With barely more than four months to election day, we're getting pretty closer to the stretch run -- and a key part of the Democratic message is emerging:
"I think the prospect of a Republican takeover — while not likely, but plausible — will be very much part of the dynamic in October, and I think that will help us with turnout and some of this enthusiasm gap," said David Plouffe, who was Obama's campaign manager two years ago and is helping to oversee Democratic efforts this fall. Still, he put all Democrats on notice, saying: "We'd better act as a party as if the House and the Senate and every major governor's race is at stake and in danger, because they could be."
Plouffe and other Democratic strategists say Obama will play an important role in making the case that the Republican Party is one of obstruction and indifference. But they think the outcome in November will depend as much on the skill of candidates in mobilizing potential supporters who are now disinclined to vote.
This isn't to say that Democrats won't also run on their record. Of course they will, touting things like stabilizing the economy from the free fall that began during the Bush administration; launching the economic recovery that has delivered more jobs than were created in the entire Bush administration; enacting health care reform that will provide coverage to every American citizen by 2014; improving America's standing throughout the world; keeping America safe by stopping several terrorist plots dead in their tracks and reducing the the threat posed by nuclear weapons; holding BP accountable even while fighting the biggest environment disaster in American history; and passing the most sweeping Wall Street reform/consumer protection legislation since the Great Depression.
Nor is it to say that Democrats won't continue to focus on unfinished items on the agenda, chief among them immigration reform and adopting a new national energy policy to free of us our addiction to oil and create new clean energy jobs to rebuild our manufacturing sector and usher in a new era of sustainable economic growth.
But it means that in addition to focusing on what Democrats have accomplished since taking over Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008, this fall's election will also focus on the fact that voters face a choice: continuing the path forward charted by President Obama and Democratic congressional leadership, or going back to the failed Republican policies that caused all the problems we're dealing with today. In fact, that's putting it kindly -- towards the GOP -- because if anything, today's Republican Party has gotten more extreme, more crazy, and more out of touch.
Republicans want the fall election to be a referendum on a snapshot of the state of the nation -- they don't want people to think about the past or the future. If they can pull off framing the election that way, then they may win, because things are very tough right now throughout the notion.
Democrats don't accept that framing. They think the election is about a choice between whether to continue changing the direction of the country from where it was headed under Bush or whether we should go back to those policies and ideas that failed so miserably when Republicans were running the show.
In that sense, this election will feature something of an irony: Republicans don't want American voters to think about the fact that the GOP could retake control of government because then they'd have to choose between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, on the other hand, think it's to their advantage to point out that Republicans could in fact win this election.
There's no question that this is going to be a tough election for Democrats, but if you think it'll be a cakewalk for Republicans, the mere fact that Democrats are more willing to talk about the possibility of GOP victory than are Republicans tells you that the Republican Party has some very serious challenges as well -- and they know it.