Kyle Kondik of Larry Sabato’s group has written up their first set of House rankings, and it’s a mixed bag. Democrats need 24 seats to win back the House, and Sabato’s forecast has 30 Republican seats in play. This is a redistricting year, but it looks like neither party will gain much (if anything) from redrawn districts. So, at best, it looks like a big lift for Democrats in the House, and the Senate is also going to be tight, with a bunch of safe Republican seats and a few shaky Democratic ones.
Kondik uses the 1948 election as a recent historical example where Democrats flipped the House after a Republican mid-term wave. In that election, Harry Truman ran against the “do-nothing 80th Congress”, and the parallels are interesting:
Under Dewey’s leadership, the Republicans had enacted a platform at their 1948 convention that called for expanding social security, more funding for public housing, civil rights legislation, and promotion of health and education by the federal government. These positions were, however, unacceptable to the conservative Congressional Republican leadership. Truman exploited this rift in the opposing party by calling a special session of Congress on “Turnip Day” (referring to an old piece of Missouri folklore about planting turnips in late July) and daring the Republican Congressional leadership to pass its own platform. The 80th Congress played into Truman’s hands, delivering very little in the way of substantive legislation during this time. The GOP’s lack of action in the “turnip” session of Congress allowed Truman to continue his attacks on the “do-nothing” Republican-controlled Congress. Truman simply ignored the fact that Dewey’s policies were considerably more liberal than most of his fellow Republicans, and instead he concentrated his fire against what he characterized as the conservative, obstructionist tendencies of the unpopular 80th Congress.
As much as we’d like Michelle Bachmann and her closeted pray-away-the-gay husband to be the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney will probably grind out a win. By next Fall, he’ll be running towards the center, away from the Teatard House. Because today’s Republicans no longer have a positive agenda, a special session of Congress would be pointless. But running against the do-nothing House, combined with a strategy that cherry picks some of Romney’s recent base pandering and compares it to clips of, say, Louie Gohmert or Bachmann, is a winning strategy for Obama that could also give him some coattails.
This also gives Obama an opportunity to turn swing voters without damaging their delicate and exquisitely tuned feelings. It’s hard to tell people that they elected someone who’s crazy, because it makes them look stupid — discerning swing voters should have garnered that from the 2010 campaign. But if you tell them that they elected someone who’s lazy, that’s a different matter, because you can’t tell lazy from a campaign commercial.
Xenos
One could also talk about how the GOP candidates, up and down the line, lied in 2010. Jobs, jobs, jobs, saving medicare, straightening out state budgets… if they talked about something, they lied about it.
Run against that, maybe.
c u n d gulag
I think Obama should say:
“I wish I had a Do-nothing Congress. But instead, I’ve got a a Do-little Senate, and a Do-WORSE House.”
rob!
Doesn’t Bachmann’s surprisingly strong showing in the race mean she can’t really run for another term in the House?
I mean, I know its done all the time–Kerry went right back to the Senate–but he wasn’t up for reelection WHILE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AT THE SAME TIME, unlike Bachmann.
I would imagine she would have no time to campaign in Crazy Train, MN (or whatever district she represents) if she keeps doing well. So even if Mittens The Dog Torturer ends up with nom, this might knock Bachmann out of the House, which is double plus good.
Ron
@rob!: In 2000, Lieberman ran concurrently for VP and Senate. Whether or not its practical for Bachmann is another story.
sb
It makes sense. But then again, it makes sense that the debt-ceiling should be treated as a political scandal and it’s not. I don’t see a groundswell of support for labeling the Repugs as crazy. I’d like to see an article in a major news outlet (Time? A major paper?) with the headline, “Why are the Republicans crazy?” but I won’t. I’ve seen any number of articles questioning Obama’s birth, lies upon lies about HCR, lies upon lies about taxes and spending cuts but I have yet to see folks in the delicate middle saying, “Holy shit! The debt ceiling won’t get raised and we’re fucked and that’s because of the crazy Repugs!”
I’m sorry but I don’t see the Repugs being treated as the party of crazy. As long as we have a complacent and frankly dumb watchdog, I see the Republicans continuing to try to get away with almost anything. They may not get away with their craziness, but they sure feel free to try.
