What Does It Mean?

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Barring a reversal by recount, it appears that Democrat Doug Jones has defeated Republican Roy Moore in Alabama's special election to fill the Senate vacancy left by Jeff Sessions' appointment as attorney general.

Jones did not win a full six–year term. He was only elected to finish the unexpired portion of Sessions' term. If he chooses to seek a full term, he will have to do so in 2020.

In that regard, he is much like Republican Scott Brown, who won a special election in Massachusetts in 2010 to complete the term of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Kennedy died in office in August 2009, and Brown was elected to serve the last two years of his term.

The dynamics of the elections differ, but the overriding similarity is the fact that both states elected nominees from the parties that had not been successful in those states for a long time. It was especially shocking in Massachusetts, I suppose, since that Senate seat had been held by Kennedys for more than half a century — and Massachusetts had given nearly 62% of its vote to Barack Obama in 2008 — but it is no less shocking in Alabama, where Donald Trump received 62% of the vote in 2016.

Pundits are looking for clues to the political future, just as they did in 2010. I am inclined to reach the same conclusions now as I did then.

In 2010 I wrote the following: "I see no way that yesterday's election will not be a factor in all the other races that will be held this year." I feel that way today — but I have no more of an idea of the extent than I did then.

The circumstances could hardly be more different. A cloud of controversy hung over Moore in the last month of the campaign; the extent to which that contributed to his defeat remains to be determined, but its influence cannot be denied. There was no such cloud hanging over Martha Coakley when she lost to Brown in 2010; apparently she simply took victory for granted. She tried unsuccessfully to correct her shortcomings a few years later when she sought the governor's office and lost to the Republican nominee. Was Coakley the problem? Or was the party the problem?

The same question could be asked about Moore and the special election in Alabama.

As a harbinger of things to come, the Massachusetts election may have given Democrats — who had been anticipating seizing full control of the government after Obama became the first black man to be elected president and they achieved filibuster–proof status in the Senate with the election of Al Franken in Minnesota and Arlen Specter's party switch in Pennsylvania — a glimpse into a grim future.

The Democrats didn't lose control of the Senate in 2010, but they came close. Going into the election, the party held 58 seats (which, when combined with two independents who caucused with them, provided them with their filibuster–proof status) and emerged from it with 51 seats — still a majority but greatly diminished — and fully vulnerable to a Republican filibuster.

The 2010 midterms are not remembered in history for the outcome in the Senate races, though. What is remembered is the fact that Republicans turned a 79–seat deficit in the House into a 49–seat advantage. They have held the majority in the House ever since.

As a harbinger of things that may be yet to come, the Alabama election may have done the same thing for Republicans. The question is whether the GOP will be wise enough to heed its warning.

I don't know if Democrats can be competitive in enough House districts to pull off the kind of wave the Republicans achieved in 2010. Based on what I have seen, they may be fortunate to grab a narrow majority if they claim one at all.

Republicans don't need to lose as many Senate seats in 2018 as Democrats lost in 2010 to lose control of the chamber — and, as I have mentioned before, the historical tide of midterms runs against the party in the White House.

But until Tuesday, the Democrats faced an uphill struggle in trying to capture the Senate. Only one–third of the senators are on the ballot in a given election year — unless a special election has been called because a senator died or resigned before his/her term was completed. In this cycle, the vast majority of senators whose seats are on the ballot in 2018 are Democrats. Of those senators whose seats must be defended in 2018, only one incumbent Republican senator comes from a state that voted for Hillary Clinton whereas 10 incumbent Democrats must face the voters in states that supported Donald Trump.

With their upset victory in Alabama Democrats need only two more seats to claim a majority in the Senate for the last two years of Trump's term. That is more plausible now — but not necessarily more probable.

Regardless of whether Democrats can seize a Senate majority next year, even a short–term one, the Republicans' agenda is in jeopardy. If American politics has made anything clear in the last decade or so, it is that the voters want a change; as Republicans seemed to offer what they wanted, the voters gradually turned over the levers of government to them.

