Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Edit HTMLDemocratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen are stating flat out that Democrats will hold onto the House, despite predictions of a GOP wipeout.
"We're on pace to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives," Pelosi just told reporters.
"Millions of Americans are proving the Washington pundits wrong," Van Hollen said.
Democratic operatives are claiming their base is turning out to vote in heavy numbers, especially among African-Americans.
It's fine to predict victory months again of the vote, or when the poll is close. But when it's election day and you know you're going to get wiped out, you express objective confidence in your candidates, and encourage folks to come out and vote. You know, non-partisan pleasantries.
Of course Ms. Pelosi has been saying this stuff since at least as far back as May. But you'd think she'd drop the act on the last official day that she's House leader.
The Republicans stand to make huge gains in both the House and Senate tonight, but, just in case something goes wrong, Fox News has already gone to the "vote fixing" well:
If you didn't watch it, voters in Nevada (the ones that call Fox News, anyway) are apparently complaining about their touch-screen ballots, claiming that they only displayed incumbent Deomocrat Harry Reid's name (while his opponent, Republican favourite Sharron Angle, did not appear), or, that Harry Reid's name was already checked off.
So community organizers from the now-defunct ACORN are still up to their dastardly old tricks, it would appear. Unless Ms. Angle actually wins, of course. Then the vote went fine.
As the AP reported on Sunday, one of the big-ticket issues that post-midterm Washington will have to deal with is the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, which is set to happen at the start of 2011 if no action is taken. For both political parties, this is a problem -- Barack Obama famously promised that he would not increase taxes on households making less than $250,000 in annual income, while Republicans insist that all cuts should be made permanent.
This whole debate is really a bit nonsensical, as The Economist reported in September:
The irony in this drama is that the money at stake is, in the larger scheme, trivial. Raising taxes on the top 2% of households, as Mr Obama proposes, would bring in $34 billion next year: enough to cover nine days’ worth of the deficit. Indeed, the problem with the tax debate is not that Democrats and Republicans disagree, but that they mostly agree. Democrats think 98% of Americans should not pay higher taxes; the Republicans say 100% should not.
Having said that, there is a certain symbolic weight to all of this. A full Republican victory would set a precedent of keeping taxes low, thereby forcing the government to try and cut back spending in order to tame the deficit (more on that in a minute). A compromise deal which allowed for taxes to go back up for, say, households making more than $500,000/year, might make future taxation policy more flexible.
An important issue, then. So how do Washington insiders see this playing out? From the AP article:
"The most likely outcome is a one-year extension of everything," said Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf. "The second most likely outcome is nothing happens."
So either the issue is put off, or no deal is reached. This is the reality of politics in Washington, and it's quite sad. At a time when strong leadership of any kind - Democrat, Republican, whatever - is so sorely needed, Congress and the President have failed in successfully and comprehensively tackling any important issue of the day, and seem intent on going on in this way.
This is why there is so much anger directed at Washington. It may often be misguided, hyperbolic, and cruel, but the anger is there for a reason.
But it won't be long before everyone will be forced to step up and take action. From The Economist:
Around 2015, spending will start a multi-year climb. To attribute that entirely to Mr Obama would be disingenuous. His health-care plan does contribute to it, but rising interest on the national debt and built-in health and demographic pressures are more important.
In other words, despite Republican promises to roll back spending to pre-recession levels, the deficit will almost surely rise because of issues that are beyond their control. If they dig their heels in on tax cuts now, they are ensuring that future measures to cut back the deficit will have to be much more extreme.
But Democrats have to shoulder a fair share of the blame for this fiscal mess. Obama's signature health-care plan was such a disappointment on so many fronts, and it will eventually become a serious financial burden, as the article goes on to explain:
Mr Obama took an American approach to health care, dismissing both a Canadian single-payer option and a broad federal safety-net plan to win support. One result is that 7% of Americans will remain uninsured, still the third-highest percentage in the OECD, after Mexico and Turkey. “This is way to the right of what [Richard] Nixon proposed,” says Jonathan Gruber, a health expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. American resistance to Canadian-style rationing is also why the reform provides so few serious cost controls. A recent study by the actuary of the federal agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid found that the reform will do little to slow the growth in public and private health spending.
So much political capital spent on a bill that does not achieve any of its stated goals, and a deficit that will continue to climb even if the economy improves (this expectation is built into the projections). There will come a time when Washington will no longer be able to kick its problems down the road.
Paul Krugman's op-ed piece in Friday's New York Times quickly spread through the Web and attracted much derision from right-wing pundits. The piece is essentially a long, manic rant about the terrible world to come if the Republicans take control of the House (and possibly the Senate), nicely sprinkled with apocalyptic prophecies such as the following:
This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.
