Less than a year after their decisive electoral victory, it is starting to look like the Democrats may lose substantial ground in the 2010 midterm elections. According to a Pew Research Center poll just 37 percent of Americans view Congress favorably, the smallest percentage in 24 years of polling. And President Obama’s approval rating recently dipped to 50%, down from 70% when he came into office. Charlie Cook recently told The Cook Report subscribers that “the situation has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”
Now Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com tells Politico that Republicans will probably pick up between 20 and 50 seats in the House next year, and may even have as much as a one in three chance of winning back control of it. As Silver explains,
A lot of Democratic freshman and sophomores will be running in a much tougher environment than in 2006 and 2008, and some will adapt to it, but a lot of others will inevitably freak out and end up losing. Complacency is another factor: we have volunteers who worked really hard in 2006 and 2008 for Obama, but it’s less compelling [for them] to preserve the majority.
According to Politico even Democratic officials privately expect to lose at least 10 House seats.
None of this is particularly surprising. The party that is in power has lost seats in 10 of the last 12 midterm elections. Actually governing is hard, and it is always difficult for a party to make good on its electoral promises. And the poor economy has put the Democrats in a difficult position. Even so if the Democrats are able to enact meaningful health care reform or the economy starts to improve the electoral landscape will look very different.
Still, some of the dissatisfaction with the Democrats seems to stem from their inability to get much done in spite of being having substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. The problem is that even without an effective Republican opposition, it is impossible at least in the short run to please both Democratic Party’s progressive base and the increasingly influential independent voters who brought Obama into power. And in their efforts to please everyone, the Democrats have managed so far to please almost no one.
Discuss
tim hall on September 2, 2009, 11:26 PM
It sounds like more looser Republican jargon. The Democrats took over a nation that had been completely run into the ground by Republicans. They stopped an economic world disaster in just seven months of hard policy making. Next they will change the face of health-care like LBJ did for education. By election day, they will be seen as the most responsible government in the history of the U.S. In 2010 they will bring the hammer down on the pigs. Obama will pass more mandates than any setting president ever. They will put an end to a Nation ran by corporations. The people are taking back their country. Since Obama came into office 10 times as many people have written there representatives. They realize that they have a voice with this government. The tax payers are in and the pigs are out. Republicans will have to change their name yet again in 2012. The scum bags are finihed. FFLOL.
Omar Sapayeen on September 3, 2009, 1:10 PM
People need to be vocal.
The Democratic Party has control of the House and the Senate, they have the White House. The Republicans have no clear leader, no clear message. And yet the mood of the entire nation has been shaped by the very vocal crowd of angry white people, guided by Fox News and talk radio.
Power is with the people. Liberals are pussies – they were forced to come out and vote for Obama after 8 years of Bush disaster, but have once again resigned to seething in their living rooms.
I don’t know if it’s Christianity or religion in general that’s taught conservatives to stand up and rally for their cause when liberals have no such inclination, but to me right now the difference in attitude with the respective bases (ie passionate conservative base vs. nonexistent liberal base), but we can’t just blame politicians for this fast decline of a Democratic administration.
I admire Republicans for their tenacity, their willingness to fight and fight dirty when that’s what’s called for. Unfortunately everything they stand for is vile and repugnant. Democrats stand for things I believe in, but they’re absolute pussies.
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