But the political pendulum is always moving in America. The Republicans' already slim majority in the Senate will shrink in January when Jones is seated, which gives them a few weeks to accomplish whatever they can with the seats they currently hold. Given their track record this year, though, getting anything done seems unlikely.

Voters seem to have developed a rather limited tolerance for political performance in recent years. Nonperformance may fare worse.

Until Tuesday, I had not seen anything in any of the special elections that surprised me. All the House seats that were vacant because their representatives had been appointed to positions in the administration were in red states. Democrats made a lot of noise about being competitive in those districts, but ultimately they lost every special election.

Then in November the first statewide races in the Trump era were held — in New Jersey and Virginia, states that elect their governors in the years immediately following presidential elections. After decades of voting for Republicans, Virginia (where governors are prohibited by law from seeking re–election) has been trending blue. Three of its last four governors have been Democrats, and it has voted Democratic in three consecutive presidential elections. Even though Republicans put up a good front about being competitive in the governor's race, I wasn't surprised when the Democrat won.

Nor was I surprised when the Democrat won in New Jersey. Term–limited Republican incumbent Chris Christie is about as popular as Richard Nixon was just before he resigned the presidency, and the Republican nominee had to carry that toxic baggage. No, I wasn't surprised by the outcome there, either.

But Tuesday's special election in Alabama did surprise me.

I realize that the circumstances had a lot to do with it. The decades–old charges of sexual harassment against Moore appear to have done enough damage to permit Jones to win by about 20,000 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast — even though no charges were substantiated and most were suspect.

Perhaps, as conservative commentator Ann Coulter observes, this outcome opens the door for Rep. Mo Brooks to reclaim the seat for the Republicans in 2020.

That wouldn't be unprecedented. Two years after Brown won Kennedy's seat, he was defeated in a bid for a full six–year term — by Elizabeth Warren, who is now considered a leading contender for the Democrats' next presidential nomination.

I'm not saying Brooks is a future presidential prospect. But in 2020 he would have Trump's coattails to ride in the general election — and that will almost certainly help in Alabama.

Democrats Not Likely to Catch a 'Wave' in 2014

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The federal shutdown ended this week — just in time to avoid default.

As the government shutdown dragged on, I heard some Democrats gleefully anticipating a "wave" election next year that will restore a Democrat majority to the House of Representatives.

With public opinion polls showing Congress' approval at record low levels, I suppose that is a normal reaction, even one to be expected, but history simply doesn't support it. Frankly, it sounds a lot like the talk that was prevalent four years ago, just after Barack Obama took office, that held that Democrats would be in charge of things for a generation, at least.

Of course, history has been turned on its ear in the last two presidential elections. A nation that had never so much as nominated a black man for president before 2008 has now elected a black president twice. With Gallup reporting that, less than a year after Obama's re–election, congressional approval is at 11%, doesn't it follow that Republicans in Congress are in, to use a George H.W. Bush expression, deep doo–doo?

Well, that assumes that a midterm election is really no different than a presidential election — and that simply has not been true historically. It wasn't even true in the first midterm election of this president's tenure. Less than two years after he took office with stunningly high approval ratings (when there was literally nothing of which to approve or disapprove), Obama saw his party lose more than 60 seats in the House.

Democrats regained eight seats in 2012, but that was achieved with the president's name at the top of the ballot. Having Obama on the ballot brought out many voters who typically do not vote, just as it did four years earlier. But, without him on the ballot, those voters reverted to historical form and did not participate in the 2010 midterms.

At best, Obama will be an advocate for others in 2014 — that is, when he chooses to participate. He didn't tend to lend much support to Democrats who were on the ballot in 2010 until it was too late to make much difference.

The great unknown about 2014 is the impact that Obamacare will have. In the first 2½ weeks, there have been conflicting accounts about the success or failure of the initial efforts, mostly focusing on the woes of the websites being used to enroll people. In a year, it will be clearer how the system is performing, whether it is delivering everything that was promised, and that is sure to influence the election.

But this year's shutdown will be forgotten. After all, another one is looming in just 90 days.

The midterms in the sixth year of a presidency have been, historically speaking, brutal for the president's party. The exceptions to that truly are few and far between.