Also:
So if the elections go as expected next week, here’s my advice: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Mr Krugman offers no reason to believe that if Republicans fail to capture the House, Democrats will deliver the policies he thinks we need to avoid "years of political chaos and economic weakness". It's a little sad, isn't it, when even our most eminent public intellectuals waste so much of their time, and ours, on baseless partisan freakouts?
Ouch. But Democrats and their supporters, facing up to the reality of what seems likely to be a disastrous election night next Tuesday, have started making a rather crude argument -- yes, they've made mistakes, they say, but if the Republicans win they'll be even worse.
Why are Democrats making this argument? Well, even though the Tea Party crowd brands Obama as a radical leftist, the truth is that the President has been a huge disappointment for the liberal left. He has failed to enact credible policy changes in any area that matters to the voters that put him in office. The health care bill is weak, the climate change bill died in the Senate, and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has yet to be repealed.
This is why Obama went on The Daily Show and made the now infamous remark, "Yes we can, but..." -- the point being that he is still supposedly committed to great change, but that more time is needed.
Mr. Krugman makes a similar appeal with the following remarks:
Right now we very much need active policies on the part of the federal government to get us out of our economic trap.
But we won’t get those policies if Republicans control the House. In fact, if they get their way, we’ll get the worst of both worlds: They’ll refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to be worried about the deficit, while simultaneously increasing long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts — cuts they have already announced won’t have to be offset with spending cuts.
But here's the problem -- the Democrats have had two years of utter domination in Washington in which they could have enacted the agenda Mr. Krugman is demanding. And the fact is that they have failed miserably. When you're in office and you fail so badly, you don't really deserve to stay in office, do you? The "we're less worse" argument doesn't wash -- at the very least, it's not the sort of message that's going to get the base to go out and vote.
Mr. Krugman also blunders badly with the following argument:
We might add that should any Republicans in Congress find themselves considering the possibility of acting in a statesmanlike, bipartisan manner, they’ll surely reconsider after looking over their shoulder at the Tea Party-types, who will jump on them if they show any signs of being reasonable. The role of the Tea Party is one reason smart observers expect another government shutdown, probably as early as next spring.
The Tea Party movement certainly has its mean, hateful side. It also has terribly unrealistic expectations. But are we to automatically assume that every Republican elected to office is going to behave boorishly in office? Is it too much to assume that at least some of them will act in a "statesmanlike" manner, or at least as statesmanlike as any other member of Congress? Every politician who goes to Washington has to make compromises. Why should we automatically assume that the Tea Party candidates will be no different?
Don't get me wrong here -- a Republican House will make things very difficult in Washington. The party has yet to indicate how it is going to try and enact legislation with a Democratic President holding the veto pen. The economic situation is still dire. There are many reasons to "be very afraid" -- but the Democrats have had their chance to assuage our fears. And they haven't.
The term "Progressive" - meaning a leftward-leaning politician, pundit, or regular human being - seemed to emerge out of nowhere sometime around 2008. Never mind the fact that early 20th century American Progressivism, which obsessed over Washington's perceived "inefficiency" as well as its cozy relationship to the corporate titans of the day, very much resembles the modern Tea Party movement. But that's a discussion for another day. The topic here is modern Progressives and their seeming inability to criticize Barack Obama, blaming all of his misfortunes on the big bad Republican party.
The Huffington Post has been the online hub for Progressive bloggers for some time now. And many of their writers still can't seem to find a single flaw in Obama's performance as President up to this point. Take this column from writer Michael Shaw (you can see the photographs on the website):
The "White House Memo" column fronting Monday morning's NYT (Obama's Playbook After Nov. 2) is simply mind-boggling. It paints a picture of Obama as unwilling to work with the GOP, leading off with the assertion it took the President eighteen months to formally engage Republican Senate honcho, Mitch McConnell. Has Obama's "post-partisan" obsession simply vanished from the memory banks? As a memo to the author, Ms. Stolberg, Mr. Obama has been practically licking Mr. McConnell's boots not just regularly, but fresh out of the gate as documented by the pictures we've been running almost since the inauguration
Take the image above, for example. As early as two months into his term (see: "Catering to the Right") Obama has publicly been soliciting McConnell. (This photo, by the way, was taken four days after Obama had all those GOP Congresspeople to the White House, if anyone remembers that. ...You know, it was that session where the members got in the new president's face, and then collected autographs from "The One" for the folks back home.)
