Hope For The Best…
…but prepare for the worst:
With fewer than 100 days left before the Nov. 7 election, certain assumptions can now be made, contingent upon the absence of a cataclysmic event.
First, the political climate will be extremely hostile to Republican candidates. Second, while Republicans benefited from turnout in 2002 and 2004, this time voter turnout will benefit Democratic candidates. And third, the advantages that the GOP usually has in national party spending will be significantly less than normal.
In terms of the political climate, the facts are clear. All of the traditional diagnostic indicators in major national polls taken in the past 10 days show numbers consistent with an electoral rout.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but we’d better get used to the concept: 2006 may be our 1994, after all…
Hi Mark,
Some of us come here for thoughtful analysis, not hand wringing. You’ve posted articles before about how 2006 is nothing like 1994. Now you think it might be?
Is it possible you are spending a little too much time listening to the political and media elite that have been wrong the last two election cycles?
Sure, control of congress could change, but how is 2006 different enough from 2004 or 2002 to predict a change other than polls that are getting less and less reliable?
Well, sometimes I have time for analysis, and sometimes I just link to pieces that I think are worthwhile. I think that clearly the GOP is in serious trouble. I don’t think it’s inevitable we will lose control of Congress, but I sure think it’s more than possible.
Polls can be wrong, but when poll after poll after poll shows enormous dissatisfaction with the president, the Republican-led Congress, the Republican-led war in Iraq, the direction of the country, and optimism over the future – doesn’t that strike you as perhaps a tad bit on the worrying side?
I’ll gladly listen to counter-arguments, and I might even be persuaded by them – but as of this moment, if I had to put my own money on it – well, I don’t know what I’d do. But six months ago, I would have put my money on the Republicans without hesitating, and that’s no longer the case…
Somewhat off-topic: this week’s New Yorker notes how the GOP has stopped referring to their opposition by their name (the Democratic Party) and instead calls it the “Democrat Party.” Republicans from George Bush on down routinely drop the last two letters. What’s the difference? Well, in addition to the fact that it’s incorrect, it sounds harsh (rhymes with rat); both parties are named after principles, but the “democratic” principle has been dropped from the party name; and it removes the current party from its predecessors. It’s a subtle but powerful thing. It reminds me of 1988, when Democrats referred to the VP candidate as Danforth Quayle and to the standard bearer by all four of his names. If Dan Quayle wants to be called Dan, it’s only fair to do so. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.
Hi Mark,
My point is that the arguments for Democrats and against Republicans are the same now as six months ago, two years ago, and four years ago. Some of the details have changed, but the argument concepts are the same now as then. I’m not claiming the polls are wrong. I think the polls do reflect the sentiment of American citizens. Right now the citizenry is in the same mood as you. However, the polls are becoming less and less able to predict election outcomes.
When citizens answer poll questions, they let off steam. When voters vote, they have two choices; the same two basic choices they have had for the last six years. Just who is going to vote differently now than they did in 2004? Perhaps some will stay home, but most voters will vote the same as they did in 2004. Most voters could stay home in most districts and nothing would change.
Well, I concur that the media tends to overestimate Democratic performance by several percentage points – but our margin of error is shrinking, right now. I think things have changed since 2004, and for the worse, in terms of public perception of Republicans…
Peter, that “Democrat” party thing is not a new phenomenon, and if the New Yorker is just picking up on it now, I’m wondering where they’ve been for the last couple of decades. I can recall complaints from Democrats about that back when J. Danforth Quayle was running for VP the first time.
It’s kind of silly and childish thing to do, and I don’t much care for it. Does it make any real difference? Well, the Democrats are obsessed with “framing” lately, so I understand why it would bug them, but I have a hard time believing people are really paying that much attention.
There is one huge difference between 1994 and 2006. From 1993 to 1994 Republicans swept all of the special elections for congressional races. In the last two years, Republicans have managed to successfully defend all of those races. And in most of those races (Hackett’s Ohio race excepted) the Republican candidate(s) totals came fairly close to what Bush pulled in 2004.
This is a complete inversion of where I was a few months ago, but now I’d say the Democrats have a better chance taking over the Senate than the House, assuming they can win the 2 open seat races in the South, topple DeWine, Santorum, Burns and Chafee (all but Chafee are currently trailing in the polls), hold Minnesotta and Maryland and keep Lieberman from caucusing with the Republicans when he inevitably knocks off Lamont in the general election. Its still a long shot, but they can do it.
