The current Congress consists of GOP majorities in both the House and Senate. If Bernie (or Hillary for that matter) is to be effective, the next President will need a new Congress to support his initiatives. The conventional wisdom asserts that the Senate stands a good chance of flipping to Democratic control. The know-all, see-all, ever-wise pundits who monopolize our public airwaves are not so bullish on Dems taking control of the House during this election cycle. However, one political observer, Stu Rothenberg of Rollcall.com takes a serious look at this question:
Democrats have a better chance of winning control of the House next year than they did at any time in 2014. That’s true even though they now need to gain 30 seats, almost twice what they needed last year.
Not surprisingly, House results tend to reflect outcomes of presidential contests, with the party winning the White House adding House seats in 11 of the past 15 presidential years. So Democrats would need a big victory at the top of the ticket in 2016 to have any chance of major gains, let alone electing Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California as speaker again.
Rothenburg is not the only political pundit who has speculated on the growing likelihood of this enventuality. Kyle Kondik of Politico seems more inclined to believe a Democratic surge in the House is on the horizon:
The 38 Republican-held seats rated as at least potentially competitive in the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ Crystal Ball House ratings all lie outside the borders of the 10 states that rank in the top third for both smallest percentage of college graduates over 25, according to the U.S. Census, and for highest percentage of white evangelical Christians, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Atlas polling. These are some of the states where [the GOP front runners] might do best.
In the places one might expect [the GOP] to best retain their strength—Appalachia and parts of the South—Democrats do not have any House seats they can plausibly target.
Without belaboring this point, I would mention that there are other media pontificators who are coming to the same realization:
“Based on demographic shifts alone, the report finds that if the 2016 Democratic nominee performs as well as Mr. Obama did in 2012 with various voter groups, she (or he) would win by six percentage points—up from Mr. Obama’s four-point win last time.”~Laura Meckler of the WSJ
“How bad could 2016 be for Republicans? Pretty bad. Start with the likelihood that minorities, who voted 80 percent for Obama, will increase by 2 points to 30 percent of voters. Add to that the continued growth of heavily Democratic Millennial generation voters within the electorate, whose numbers will increase by about 4 million a year. By the 2016 election, Millennials should be about 36 percent of eligible voters and roughly a third of actual voters.”~ Ruy Teixeira - Guest Contributor at ThinkProgress.com
While all of these statistics are interesting (and even promising), they belie 2 important facts:
- Improved demographics alone will not produce a Democratic victory in November. Only high voter turnout can accomplish that.
- Even if Dems sweep the House in a wave election, the new (and returning) legislators will still be subject to tremendous pressure from special interests to compromise on the progressive promises that swept them into office.
If Bernie wants to be the next FDR, he will need a Congress that has strong constituent support in every local district. The reason this is true is because the first day on the job, every freshman legislator will be paid visits by corporate lobbyists admonishing them to move slowly or not at all on campaign promise to the middle class. Those warnings will come with threats of money bombs in the next election cycle to support any candidate who will challenge the Dems who will not play ball. This is how the game is played by the wealthy cowards who hide behind their corporate lobbyists. And that will be only the beginning. For the next 2 years, every one of those new Democratic Representatives will face unbelievable scrutiny and sometimes completely fabricated claims of impropriety by those same hostile forces. Unless enough members of Bernie’s Congress feel that their future legislative career is secure, it may be difficult to muster the votes for the bold initiatives that Bernie is proposing.
I can tell you from first hand experience that I have, on more than than a few occasions, received emails and phone calls asking to call out the troops (figurately) on behalf of one legislator or another. These entreatments usually come because the legislator has heard through the grapevine that some special interest was planning to drop a money-bomb in his or her district. These legislators will need more than enough votes to get elected. They will need our ongoing support. And if we want to see Obama’s successor have a successful presidency, he or she will also need us to provide our legislators with that level of commitment.
Moreover, Bernie will need to build an overwhelming army of supporters in order to capture the Presidency. President Obama proved that this is possible in 2 consecutive elections. However, it is instructive to remember what happened in 2004 when Al Gore won the election. All it took to rob Gore of his victory and the America middle class of 8 years of prosperity was an partisan and unethical Secretary of State in Florida who, with the aid of a corrupt Supreme Court, was able to subvert the will of the people to give us 8 years of George W. Bush.
What does Bernie need? He needs each and every one of us to commit to providing progressive support to him AND to the progressive Congress he needs in order to move a middle class agenda.