And its been the same for most of the past two years. This shot, for example -- part of an usual pair of back-to-back Obama/McConnell shots on the White House Flickr stream (see: White House Flickr Stream: Professional Right In, Professional Left Out) appeared as recently as two months ago. Once again,the theme is reaching out, reaching out, reaching out ... and McConnell, McConnell, McConnell.
The New York Times article under discussion may be found here. Here is how it opens:
It took President Obama 18 months to invite the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to the White House for a one-on-one chat. Their Aug. 4 session in the Oval Office — 30 minutes of private time, interrupted only when the president’s daughter Malia called from summer camp to wish her father a happy 49th birthday — was remarkable, not for what was said, but for what it took to make it happen.
Not long before the meeting, Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate leader, lamented to his onetime Democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle, that Mr. Obama would never get an important nuclear arms treaty with Russia ratified until he consulted top Republicans. Mr. Lott, who recounted the exchange in an interview, was counting on Mr. Daschle, a close Obama ally, to convey the message; lo and behold, Mr. McConnell soon had an audience with the president.
And it goes on like this for a while. So, who is right?
Well, here is Obama speaking on January 27, 2009, after the meeting with the House Republican Caucus that Shaw references:
As you might expect, the focus here is on the forthcoming economic stimulus package. Obama sure sounds non-partisan, stating that he respects the "philosophical differences" the Republicans have with his proposals, and that he doesn't expect 100% support from the party. In the end, of course, not a single House Republican supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Some might argue that Republicans were determined to stonewall Obama at every turn, so there was no way that he could have won their support. But such thinking is anachronistic. The Republicans were reeling after the 2008 elections, having been thoroughly trounced in just about every way imaginable. The swagger the party has now leading up to the midterm elections was non-existent. And you're telling me that the President could not get one single House vote for a stimulus package at a time when the economy seemed to be on the verge of collapse? Surely the fault here does not lay entirely with the Republicans.
Note that Obama said something else important in that clip -- he had not yet had a formal meeting with Republican Senators. In fact, such a meeting would not take place until nearly a year and a half later. Why would it? When Arlen Specter defected to the Democratic party, they had a filibuster-proof majority in the chamber. Progressives everywhere crowed over these developments. But then Massachusetts had to ruin the party by voting in Scott Brown. Oh well.
Anyway, on May 25th, 2010, Obama finally went over to Capitol Hill to hold such a meeting. Here is how The Washington Post described the proceedings:
President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a rare meeting with Senate Republicans, but the 75-minute session yielded little progress on hot-button topics and left some senators with bruised feelings.
"He needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans," Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) told reporters. "He's pretty thin-skinned."
Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) described the meeting as "testy," and Sen. John Thune (S.D.) called it a "lively discussion." Others questioned whether the "symbolism" of Obama's approach matched the actions of his Democratic congressional allies.
Republican senators complained that President Barack Obama talked about cooperation while pushing a “far left” agenda during a private meeting that one lawmaker described as “very tense.”
Obama went to Capitol Hill yesterday to press for bipartisanship on issues such as immigration and energy policy that he wants Congress to tackle this year.
Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who will be one of 12 Senate negotiators on merging House-Senate financial- overhaul bills, said Obama “talked a great deal about bipartisanship” while pushing “very partisan” proposals.
“I asked him how he was able to reconcile that duplicity coming in today to see us,” Corker said yesterday. “I just found it pretty audacious that he would be here today as we move into election season using Republican senators as a prop to talk about bipartisanship.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the president has been pushing proposals on the “far left” and trying to pass them with support from only a few Republicans. “That’s not our idea of bipartisanship,” he said.
Now, accusing Obama of having a "far left" agenda is a bit much. But Democratic supporters have to face the facts -- while Obama preached the gospel of bipartisanship for much of his early Presidency, his actions suggested that he wanted bipartisanship to operate on his terms. Remember, this is the same man who expected to have a healthcare bill passed before Congress went on summer recess in August 2009. This is the same President that pushed for cap-and-trade legislation at the same time, got it through the House, and is now apparently abandoning the idea as the bill languishes in the Senate. Shouldn't there have been a plan to get this passed from the get-go?
Clearly Obama faces a fierce and determined opponent in the Republican party. But it is also abundantly clear that he was not even close to being prepared to deal with such an opponent. As for his attempts at bipartisanship, I'll let this Politico article from January 23rd, 2009 do the talking:
President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who's in charge of these negotiations. "I won," Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
Unfortunately for Obama, it seems as if the leader of a newly-minted Republican House might be able offer the same retort in the near future.
An interesting AP article (the MSNBC crosspost is provided here) reflects on the potential pitfalls that face the Republicans should they emerge victorious in the upcoming midterm elections.