Ash Can
@Xenos: This was exactly my first thought as well. Nevermind lazy — the ad narrative could be along the lines of, “You elected Congressman Jagoff to help jump-start the economy and save Medicare. And we (the Dem leadership) would have welcomed his problem-solving ideas. Instead, once in office, he voted to end Medicare and spent the rest of the time focused on suppressing voters’ rights and trying to kill women’s health care. So, Congressman Jagoff, our question to you is the same one you asked us when you were asking your voters to hire you: Where are the jobs?”
Sko Hayes
People, Michelle is on top right now because she’s pandering to the most radical christianist base and these are very active Republicans, the most active in places like Iowa. Reality will strike her down once she leaves Iowa and is no longer surrounded by adoring fans.
Romney needs her to run in second place, because it will come down to the “serious” Republican versus the Tea Party candidate. The Tea Party, which may or may not be weakened by this debt ceiling crisis, will realize that “a lot of noise signifying nothing” will always be trumped by the Big Money Boys.
Napoleon
I think LBJ did as well when running as JFK’s VP.
Napoleon
PS, Karl Rove’s unit is already up on the air here in Ohio with negative ads against Sherrod Brown.
NobodySpecial
I told everyone a while ago: The clown car that is the GOP Presidential nomination will lead to an Obama wave victory. The only question is how big that wave gets.
And if anyone wants to start that ‘President Bachmann’ crap again, just stop, you’ll embarrass yourself. 4 years of old white people dying and latinos increasing population means that whoever the GOP runs is gonna have to pull 6 million votes out of their ass to compete with Obama. Short of a dead woman/live kid scandal, that ain’t happening.
Quincy
Those numbers are kind of depressing. It appears the next four years might be spent on Obama protecting the ACA and repeatedly vetoing stupid.
Pococurante
I don’t believe there is any longer such thing as a “swing” or “independent” voter as termed in this context. As near as I can tell these folks nearly always vote Republican and nearly always know nothing about the actual actions of their candidate.
Bobby Thomson
And Lloyd Bentsen in ’88 and Biden in ’08. It’s pretty common for Senators. Looks a little different when you’re a House representative.
agrippa
I do not know at this point. The voting public – perhaps half of those eligible to vote – rarely pays any attention to politics or current events. Most have neither the time nor the energy to pay attention.
It takes a lot to get most of them to take any notice.
My guess is that Obama will get about 53% of the vote, just as he did in 2008. And, the Dems will pick up a few seats in the HoR.
The media is just fatuous and lazy.
MattF
There’s also the unpopular winger governors in Wisconsin and Florida– voters who made an oopsie on the state level last year will have the opportunity to express their regret in 2012.
jim filyaw
if mitt gets the nomination (no sure thing), he can run toward the middle all he wants, but in this day of google and indelible electronic record keeping, his most difficult opponent will be the 2011 version of himself. and that won’t even come close to what is shaping up as his biggest problem–the exercise in lunacy that will be the 2012 g.o.p. convention. it will make the 1972 democrat convention with its grape boycotts, native american riffs, and 2:00 a.m. acceptance speeches seem to have been the model of decorum. that fiasco made george mcgovern, a decorated war hero, indistinguishable from timothy leary in the minds of ordinary americans. i’m looking forward to this one.
rob!
@Ron: Good point, and I forgot about that. But I still think there’s a quantitative difference between running for VP and running for President.
I just want Bachmann out of government; don’t care how I get it!
aimai
I really think that for some percentage of the population–27?–without Fox and Rush going dark we simply can’t get our message through. The comments over at Politico on the article about Cantor walking out of the talks are simply mind boggling in their racism and specifically in accusations (still!) that Obama is “in over his head,” “never ran a business or a meeting,” is “lazy” went “out for a cigarette” or “to play golf.” Some of these right wingers are simply incapable of looking at reality directly.