No doubt, Democrats will recall that they fared all right in the midterms that were held in Bill Clinton's sixth year in office, but that was more backlash against the Republicans for going ahead with unpopular impeachment proceedings than anything else.

Sixth–year midterms typically go poorly for the party in the White House. Recent history tells the tale. George W. Bush's Republicans lost both chambers of Congress in 2006. Ronald Reagan's Republicans lost the Senate to the Democrats in 1986. In the sixth year of the Nixon–Ford presidency, the Democrats (helped in no small measure by the Watergate scandal) padded their majorities in the House and Senate — by nearly the same number of seats they lost in 1966, the sixth year of the Kennedy–Johnson presidency.

Sixth–year midterms almost always go badly for the president's party, no matter how popular the president may be. Reagan's approval rating was in the 60s in October 1986. Dwight Eisenhower's approval rating was in the 50s in his sixth–year midterm in 1958.

The more unpopular the president is, though (and it is worth noting that, while approval for Congress currently is historically low, Barack Obama isn't doing terribly well, either), the greater the challenge for his party.

There have been only two real exceptions to that in midterms in general in the last 80 years — 2002 and 1998 — and both could be said to have been due to unique (or almost unique) circumstances.

In 2002, the country was still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Bush and the Republicans were rewarded for their efforts to stop terrorism with gains of eight House seats and two Senate seats. Four years later, in the "wave" of 2006, they lost 30 House seats and six Senate seats.

In 1998, Clinton's Democrats benefited from backlash against Republicans for their insistence on pursuing impeachment proceedings. They didn't really gain much, just four House seats and no Senate seats, but that's better than parties in their sixth year of occupying the White House typically do — and it was a whole lot better than Democrats did during the first midterm election of Clinton's presidency — when they lost 54 seats.

It's possible, of course, that 2014 will turn out to be a rare wave midterm that benefits the occupant of the White House, but, at the moment, it appears to be lacking the catalyst that could make that happen.

Even under the most advantageous midterm conditions, an incumbent's party hasn't won more House seats than Bush's Republicans did since 1902, exactly a century earlier, when both parties gained more than a dozen seats following the 1900 Census and the creation of 29 House seats.

Obama's Democrats need to win more than twice as many House seats as Bush's Republicans did 11 years ago merely to earn an extremely narrow edge in that chamber. To achieve that, it seems to me, Obama's agenda will need to gain some serious traction in the next year, but the steam seemed to have left that engine before the shutdown. There was already talk of how lame–duck status had been settling in even before Obama began his saber rattling over Syria. It might be set in stone by now.

Lessons Learned in 2010

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"As we ring in 2011 with prayers for the world, our nation, our towns, our jobs and our families ... let us look back at a teeter–totter of a year, where high–riding America suddenly found herself hitting the ground of reality with a thud. War is not over; the economic recovery is slow–to–stagnant and those who are not yet struggling themselves know someone, or love someone, who is."

Elizabeth Scalia
Our Sunday Visitor

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One of the time–honored end–of–a–given–year traditions of journalism is the year–in–review piece on whatever relevant topic the writer spends the rest of the year writing about — politics, sports, movies, etc.

These articles usually appear in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. In all the years I worked for newspapers, that week habitually was the closest thing to a slow news week one was apt to find. Once in awhile, something would happen — but not often.

When I was growing up, such reviews typically came in the form of newspaper and magazine articles. In the digital age, you're just as likely to see a review like that in video form, either on television or the internet.

Nevertheless, I'm sure that you have seen or read something like that about 2010 in the last few days.

I can tell you, from having written my share of such articles, that there are several ways to approach writing them. I always preferred the chronological approach, personally. I kind of felt that it put things in context — X happened in January, whereas Y happened in May and Z happened in October.

Sometimes, my year–in–review articles came across like illustrations of the domino theory. But the truth is that certain events happen because (and only because) other events happened first.

Seen in that light, I think, the story of a period in time (like a year) can only be told effectively in chronological sequences.

Several years ago, for example, I remember watching a program on The History Channel about the month of April 1865, a truly pivotal month in the nation's history.

