does he decide to go for it as the most dynamic and facile speaker—and, besides Wesley Clark, the least politically experienced—national candidates the Democrats have offered up since JFK.


posted at 10:08 PM

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