Side note: I well remember how Clinton got hammered for being a Bubba and for dressing like a slob when he first came to the White House. A lot of that eased up when he began dressing in expensive suits and not exposing his fat boy thighs. With Obama there is so much resentment of his being black that the very fact that he displays upper class attributes like playing golf is itself considered a provocation. Lots of those comments implied that Obama had dropped the community organizer shtick as soon as he could vault into the elite and start playing golf all the time. This is especially jaw dropping since it is common knowledge that it was on the golf course that he and John Boehner chose to do political business and you can’t smear one without smearing the other. Of course Boehner is now a class and race traitor too, so there is that.
aimai
Killerdog
The JEF is nothing but a crybaby man-child. Smell the coffee libs there ain’t no money left.
drkrick
It’s long been true that most of those who describe themselves as “swing” or “independent” voters are in fact reliably partisan Dem or GOP voters (in about equal numbers) who think identifying themselves as such sounds less intelligent or civic-minded. There’s a much smaller group (maybe 10%) that are truly “gettable” by either side in any given election.
Ash Can
@aimai:
They can’t. Their heads would explode. It’s like looking at the Medusa or looking back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Killerdog
What are you people afraid of, post the comments or shut your site down.
Davis X. Machina
@Pococurante: Poli-sci boffins say real independents make between 5% and 8% of the voting electorate.
The fate of the universe hinges on a very small number of deeply stupid people.
baldheadeddork
I doubt it. Look at the primary schedule. Romney isn’t going to win Iowa. Paul and Bachmann on the ballot will make it hard for him to get a clear win in New Hampshire. Then comes Nevada, South Carolina and Florida, which for Romney might as well be named Maybe, No and Hell No. (Yeah, there are a lot of Mormons in Nevada, but it’s a caucus state and the teabaggers overran it last year.)
There are a few states that should favor Romney on Super Tuesday, like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and possibly California. But if he doesn’t have momentum going in he’s going to be portrayed as wounded/weak and the rest of the Super Tuesday slate is a smorgasbord of hardcore Tea Party states.
And look more closely at the northeastern states where Romney should be strong. Who did Connecticut and Delaware nominate in last year’s senate race? Who won the Republican NY gubernatorial primary? What happened with the GOP in NY26? I get that there is a presumption that the establishment GOP will bring the base to its senses, but I haven’t seen anything in any election since 2008 to show that is true.
Ash Can
@baldheadeddork: Now you’re just getting my hopes up. Stop that.
Omnes Omnibus
@ aimai: Great comment overall, but I have one small nit to pick. Do you really think that, in this day and age, golf is still perceived as an upper class sport?
Dennis SGMM
@aimai
As a person who’s actively participated in our grand experiment for two-thirds of my sixty-three years and who has further lived and visited in the Red States, I’d say that even if right wing talk radio and Fox disappeared tomorrow we still couldn’t get through to that twenty-seven percent. We didn’t get through to them before 1861 and we sure as hell haven’t changed their minds since 1865. The beliefs and attitudes of these folks were forged a long time ago; what we see as reality gets filtered through their beliefs and becomes for them something quite different. All that the audience-oriented media does is reiterate their view of the world while making a tidy chunk of change for itself.
Davis X. Machina
@baldheadeddork: Name brands — Romney — do better the larger the electorate. The crazy gets diluted.
O’Connell won the GOP nod in a small-state primary with miniscule turnout. Nevada — is quite small as well. CT is bigger (4 US Reps?), but not a lot bigger. By definition, the House races are small.
I remain to be convinced.
Davis X. Machina
@Dennis SGMM: There are days when it’s easy to cultivate a soft spot for the Lega Nord
Paul W.
Mitt. Romney. Will. Not. Win.
Period.
The GOP PRIMARY voters are just waiting for someone better to show up, don’t forget that those who now turn up to vote for the GOP are MORE conservative than in the past. Mushy middle independent voters as well as moderates stay home. Romney doesn’t have a base to turn to for votes.
Perry, Michelle, or another darkhorse will win this running away.
joes527
rob!
Minnesota is running dry. Even now, folks are sobering up. There is no way she gets re-elected at home.
Dennis SGMM
@Davis X. Machina
True and perhaps the best thing. The northern portions of Italy succumbed to and were settled by non-Latin peoples, the Lombards being the last and most influential. That people in the Red states think differently than we do isn’t a knock; they are who they are. That their elected pols in Congress are making this nation ungovernable is a knock. I have come around to thinking that the unthinkable; dissolving the union and reconstituting it as two nations may be the only way to in the long run finish as a unified nation.
benintn
I wrote something similar about Truman and the 1948 elections just a couple days after the 2010 election.
