Democrats Have Nothing to Fear But Themselves
As the White House and all the members of the Republican echo chamber relive the glorious days of November 2004 by bashing John Kerry on another misstatement, what you should really watch for entertainment is how Democratic fear mounts as election day draws closer.
This is best reflected by Tom Toles
Having lost all but 3 (or 4 depending on how you count 2000) presidential elections since 1964 and having lost the Congress since 1994 (accept for briefly in 2001 when a Republican left his party), Democrats are more sure of their ability to lose than anything else. You can see this on liberal .blogs who refuse to be optimistic about next Tuesday until next Wednesday. You can see it in the all sorts of media and it is exemplified on a podcast by Joe Klein on today's Time.com entitled, "Can the Democrats Find a Way to Lose?" Whatever you think of Klein, this is how Democrats see the world. The John Kerry flashback of the past two days only strengthens their fear. They pounce on every unfavorable poll in every key race and ignore the more numerous favorable ones. They have nightmares about the Republican Get Out The Vote effort while ignoring that they didn't do badly themselves in 2004 and this year they have the more self-motivated voters. Some of this is done to keep motivated those numerous folks who will be needed this last week. They'll need lots of people spending more time volunteering than at home before they can gain victory.
Will Democrats fail again? I don't see it. I am with the current conventional wisdom that says the Democrats will take the House by a small margin, but I don't see more than 4 clear Senate pickups yet. The Senate is still possible however and I'll come back to this before election day.
Did Kerry hurt them? Not really, voters know Kerry isn't on the ballot. He hurt himself more than any Democrat on the ballot next week. For some reason, Kerry's sees another presidential candidacy in his future. The past two days does hurt that dream.
The reality that is the FUBAR Iraq War will soon push Kerry back into obscurity. Today's NY Times story has as their top story on how the US military is now doing powerpoint presentations on Iraq moving toward "chaos." That's their time just see the chart that goes with the story. This the reality that has pushed Bush's polling numbers into the 30's and is dragging many Republicans down with him. I'll post on that soon as it relates to even popular Republicans like Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.
posted by redbarb at 3:15 PM
4 Comments:
The whole uproar about Kerry is stupid. Even if he wasn't talking about Bush, as he claimed (and I think it's pretty obvious from the broadcast that he was), he was just saying what so many people think anyway. He's not running for anything, and he's not representing anyone besides the state of Massachussetts.
GreetingsI obviously hope you and others are wrong about what will end up happening next Tuesday (though regretably it would seem rather likely even to me), but, whatever the result, it is going to be quite interesting to observe! I admit to not having heard any conjecture as to what level of voter turn-out is predicted, though this obviously could vary between states and districts.
Hoping you will eventually see this, and if I may be off topic for a moment, you once asked me to recommend some music to you. Should you wish to visit my own blog and have the time to do so, you will find there, among other things, a two-part post about two English composers, Vaughan Williams and Howells. Yet you should be forewarned that the latter's big works, notably his _Hymnus_ _Paradisi_, can be _QUITE_ intense since he felt with his heart as well as wrote with his head.
J. V.
Or, to phrase it better, _COMPOSED_ with his head.
Well, they have a few things to fear in addition to themselves:
1. Incumbency--The conventional wisdom is that undecideds break against the incumbent, but I'm not so sure that's true anymore. If undecided voters are only showing up for the glamour races (governor, senator), then they may default to incumbent House members and save a few GOP backsides.
2. Partisanship--The Democrats' hopes in the House rest, to some extent, on seats that have been gerrymandered Republican. As the party faithful inevitable "come back home" toward the end of the campaign, the Dems dreams in places like Arizona and Ohio, not to mention Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho, may be dashed.
3. Saddam--Of course, the date of the verdict was ordered from Washington, and of course, Saddam's death sentence means nothing in the big scheme of things (except to Saddam, I suppose), but this sort of news usually generates a small uptick for Bush. Even a two-point blip would put another 10-20 House seats out of reach.
4. Iraq--There is, I think, a strange ambivalence about Iraq, similar to what existed back in the Vietnam days. People would rather win than get out, but they'd rather get out than "stay the course". Since the Democrats haven't been very clear about whether/when/how to get out, and the Bushies are now promising to do something different, maybe people will decide to give them one more chance to win. (Of course, Bush didn't help this by endorsing Rumsfeld. Doing that before Election Day was enormously stupid, even for him.)
5. Turnout--First, the Republicans better at GOTV than the Democrats. Second, the Democrats' key constituencies generally lag behind the Republicans' base in terms of turnout. Almost every poll shows likely voters more pro-Republican than registered voters.
Add all that together and the Republicans hold the House by a slight margin.
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