It was the month Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. A few days later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a Southern sympathizer.

To people in the 21st century, it seems kind of neat and orderly — this happened, then that happened, then the nation began Reconstruction.

It is what happened. We know that. Our history books tell us so — but, as the program pointed out, there were many other events that took place that month and in the following month that had the power to change the direction of the flow of events — and, ultimately, alter the course of history.

It is because things happened as they did and in the sequence they did that the dominoes were positioned to, eventually, create the 21st century reality we have today.

Very often, events can be seen clearly only from the perspective that distance provides — and by acknowledging that sometimes things happen because other things happened earlier.

I've never believed it was quite as simple as the chaos theory, which suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Andes can affect the weather on the other side of the globe. That suggests a tad more interdependence than I find comfortable.

But the chronological approach isn't the only way to tackle the assignment of reviewing a year. There is something to be said for other angles as well.

I'll grant you, the chronological approach doesn't really require much thought. When you have the benefit of a lot of hindsight, the way the producers for The History Channel have, you can do the kind of thoughtful analysis of the events of a given year because you know what happened in the years, decades, even centuries that followed.

But it's harder when you're writing about a year that has not yet ended. No one can yet say how the events of this year will influence the events of the future. All we can say with any real certainty is that they will influence the future.

That's why I give credit to Elizabeth Scalia of Our Sunday Visitor for at least trying to find more than a superficial examination of a year.

Our Sunday Visitor, in case you don't know, began operation as a Catholic newsweekly nearly 100 years ago.

I'm not Catholic so I haven't read the paper itself. I have only seen it online, but it appears the paper is still being published — and appears to be thriving. In fact, Our Sunday Visitor has a complete publishing wing that puts out books, periodicals and religious/educational materials.

Anyway, back to Scalia.

Her article focused on eight events that shaped this year. The task of peeking into the future is not an easy one, and I give her credit for trying even if she does so through a somewhat biased lens.

Our Sunday Visitor has always been politically and socially conservative, actively opposing communism, birth control, divorce and "indecency" in books and films. And Scalia's opinions seem to reflect that.

Some of the things of which she wrote were clearly religious in nature — so it wasn't really surprising to me that the pope's "fairly good run" this year and the church's role in relieving Haiti were at the top of her list.

In fact, the Roman Catholic church played a prominent role in many of the items on her list.

But I was intrigued by the final item — labeled Defeat of the Democrats.

Now, let me say this: Whether the opinions that are expressed or implied happen to be Scalia's or her employer's, they seem to be more conservative than my own. But that's really beside the point because many of her observations seem to be so obvious that neither philosophy nor theology come into play.

They are simply facts. And facts, as I wrote the other day — and John Adams said nearly 250 years ago — are stubborn things.

For example, Scalia writes, "Anyone paying attention ... when Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley for Massachusetts' 'Ted Kennedy' seat in the U.S. Senate knew that recession–weary voters were ready to throw aside sentiment, tradition and the status quo if it meant creating jobs and hitting the brakes on both government spending and a controversial health care bill that appeared unwieldy, costly, undefined and terrifyingly broad in scope."

Considering the results of last month's midterms, I find that hard to dispute.

I also find it hard to argue with her assertion that "[a]nyone paying attention when Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blithely remarked, 'we have to pass [the health care bill] to see what's in it,' knew that her disregard for the valid concerns of the citizenry came across as arrogant and oddly unserious."

Furthermore, she wrote, "[a]nyone paying attention would have predicted an electoral 'shellacking' come November."

Can't argue with that, either, or with her conclusion.

"It was as if the Democrats simply had not been paying attention," she wrote. "Whether the Republicans were remains to be seen; their very future may hinge on how well they comprehended the voter messages of 2010."

Aye, as Shakespeare wrote, there is, indeed, the rub. Were they paying attention?

Imperial hubris, I have frequently mused, was never confined to one side of the political spectrum. The Republicans were guilty of it and got their comeuppance in 2006 and 2008. Then the Democrats were guilty of it and got their comeuppance in 2010.

What will happen by 2012?

