I mean, when I was a child, I did all right on my multiplication tables. And I managed to keep up with my classmates — sort of — when we moved on to more advanced types of math, like algebra and geometry.
But I must confess that, when we got into numerical constructions that involved figures that went into five or six digits or more, that was about the point where I got off the bus.
I do understand enough about math to know that the Democrats are about to get pummeled. I don't know how badly, but I suspect that it will be impressive, much like the 1994 midterms — and with about the same outcome, too.
Anyway, today my attention is on the battle for the House. In the next couple of days, I will write about the battle for the Senate.
As I say, I am not a mathematician. But I know the numbers are crumbling for the Democrats.
And many of them seem to be caught by surprise, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. How could that be possible? The signs have been all around them for more than a year.
First, there were all those polls showing slippage for both Barack Obama and the Democrats after the euphoria of the spring of 2009 wore off.
But many Democrats chose to ignore the signals the polls were sending to them. I distinctly remember one of my friends admonishing me that polls aren't accurate, that no matter what the polls were saying, the voters would stick with Obama and the Democrats because the Republicans were clearly to blame for all the nation's ills.
And they went forward, full speed ahead, with an increasingly unpopular health care proposal while ignoring the very issue that had made Obama the first Democrat in more than 30 years to receive a clear majority of the vote — job creation.
It got a little harder to ignore the gathering storm when Republican Scott Brown captured Ted Kennedy's Senate seat back in January. Many Democrats were understandably stunned by that development.
But Jeff Jacoby suggested, in the Boston Globe, that the Democrats had been handed a "blessing in disguise."
His only condition? "[I]f only they are wise enough to recognize it." And the Democrats were assuaged.
Well, I guess we'll find out if they were that wise in a little more than a week. But I never felt that they were, and their last–minute attempts to breathe life into an employment picture that is half again as bad as it was the day Obama took office have been transparent, at best.
In their hearts, Democrats seem to know what is coming; the recriminations have already begun.
I'll give Obama credit for realizing that he failed to give adequate attention to the political side of issues in the first half of his term and for placing the blame for it squarely on his own shoulders — well, sort of.
"I think that one of the challenges we had two years ago was we had to move so fast, we were in such emergency mode, that it was very difficult for us to spend a lot of time doing victory laps and advertising exactly what we were doing, because we had to move on to the next thing," Obama said. "And I take some responsibility for that."
The attitude was to get the policy right, "and we did not always think about making sure we were advertising properly what was going on," Obama continued.
CNN wire staff
Well, as Mario Cuomo observed a quarter of a century ago, "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." And this president, while gifted at the poetry part, has never been able to master the prose.
Much like his predecessor, he just can't seem to take the blame for anything.
And that, I suspect, is at the heart of the disconnect between Obama and the voters. Obama feels compelled to remind the voters that he inherited the bad economy. But that isn't the problem.
The problem is that the voters already understand that. Their disenchantment is not due to origin. It is due to the absence of evidence of improvement.
Obama may think all sorts of grand things about himself and his historically inevitable role, but the thing that broke open his race with John McCain was the economic implosion and the massive hemorrhaging of jobs that continued through his first year as president.
He has never been enough of a politician to recognize the one thing that the voters expected from him above all else — leadership through harrowing economic times. Even if a president can't produce jobs, he should be enough of a politician to know how to take credit for his efforts to promote job creation by those who can do it.
That is called reassuring the voters. And this president, as intelligent as he is, couldn't grasp the national need for that. Even if you have limited knowledge or understanding of history or human psychology, you know that Americans respond favorably to — and remember with fondness — presidents who feel their pain.
Presidents who appear aloof or distant in trying times usually do not remain president very long.
Many were expecting some sort of solidarity from the coalition of irregular and first–time voters who fueled Obama's election two years ago.
But, one by one, the groups that helped Obama by actually coming out and voting for him in unprecedented numbers on Election Day 2008 have been slipping away from the president's party (lately, Helene Cooper and Monica Davey indulged in some hand–wringing in the New York Times about the defection of women voters — who usually vote for Democrats but appear to be pulling away from them this year; so, too, did Liz Sidoti and Darlene Superville with the Associated Press).
They aren't necessarily switching parties. They're just resuming their usual pattern — and not voting at all. Some may be disappointed — as idealists often are — and some may feel permanently alienated from the system, but there are always some of those.
It's just more pronounced this time, with so many first–time and seldom–participated voters who showed up to vote for Obama last time — and now appear to be living down to expectations in the midterm.
There's no telling, of course, what these folks might do in 2012. But one thing, I think, can be said with some certainty as we approach Election Day 2010: even if the Republicans aren't winning over these folks in the midterm, Obama isn't retaining them. Electorally, they might as well not exist. They might as well be one of George Orwell's "unpersons."
Meanwhile, the GOP base — the composition of which has been fairly consistent for the last two or three decades — is said to be energized and eager to vote.
Whether turnout is low or high, Gallup is saying, Republicans stand to win and win big. Pollster Peter Hart recently said the Democrats face a Category 4 hurricane on Election Day.
The House
And I was reminded of something John Boehner said about six months ago: "at least 100 [House] seats are in play." Many political observers scoffed at such bravado; after all, what Boehner suggested would be truly historic, unprecedented in this nation's history.(Well, a 100–seat swing might be unprecedented, but we have come close to that at times in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century.)
No matter what has happened in the last six months, to be honest, it still doesn't seem likely that the Republicans can win 100 House seats from the Democrats.
Of course, Boehner didn't say Republicans would win 100 seats, only that 100 would be in play. And, while each party would like to think it can win all the seats that are in play in a given election (and can devote seemingly endless hours to concocting scenarios in which it is conceivable to do so), such a thing simply never happens in modern America.
But today, some of the foremost political observers in America are suggesting gains that even they might have found impossible to believe only a few months ago.
- Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and perhaps the most spot–on political prognosticator in America today, predicts that Republicans will gain 47 House seats.
To put that into context, let's look at the largest gains experienced by either party in the last half century — Republicans won 54 seats in 1994, 47 seats in 1966 and 34 seats in 1980, and Democrats won 49 seats in 1974, 49 seats in 1958 and 34 seats in 1964.
If Sabato is correct — and last time, he was darn near perfect — it would match the Republicans' gains in 1966.
Oh, and take note, you Boehner defenders — Sabato says 99 Democrat–held House seats are in play. - Nate Silver of the New York Times predicted something similar.
The GOP, he said, will win 49 seats on Nov. 2. - Charlie Cook, another accurate political handicapper, projects a 52–seat gain for the Republicans.
Which puts him in roughly the same range as the other two ... - But Jay Cost's prediction at The Weekly Standard dwarfs them all.
Cost says Republicans will win 61 seats. That would be their biggest gain in more than 70 years.
I, too, think the Republicans will capture control of the House. I think Cost's prediction is too extreme, that it is more likely to be somewhere between Sabato and Cook.
I'm more inclined to favor Sabato — but I think his number, too, is too high — and say that I expect the Republicans to win about 45 House seats.
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