Steve M.
I agree (alas).
This I’m not so sure about. I think 2012 is going to be an excellent year for third-party candidates, even candidates and parties who’ve done nothing special at the polls in recent cycles. On our side, I know Nader gets a smaller and smaller vote every time out, but I think Firebagger anger (some of it, let’s face it, a bit justified) will push the vote total for his inevitable run a little closer to 2000 numbers than 2008 numbers.
And on the right, somebody’s going to go litmus-test if Romney doesn’t. I think Romney will (with good reason) worry about some Constitution Party type cutting into his totals in swing states if he doesn’t go teabaggy, so he’ll go at least somewhat teabaggy.
Rhoda
I just want to add my name to the chorus of Mitt Romney will never win the Republican nomination. He’s a Mormon, he’s a RINO, he’s disliked by many elites. No one wants Romney to win the nomination and in ’08 all the other candidates for the nomination were united in one belief; Mitt Romney shouldn’t get his hands on the Republican nomination.
The fundraising numbers pretty much confirm his weakness within the party and it’s clear money is sitting on the sidelines for a Rick Perry or Chris Christie type to walk into the nomination. Huntsman thought he could fill this void; but he’s a Mormon and a RINO and just because people don’t hate him doesn’t mean he can win. Huntsman made a huge strategic mistake in running.
And it’s not talked about but Romney is basically running the 2008 Giuliani strategy: you can’t pick and choose states to contest. Romney had a choice to make; run in Iowa or concede the state and he’s conceded which signals his weakness to the money folks.
Mittens has yet to take any serious hits; but the wounds to his candidacy are clear and visible to anyone right now. And they’re deep enough; a bat shit insane candidate like Crazy Chelly can make a run at him.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
That’s an oxymoron, er, oxymoran.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dennis SGMM #35:
I’ve reluctantly come to the same conclusion. We’ve reached the point where we are so divided that one political faction is willing to commit what is in-all-but-name treason against the economy and interests of the whole nation, in order to gain partisan advantage. That is no way to run a nation.
Small-d democracy was an uncommon and fragile thing in Lincoln’s day, it made sense back then to save the Union and preserve the US as a nation, as a fragmented pair (or more) of American states would have been too geopolitically vulnerable in an era of powerful European empires. But those days have passed us by.
The present day US is occupied by people whose very different ideas as to the proper structure and policy of the govt are so incompatible that nothing short of another Civil War is going to resolve them, the pre-gridlocked structure of the Federal constitution means that with even a small bit of power one side can always block the other side from accomplishing anything at all, and the two factions are too close in size numerically for one to succesfully dominate the other in electoral terms for more than 1 or 2 election cycles. This country doesn’t work any more as a single nation, time to split it up into smaller units that do work (or not).
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This. At least that’s the way it is here in (un)Real ‘Murka aka Central Misery.
Lots of people claim they’re “independent” but then you ask them “when’s the last time you voted for a Democrat?” and they hem and haw and point to some shiny object on the ground to divert your attention.
Trollenschlongen
Why the focus on “winning back” the House for Dems?
Didn’t we have a Dem House, Senate, and White house 2008-2010?
What the hell difference did it make?
boss bitch
don’t feed the Troll
Trollenschlongen
ah boss bitch, the discourse hall monitor as per usual.
For the thousandth time: When did BJ become a DLC affiliated site?
James E. Powell
@Davis X. Machina:
The number of truly independent voters, those who make a discrete and rational (to them) decision with candidate party ID playing a small or no role, may even be smaller.
Elections that are won on the margins are won not by garnering the ‘independent’ voter, but rather by identifying those voters who are almost certain to vote for one’s candidate but who are not certain to vote. GOTV work, and by that I do not mean just election day or election week efforts, is what wins elections.
Easy illustration. The anti-gay marriage ballot issues were a way to motivate the may-or-may-not voter who was almost certain to vote Republican.
Tom Q
Sometimes I think the people most persuaded the GOP will inevitably make out OK (excluding DC pundits) are liberal Democrats. There are an awful lot of things nobody knows here, that make this generally positive forecast for Republicans a shot in the dark.
1) We don’t know what the economy will do between now and next November.