That depends on who is paying attention and who is not.

The Vision Thing

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"Oh, the vision thing."

George H.W. Bush

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In the waning days of the 2010 midterm campaign, I found myself thinking a lot about Barack Obama's insistence that there was nothing wrong with the message, it just hadn't been conveyed properly.

Well, it seems the voters, in that time–honored way, shot the messenger. But was it fatal? Or was it, in the words of the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," merely a flesh wound?

From what I could see, the voters agree with Obama about many of the things that need to be done. But they elect presidents to make often painful choices between what absolutely positively must be done and what needs to be done but can be put on the back burner.

They did not believe that Obama has been making those tough choices so they tried to get his attention in the only way they could.

The resounding message from the voters on Nov. 2 was not that they had experienced a change of heart about Republican government. They are still wary of the Republican Party, still inclined to blame it for the policies that they believe contributed heavily to the economic mess we face today, and they are particularly concerned about its members who ran as Tea Partiers.

But they were willing to put all that to one side in this election and deliver an urgent message of their own to the Democrats.

The number of voters who told exit pollsters that jobs led their lists of concerns dwarfed everything else — health care, the environment, you name it. And those voters want to see improvement in that area.

Their message was clear — their expectations aren't being met.

What this means for the future of the Obama presidency is not immediately clear. I suspect much will depend upon what Obama does in the next couple of years. He must be a leader. He must bring diverse people together.

He will have to do things he has not had to do up to this point in his life — not just his political life but his life in general.

But Democrats in the House should have taken a long, hard, critical look at the leadership record of Nancy Pelosi.

The electoral defeat, the loss of control of the House was as much Pelosi's failure as Obama's. Yes, Obama is the president, the leader of his party. His support appears to have meant very little for embattled Democrats across the nation, and the Republicans' midterm triumphs are being interpreted as a rejection of Obama's leadership. Certainly, he deserves his share of the blame.

But a loss of this magnitude reflects poorly on the speaker, perhaps more than it does on the president. The president is the head of the executive branch of government; the speaker is the most visible leader of half of the legislative branch.

These were her people who got swept away in the Republican tsunami. Any serious evaluation of the reasons for this defeat must reach the conclusion that Pelosi failed to adequately defend her colleagues — and that is why her retention in a leadership role is so bewildering.

If I had been asked before the election, I would have said that no House speaker who presided over the loss of more than 60 seats in a single election would be kept in a leadership position.

I would have said that, it seems to me, the logical thing for a devastated party to do is seek new blood to lead it.

In fact, if it had been up to me, I would have chosen North Carolina's Heath Shuler over Pelosi.

Shuler, as you may know, spent a few years playing pro football, but he retired after injuring his foot, completed his degree work at the University of Tennessee (where he had been runnerup for the Heisman Trophy) and embarked on a new career in real estate. He was elected to the House in 2006, defeating an eight–term Republican incumbent in a traditionally Republican district.

Anyway, Shuler challenged Pelosi for minority leader and was defeated. The newspaper in the largest city in Shuler's district, the Asheville Citizen–Times, and its readers were not impressed. Leroy Goldman called Shuler's bid for the leadership role a "stunt," and Angela Leonard wrote in a letter to the editor that Shuler should go ahead and join the Republican Party.

Once again, a centrist takes the blunt of the punishment for the extremists' failures.

Pelosi has been speaker since Shuler came to Washington in 2007. In Pelosi's first election after becoming speaker, Democrats enjoyed gains that were primarily due to one of two things — the presence of Obama at the top of the ticket or the presence of George W. Bush in the White House for the previous eight years.

What happened in that election had little, if anything, to do with Pelosi.

But the 2010 election results had Pelosi's fingerprints all over them. She's a polarizing figure, and Republicans capitalized on that in advertisements from coast to coast.

Yes, it is true that this election was, in part, a referendum on Obama. But let's be clear here. They've been conducting presidential approval surveys going back to FDR's days, and what happened to Obama is nothing new in the American experience. It was a little more extreme than most, not new.

