Thanks for the Rule Five links to The Other McCain and The Daley Gator!
It’s waaay too early to start handicapping the 2016 Presidential elections, but the 2014 mid-terms are not all that far off – and they don’t bode too well for the party that currently holds the White House and the Senate. This just in from the Washington Free Beacon: Shellacking II: The Sequel. Excerpt:
Less than a third of the country says America is headed in the right direction. The Democrats maintain the slimmest of leads—0.8 percent—on the congressional generic ballot, but Republicans are known to do better on Election Day ballots than on generic ones. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has Obama’s approval rating at about 44 percent. That’s where it was on Election Day 2010. Disapproval of Obamacare is also about where it was on Election Day 2010. That day saw the best performance by Republicans in a midterm election since 1946, and the best performance by Republicans in state legislative races since 1928.
Let’s be empirical. The Democrats, according to one political science model, have a one percent chance of recapturing the House in 2014. According to other models, the Republicans are either “slight favorites” or just plain favorites to control the Senate next year. (On Thursday, the New York Times forecast a 54 percent chance of a Republican Senate takeover.) The models can change, of course. That’s what models do. And models can be wrong—they often are, in fact. But, for the time being, the same models that our educated classes trumpeted during the 2012 election predict a happy day for Republicans on Nov. 4. And so I, in turn, am happy to base my analysis on them.
Mind you predictions are notoriously hard to make, especially when they’re about the future. Mid-terms tend to go badly for the party in power, but so far – and only so far – this mid-term looks like it’s shaping up to be a 1994-style debacle for the Democrats.
There’s one big difference, though, between 1994 and 2014. Bill Clinton was in the White House in 1994, and President Clinton was and is one of the canniest political operators of our time. He was capable and smart enough to realize that, when his first mid-term went so badly against him, a change of course was in order. He did change course, tacking back to his left-of-center, southern Democrat roots, and was largely successful for the rest of his two terms.
Not so for Barack Obama. Never in yr. obdt.’s lifetime has a President been so tone-deaf to the electorate; even after his 2010 shellacking he did not change course, but stayed true to his Hyde Park urban liberal roots – a longs way to the left of mainstream America.
Bill Clinton, whatever his faults, had some idea how Americans really think. Unlike Barack Obama, Bill Clinton actually lived in that world before moving into the rarefied atmosphere of Oxford.
However, there is hope for the Democrats: As the Beacon concludes:
Will the clouds still be out for the president on Election Day? After the experience of 2012 I am venturing no predictions. Some unexpected event will have to occur, something bizarre will have to happen, to bring the Democrats good fortune, to brighten the sky for Obama and for his party. Fortunately for him, there is a major, long-lived American institution that specializes in making life easier for liberals.
It’s called the Republican Party.
And boy, ain’t that the truth.
