| What the Dog is talking about here is the assumption the Democrats could be in some kind of big trouble with the 2010 elections. There are some long-standing patterns, which tend to indicate this is the case, but are they actually applicable in this particular cycle? Let's walk through it and see.
The first piece of CW, which everyone subscribes to, is the curse of the mid-term election. The idea here is in mid-term elections the party, which holds the White House is more likely than not to lose seats. If we look at the House and the Senate over the last 6 mid-terms, we see that in four of them the party in power lost seats in both the House and Senate. Only two of those elections meant a change in which party controlled the House and Senate. Those were the 1994 election and the 2006. Each of those can be seen as an aberration.
In 1994 the Republican echo chamber had just come into its own, it had two years where it had been constantly pounding the drum about the Clinton Administration and had just started accusing sitting Democrats of being traitors.
In 2006, the nation had become fed up with the abuses of an all-Republican controlled government. The fall out from the war in Iraq, combined with the growing conviction Republicans could not actually govern in a way that did not cause more problems for the people than they solved allowed the Democratic Party to ride a wave of discontent to control of both Houses of Congress.
With those particular conditions unlikely to repeat themselves, we need to look at what the landscape for the 2010 elections is likely to be before we predict disaster for the Democratic Party. While the President has bounced around in the polls, the Republican Party has stayed in the basement. They have failed to articulate anything other than a big fat no on all issues of importance to the public. While there are times when being the alternate to the current situation can win on its own (2006 was something of this) the reality is we are still close enough for the public to remember what Republican mis-rule was like.
This is another structural issue, which can't be overestimated. The voting public in the United States is incredibly slow to change its mind. Once it has a meme, it holds on to it for dear life. The best example of this is the idea that Democrats were weak on defense. The Republican Party pushed this hard, since Democratic lawmakers were not quick to start wars. As the consequences of two wars have sunk into the consciousness of the American people we have seen an erosion of support for Republican foreign policy.
What we saw in 2008 was a sea change in the way America as a whole looks at the views of the Party of Lincoln. The change meme of the Obama campaign resonated so well because the nation was waking up to the fact their perceptions of the Republican Party were wrong and were looking around for new memes. Now there are a new set of memes established on a national level the Republican Party is stuck. They must either change their policy or face irrelevance. This is a real trick bag for them, as their base, who have not given up on the old, discredited ideas insists on more and more fealty to them.
While Republicans are doing well in the South, they are failing massively all other regions of the nation. The Research 2000 poll from last week shows the Republican Party favorability ratings trailing the Democratic Party by double digits in the North East, West and Midwest. Only in the South do they have a lead, but having one of four regions of the nation think your ideas are the right one is not a way to win a majority in the Congress.
There are friends of the Dog who say none of this matters, that the unemployment rate is going to be all that matters in the 2010 election and given the fact things are not going to be a whole lot better by then, the Democrats will get slaughtered. This makes a certain amount of sense, but it ignores the fact there is nowhere else for the voter to go but the Democrats.
If the Republican Party self identification is 20%, if they have high unfavorables in ¾ of the nation, if they continue to be the party of No, then even if people are unhappy with the direction of the nation, they are not going to run to the arms of that party. While being the alternate choice is sometimes a winning strategy, the more common winning strategy is to articulate a positive vision for the nation. The Republicans cannot do this. They will not be changing their loyalty to the god of Tax Cuts. They will not be repudiating their forgien policy, they will not be doing anything to solve the real problems, which face the nation, because they can not accept that government has a positive role to play in the lives of the people.
For all these reasons, plus the recent experience of the nation with the results of Republican rule, they will not have the benefit of the doubt from the voters. Even with the likelihood of lower voter turn out among traditionally Democratic voters, there is still too much recent history and too few new ideas for the public to buy and support with their votes. For all reasons it seems unlikely the CW of loses for the party in control will materialize.
If we take out the aberrations of 1994 and 2006 it is even money the Democratic Party will lose a few in Congress or gain a few in each House. All of this means we should not buy into the timid incrementalists who argue we should not push for a more liberal agenda. The Dog is an incrementalist, but there are times when you should push for the big increments not the small ones. This is one of those times. We have less to lose than we think and far more to gain by insisting our lawmakers stand tall. It will not always be that way, so the time is now.
This is also the reason we should be willing to put forward primary challenges where ever they seem needed. The argument that primary challenges weaken our chances of electing Democrats is a false one in this environment. We have the chance to elect better Democrats in this cycle with very little chance of losing seats. Just as the structure of the 2008 election cycle favored Democrats, the 2010 cycle, contrary to the conventional wisdom still favors us.
The floor is yours.
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