But there are certain warning signs Obama should heed as he prepares for his re–election campaign. When I see things like surveys that report that 42% of people under the age of 30 are familiar with the operating system for Google's smartphones but only 14% know who the speaker of the House will be in the next Congress — I have serious doubts about the stability of Obama's 2008 coalition.

That isn't an indictment of young voters only. It seems to me that more members of every demographic group could correctly identify some product than the incoming speaker of the House — and that isn't a very good commentary on the culture in general.

But, frankly, I find it hard to understand why a House speaker whose party has just lost more than five dozen seats, many in Midwestern states that are expected to play pivotal roles in the next presidential election, should be retained as her party's leader. Haven't congressional leaders been toppled for losing much less?

That, certainly, is what recent history has told us. Newt Gingrich, after all, lost his leadership role when the Republicans lost only a handful of seats after the 1998 midterms — but they had been expected to gain ground with Bill Clinton facing impeachment proceedings. I always felt Gingrich was ousted more out of disappointment than anything else.

Gingrich's successor, Dennis Hastert, remained in the House after Democrats reclaimed control of that chamber in 2006, but he did not seek a minority leadership role and retired two years later.

And the last Democratic House speaker before Pelosi, Tom Foley, went down in the Republican tidal wave of 1994. Would he have remained as minority leader if he had not been narrowly rejected? I doubt it.

Pelosi's main argument in favor of her retention seems to be the devout belief that, had it not been for whatever role she may have played in making the tough choices about which Democrats to throw under the bus so they could reallocate electoral resources from what had come to be seen as lost causes, the 2010 midterms would have been much, much worse.

Has a familiar ring to it, doesn't it? It certainly is an odd yardstick for success — "Things could have been worse ..." — but the White House uses it. We'll see how it works out in two years.

Actually, by choosing to keep Pelosi in a leadership position, Democrats seem to be taking their cue from the last time a party lost as many seats in the House as Pelosi's did. It was 62 years ago, when Joe Martin's Republicans lost more than 70 seats after controlling both chambers of Congress for two years.

The House speaker couldn't really take the rap on that one, though. It was a presidential election year, and Democratic President Harry Truman pulled off an unexpected victory over Tom Dewey. In the process, he swept some Democrats into office along with him.

Martin may have shared some of the responsibility for the 1948 losses, but most of it surely belongs with Dewey, the party's titular leader as its presidential nominee.

Martin was retained by the Republicans as minority leader. Then, a few years later, he was restored as speaker of the House when Republicans rode the popularity of Dwight Eisenhower back into congressional power. But they collapsed in the 1954 midterms and remained the minority party for the next 40 years.

So the back–to–the–future example of Martin and the Republicans of 1948 might not be the best one for Democrats to emulate — although, two years ago, I did write about speculation that Obama was following Eisenhower's lead.

If he was, somehow he must have wandered off the path — because, although Ike's Republicans, like Obama's Democrats, were reduced to minority status in the House in the midterm elections, Eisenhower's popularity rating always was greater than his disapproval rating. The same clearly cannot be said for Obama.

I guess, though, it's always possible that Obama knows what he is doing and, in time, he will be vindicated.

Call it that vision thing.

A Time to Lead

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"There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader."

Alexandre Auguste Ledru–Rollin
(1807–1874)

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In the aftermath of what Barack Obama generously called a "shellacking" in the midterm elections, there has been no shortage of advice for Democrats who are understandably staggered by the greatest loss of House seats by one party in one election in decades.

In this corner ...

• E.J. Dionne writes in The New Republic that Democrats need to stick to their guns (so to speak), just like the Republicans did after their rejection in 2008.
  
  They should not listen, he says, to those who advise them to move more to the center.
  
  "Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?" he asks.
  
  Food for thought.


• From the "What? Me Worry?/Collateral Damage" Department:
  
  Bob Shrum concedes, in The Week, that Obama made some mistakes in his first two years as president.
  
  But unless you've been mainlining the Kool–Aid as Shrum seems to have been doing, you won't so easily shrug off the lessons that are there to be learned from this experience.
  