As the situation stands now, a takeover of the House seems rather likely, while the Senate is a long shot. And, of course, the President is still a Democrat. This will make for a rather uneasy legislature.
This is particularly true given that many of the new Republicans will be enthusiastic Tea Party-backed young guns. The article explains the problem well:
First-termers who ran as enemies of business-as-usual in Washington aren't likely to be in the mood to accept the standard bargaining that's virtually certain to result once their colleagues on Capitol Hill and outside interest groups — including the business lobby — get a look at the GOP's proposals.
"They come in with an authenticity that nobody has: 'We were elected in the year of the tea party. We know what the people want. You are just old fuddy duddies who have been here forever and are part of the problem,'" said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform who often advises congressional Republicans.
The uncompromising tenor of the House could clash badly with that of the Senate. Senator Mitch McConnell, who has been the face of Republican senatorial opposition to the Obama regime over the past two years, had this to say:
"I think humility and gratitude is the appropriate response to the midcourse correction that I think is coming — not, you know, sort of chest-beating or spiking the ball in the end zone or acting like we have been entrusted with the entire federal government," McConnell said in a recent interview.
Even The Heritage Foundation, and arch-conservative think tank, has reservations about what might come to pass:
"The Republican Party is still a tattered brand. It's not as if people are enthusiastically embracing the Republican brand — they're rejecting what has been done the last two years," said Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation, a House aide following the 1994 Republican takeover. "They're going to have to do something that is dramatic enough to say to people, 'We heard you.'"
It is worth remembering that Bill Clinton faced off against a similarly young and enthusiastic Congress in 1994, and emerged victorious in his second presidential election in 1998.
The problem here is that the Senate is going to prove to be a bottleneck for House ideas no matter who controls it. Compromises to House bills will be necessary in order to avoid filibusters and the like. When such modified bills are then passed back to Congress for approval, how will the Tea Party folks in office react? Will they be willing to give in on their values in order to achieve small victories? Or will they balk at such compromises?
And then there is the matter of President Obama himself, who has the right to veto any bill passed by Congress. One gets the feeling that he cannot overuse this privilege, especially if the Democrats maintain control of the Senate. How could he possibly nix legislation that his own party approves, however reluctantly.
The key here will be to watch the House, and not just on the vaunted "first 100 days". It will be how the House performs over the long term that will determine how the Republican brand will be perceived when it comes time for the next presidential election.
Democrats formerly could count on certain demographic groups for the bulk of their votes. Such groups included women, who are presumably more concerned about issues concerning children than (often absentee) men, the poor, who often depend on social assistance, and Catholics, who tended to shy away from the WASP aristocracy in charge of the Republicans. As this New York Times article (crossposted here on MSNBC) indicates, the Democrats are in trouble with regards to these folks with the midterm elections just days away:
Critical parts of the coalition that delivered President Obama to the White House in 2008 and gave Democrats control of Congress in 2006 are switching their allegiance to the Republicans in the final phase of the midterm Congressional elections, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election cycles among women, Catholics, less affluent Americans and independents; all of those groups broke for Mr. Obama in 2008 and for congressional Democrats when they grabbed both chambers from the Republicans four years ago, according to exit polls.
The poll found that a greater proportion of women would choose Republicans over Democrats in House races than at any time since exit polls began tracking the breakdown in 1982.
Lately there has been much talk about Democratic voters closing the precious "enthusiasm gap" as compared to Republican voters. Apparently much of this has been little more than media hype:
Like several other national polls, the latest Times/CBS poll shows a considerable “enthusiasm” gap between Republicans and Democrats heading into Election Day. Six in 10 Republicans said they were more enthusiastic to vote this year than usual. Four in 10 Democrats said the same.
More about women voters here:
In the case of women, who Obama has been actively courting this fall, the shift toward the Republicans was especially marked in the latest poll, especially when compared to their stated preferences in the very last Times/CBS poll, in mid-September.
In that poll, women favored Democrats over Republicans by seven percentage points. In the latest poll, women say they are likely to vote to support a Republican over a Democrat by four percentage points, suggesting Republican gains among women who were undecided as of last month.
All of this seems to run counter to the narrative that most of the MSM has been articulating over the past few weeks -- that is, that the Democrats have been enjoying a bounce in support with the midterms looming ever-closer. Obama has certainly been working hard to create that impression, and the media seems to be reporting his motives as fact without doing their homework.
That's not to say that certain races, such as the Senate race in Nevada between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle, won't go down to the wire. One misstep or victory by one side or the other could decide the race. But this supposedly sudden surge in Democratic interest? It doesn't seem to be happening.
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