This is gonna be a dark and bleak diary. There's no benefit of sugarcoating what is increasingly looking like a midterm election disaster next November. It's starting to hit home with just about everyone that electoral conditions are bad and getting worse, but the conventional wisdom seems to be that we have a year to turn around the economy and reduce unemployment before having to face voters. Far as I can tell, there's a fatal flaw in that theory that nobody has yet touched upon. Most of the people who would be doing the hiring want Obama's economic policies to fail, and thus have a vested interest in delaying hiring until after the next election no matter what statistical economic growth rates might be.
I'm not an economist but from what I understand about the current state of affairs, productivity rates are soaring even after employers have shed millions of workers. They've simply foisted more responsibilities and longer hours on the workers they kept on the payroll. With that in mind, there's already little hurry for employers to hire more workers. But even if the economy experiences a crazy level of growth in the year ahead and more workers are needed, how likely is it that the business community will reward Obama and the Democratic Congress by rushing to hire more people next November rather than hold out for a more business-friendly Congress a few months later?
Without a hail mary economic resurrection and subsequent hiring boom, what else do the Democrats have to hang their re-election hopes on? Not a hell of a lot. Last week at this time, I would have guessed there was a 50/50 chance of a health care reform bill passing, albeit a politically disastrous "compromise" bill that infuriated everybody and pleased nobody. But after Friday's Gallup poll showing a majority of the fickle public no longer believes government has a role in improving health care access, I think it's odds-on that not one damn thing will be done with health care in 2009 or 2010. Even more Congressional Democrats will become nervous and calculate that doing nothing will be less personally risky than enflaming their voters with an unpopular health care reform bill.
Bottom line: the base will be disillusioned and stay home, discovering there is no Democratic majority large enough to alter this country's post-Reagan political trajectory. A rabid right-wing will come out in 2004-sized numbers. And independents who feel entitled to a government that delivers them 1999-level employment raates while simultaneously running budget surpluses will break overwhelmingly for the opposition party. In the end, 2010 is likely to make 1994 seem like the good old days.
It's unclear to me whether the Republicans are politically better off with a retread of Gingrich's Contract with America or if they simply continue doing what they're doing. Consider the public seems to believe the government should create millions of jobs while shrinking the defict and rejecting the stimulus and bailout legislation that is the only reason unemployment rates aren't currently at 20%, it might be wise for Republicans to sit back quietly with the expectation of the public's ignorance rewarding them. It seems like an increasingly safe bet.
Right now, I'm guessing the Democrats lose 7-8 Senate seats and more than 75 House seats next year. The core of Democratic House losses will come from the South where, contrary to popular belief, the Democrats in Congress are pretty dramatically overrepresented proportionate to their share of voters. Come Wednesday morning November 3, 2010, I would bet on only three non-African-American Democrats (David Price, Brad Miller, and Steve Cohen) still standing in the South.
As for the rest, I figure all or at least most to be wiped out in a perfect GOP storm, including Bobby Bright (AL-02), Parker Griffith (AL-05), Marion Berry (AR-01), Vic Snyder (AR-02), Mike Ross (AR-04), Allen Boyd (FL-02, effectively a "Southern" seat), Jim Marshall (GA-08), John Barrow (GA-12), Ben Chandler (KY-06), the open seat vacated by Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Frank Kratovil (MD-01, another effectively Southern seat), Travis Childers (MS-01), Gene Taylor (MS-04), either Bob Etheridge or the Democrat that runs in his open seat (NC-02), Mike McIntyre (NC-07), Larry Kissell (NC-08), Heath Shuler (NC-11), John Spratt (SC-05), Lincoln Davis (TN-04), Jim Cooper (TN-05), Bart Gordon (TN-06), John Tanner (TN-08), Chet Edwards (TX-17, the most "Southern" of the remaining Democrat-held seats in Texas), Glenn Nye (VA-02), Tom Perriello (VA-05), and Rick Boucher (VA-09). I've listed 26 Democrats I expect to be defeated next year if existing political conditions prevail, and if I'm right, Republicans are well over halfway towards retaking their House majority.
As for the Senate, it seems difficult to imagine right now that Senators like Russ Feingold or Byron Dorgan would be in any trouble right now, it would be the perfect time for top-tier challengers who would otherwise never consider getting in the race to do so. In a tidal wave, I could see either one of them defeated and put the Democratic majority in dangerous jeopardy even in the Senate.
Ironically, there's one person who stand to benefit politically from a devastating Democratic defeat in 2010...and that's Barack Obama ironically enough. With the public's "outrage" at Democrats out of their system next year, his re-election prospects would greatly improve for many of the same reasons that Bill Clinton's did as soon as Newt Gingrich took over Congress in 1994. But the price to the Democratic Party and progressive policy goals would be far too large and long-lasting for there to be much of anything to celebrate even if electoral conditions improved in 2012. A wipeout election next year would have downballot consequences that would put 2011 redistricting in GOP hands in many parts of the country, increasing the magnitude of the devastation, making permanent many Republican gains in localized levels. Furthermore, the recognition from left-leaning voters, based on the abysmal showing of the current Congress, that this country will always have a permanent de facto Republican majority no matter how many "Democrats" they elect will permanently sour millions of voters from further engagement in the political process.
Can anyone out there talk me down on my intensifying sense of pessimism? Is something in my economic model lacking that discredits the main thesis of this diary that the business community wants Obama and the Democrats to fail and will thus embrace the economic doldrums for another year? Are my predictions of a political neutron bomb detonated in November 2010, particularly in the South, too extreme? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.