Right now could easily be the nadir, reflecting as it does the Japanese disasters’ effects on the world economy, the huge run-up in oil prices (which has eased considerably), the massive cuts from state payrolls (mostly finished by end of ’11). Yes, if things continue downward, Obama will have a tougher time next year. But if things simply level off/improve (and first-time jobless claims have declined to barely over 400,000), there could be a spring ’12 much like Bush II had in 2004 — three months of the only decent job growth he ever had, but timed perfectly to make the direction look solid. And direction of economy is far more important than overall number — the raw unemployment rate in November 1984 was about the same as it had been in 1980, but the latter was viewed as Carter’s disaster, and the former was Morning in Frickin’ America.
And here’s the bottom line: if the economy isn’t perceived as a huge negative next year, Barack — based on his other achievements — will be a prohibitive favorite for re-election.
2) We don’t know his opponent.
The assumption that the sensible GOP establishment will prevail in the primaries next year assumes facts not in evidence. If Davis X. Machina remains to be convinced anything’s changed since the Dole model in ’96, I remain to be convinced it’s stayed the same, given the way the establishment has been squashed since, not just in the Senate primaries of ’10, but in the world of the Congress as we speak. I grant that primary turnout in an off year may not be representative of what we’ll see in a presidential cycle. But I caution that even last time out, McCain’s ultimate route to the nomination was far narrower than Dole’s had been — he relied on a bunch of winner take all primaries where his opposition on the right was significantly split. Romney right now is benefitting from the same, but at some point the tea party folk may settle on one candidate — even one as semmingly implausible as Bachman — and unite to choose her over the Romney they hate.
I was around in 1972. Up till then, Democrats had always chosen a sensble/electable candidate. But then it’s fringier elements (to which I at the time naively belonged) decided they had to make a stand on principle. Everything I see from the Congressional GOP/tea party movement tells me it’s time for them to make the same choice in the opposite direction. Mitt Romney has Ed Muskie written all over him.
3) We don’t know what effect all this will have on down ballot races; nor do we know what a typical House turnover is anymore.
Some wide-margin elections — of which I think Obama is quite capable, esp. against a GOP crazy — can pull in seemingly unlikely candidates in House and Senate races. In ’06, at least half of the winning Dems had not been on Rahm’s target list — people like Shea-Porter in NH, McInerny in CA. The number of GOP seats seen to be in play right now is meaningless (many analysts at this point in ’05 saw little chance Dems would get the 18 seats needed to flip the House, and they ended up with 33).
I think we also don’t know if the 80s-early 00s pattern in House races will prevail — with just a few exceptions, net gains were in the teens or single digits over that time — or if the recent 33/20/63 shifts are a sign of instability like we had in most of the centry prior. The fact that our presidential and off-year electorates are now so different — with such partisan impact — makes me think both House and Senate races could produce more shifts in the Dem direction next year than standard-range analysis would pick up.
James E. Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
When a Republican plays golf, it is proof that he is a regular guy. When a Democrat plays golf, it is proof that he is an out-of-touch elitist.
Joel
@Omnes Omnibus
I don’t know, is skiing an upper class sport? I’d rate them about equal in that regard.
Omnes Omnibus
@ James E. Powell: That makes sense.
@ Joel: Interesting. I am a skier but not a golfer. I would say that, for those who live near skiing areas, skiing is a regular sport. For those who don’t, it is an upper class sport. As far as golfing goes, there are so many options (public courses, inexpensive, working class country clubs, posh country clubs, Scotland) that it is hard to characterize the sport. FWIW I tend to see skiing and tennis as more upper class than golf as a general rule. YMMV.
Matt
And? Anybody who voted Republican in 2010 and wasn’t either already a total Koch-whore (or a recently awakened coma patient) IS stupid. It’s like saying, “don’t tell little Johnny that he’s stupid for running into traffic” after he’s done it the tenth time in a week. At some point, the grownups are going to need to either clue Johnny in or let him *experience* the consequences of his stupidity firsthand…
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
Maybe, but I don’t see how Romney wins the nomination in a party where 2/3 to 5/6 of the primary base voters are either teahadis or teahadi sympathizers. Remember, even in Delaware, a GOP Senate primary nominated crazy ass Christine O’Donnell over the mostly sane, if right-wing, Mike Castle.
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