The American public us usually pretty smart. It generally selects the leader most appropriate for the times, and when it occasionally makes a mistake, as it did with Carter, it corrects it quickly. If the Republicans lose seats in the midterms maybe they deserve to?
Bush has been consistent in his policy, if the GOP recieves a slap in November the voters will be repudiating that policy, I believe the message will be “democracy for arabs was a noble ideal but it failed. Get out and let the barbarians slaughter each other, a thousand dead arabs is not worth one dead marine.”
In any case, a humble admission of fault in the face of voter anger is a much wiser policy for the repubs than the foul-mouthed, infantile temper tantrum the lefties threw when they lost. Shrug, take it like a man and prepare for ‘08.
Also, thinking strategically, it’s good for the electorate to be able to register an exasperated protest vote in ‘o6 and get it out of their system rather than in ‘o8 where a republican rout would do real damage and maybe hand the whitehouse to the dems.
Excellent point on the special elections, Sean…
Peter, Dennis is right. this is not new. but he is also wrong. it is not childish. it is accurate. Democrat is a noun, the name of their party. democratic is an adjective, and as inapt a one as you could imagine to apply to the Democrat party. The confusion arises in that Republican can also be an adjective, but as the name of the party, it is a noun.
oh, but to the point of the post:
ain’t gonna happen.
the media can have their fictions, but they will remain fictions, no matter how hard they try to bring them from the page to reality. worst case scenario is a 2 seat loss in the Senate and an 8 seat loss in the House. And I think it’ll be a lot closer to the status quo on both counts.
Dales at RedState, the best diviner of polls I know of, sees a -1 Senate, and (I think) -3 in the House. I’d trust him over any so called expert.
Plus, if the Democrats got control of both houses, how would the DU morons explain the Diebold machines suddenly working properly again?
Amos asked:
Plus, if the Democrats got control of both houses, how would the DU morons explain the Diebold machines suddenly working properly again?
Simple. They always did work. It’s just that in ‘04, the Republicans were the highest bidder.;)
Seriously, Mark, consider this:
In 1946, after twelve years of uninterrupted control by the Democrats of both Congress and the Whitehouse and a long, debilitating war, the voters threw the Democrats out and elected Republican majorities to both Houses of Congress, putting Harry Truman in roughly the same position George Bush will be in if the Democrats win this November. The result?
The GOP wasn’t ready for primetime. Their platform was basically opposition to anything the Democrats did (sound familiar?). They got nothing done and two years later the Democrats returned to power, and except for the first two years of the Eisenhower administration, held both Houses until Ronald Reagan was elected. And Truman pulled off one of the greatest comebacks and upsets in this country’s political history.
Now the analogy isn’t perfect. This war hasn’t ended yet. And Truman wasn’t a lame-duck. But even if the Democrats do take both the House and Senate this year, it won’t be the end of the world. We’ll still have the Whitehouse. As for ‘08, we’ll just have to go out and convince the voters that the GOP deserve to be returned to the majority again. And I have no doubt that our esteemed colleagues from the left side of the aisle will be doing what comes naturally to them; proving that the GOP deserve to be returned to the majority again
Hey me, (it’s not often that I get to talk directly to me, now that the guys in the white coats keep insisting I take those medicines), I’ve got to disagree with you there. The party is called the Democratic Party. There’s no grammatical reason why it can’t be an adjective – it’s modifying the noun “party.” It would be incorrect to call party members “Democratics,” which is why we use the noun “Democrat” to describe members. (And that’s where your point about “Republican” being both a noun and adjective comes into play.)
And in any event, the party’s formal name is the Democratic Party, so insisting it be called anything but that seems to me to be a case of unfairly editorializing. Calling it the “Democrat Party” isn’t quite as bad as the Internet name-calling of Dumbocrats and Rethuglicans, but it still seems a bit pointless to me.
fatman, you make an interesting comparison to Truman’s infamous “Do-Nothing” Congress. What would a Democratic Congress do? Well, I guess they’d take a stab at raising the minimum wage, a fairly pointless exercise which plays well. After that? They’ve got no unity on taking action the big issues of the day – Iraq, immigration, world trade, etc.
[...] Over at the Decision ‘08, they’re preparing for the worst. Republicans should be, well the one’s who haven’t jumped ship. [...]