  Shrum insists that, not only has Obama been doing the right things, it will be clear to all by 2012 that they were the right things to do, that it wasn't a case of overreaching or ignoring the jobs issue. No apology is necessary.
  
  What's more, Obama's much–criticized trip to India right after the election will be vindicated as the right course of action instead of remaining in the U.S. to pick up the pieces. Remaining here, Shrum suggests, would have been a sign of weakness. The blood would have been in the water.
  
  And Obama, he says, will be re–elected in 2012. No problem.
  
  Oh, and if any of the folks who voted for him in 2008 go under because they lost their jobs and couldn't get new ones while Obama obsessed over health care, well, they're just collateral damage (see Timothy McVeigh).
  
  (By the way, it was Shrum who, only a month before the just–concluded midterm elections, confidently asserted that "the Democrats will hold the Congress — yes, the House as well as the Senate."
  
  (More than 82 million Americans voted in the election. If fewer than 60,000 people — 8,000 in Colorado, 21,000 in Nevada, and 27,000 in West Virginia — had voted for Republicans instead of Democrats, the Senate would have been a 50/50 split, and all the talk today would have been about whether independent Joe Lieberman could be persuaded by the Republicans to caucus with them, giving them the majority.)


• Ezra Klein at Newsweek metaphorically shrugs his shoulders. Sure, the Democrats lost the election, he writes, but they accomplished such great things.
  
  Great things that are likely to be overturned — if not in the newly elected Congress, almost certainly in the one that looks likely to be elected two years from now.
  
  But I'll get to that in a minute.


• At the New York Daily News, Steve Benen says Obama should call the Republicans' bluff.
  
  Benen recommends turning the tables on the Republicans, proposing things their own people have proposed in the past. For example, he could take a page from the McCain–Palin playbook from 2008 and advocate "establish[ing] 'a cap–and–trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions' and pursue 'alternatives to carbon–based fuels.' "
  
  What's more, Benen writes, "if the president were feeling particularly mischievous, he could endorse the tax rates adopted by Ronald Reagan, who oversaw rates considerably higher than the ones in place today. Would Republicans really condemn Ronaldus Magnus' tax policy?"

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And in this corner ...

• There's something vaguely unsettling (not to mention unseemly) about Karl Rove using the lyrics from a popular singer who is about half his age to make his point about Obama.
  
  But that's what he did — and fairly effectively, too — in the Wall Street Journal when he asserted that the president has a tin ear.
  
  Personally, I think Rove is right about that, but you have to consider the source. Rove clearly has an axe to grind.


• So, too, does Peggy Noonan, a writer whose work I have admired since she wrote Ronald Reagan's memorable speech following the Challenger disaster nearly 25 years ago.
  
  Noonan observes the volatility of the electorate and reminds Republicans, flush with victory, that "things could turn on a dime," as they did with Obama.
  
  Obama's problem, she suggests, is that he did not hold the political center that played a vital role in his election in 2008, and that's a hard argument to deny following an election in which independents so visibly abandoned the Democrats and voted for Republicans. "To hold the center you have to respect your own case enough to argue for it," she writes, "and respect the people enough to explain it."
  
  Noonan's had some experience with the fluidity of the electorate, and she remembers the days in the mid–1990s when the Republicans took control of Congress. She tells Republicans that the right wing's favorite whipping boy, the media, "had a storyline" it was eager to sell — "[t]hese wild and crazy righties who just got elected are ... wild and crazy," and the media will try to sell it in 2011 as well.
  
  There is an impression among many voters — one that is a half–truth at best — that all the Republicans who have just been elected are extremist Tea Partiers. The media will seek to exploit that, Noonan warns. The media, Noonan says, will try to portray all newly elected Republicans as extremists so she urges incoming Republicans "to keep in mind the advice of the 19th century actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who once said ... that she didn't really care what people did as long as they didn't do it in the street and frighten the horses."
  
  And that is what Noonan tells new Republican lawmakers: "Stand tall, speak clear, and don't frighten the horses."

As an amateur historian, I appreciate Noonan's knowledge of great quotes and how she skillfully weaves them into what she writes.

I seldom agree with her, just as I seldom agreed with her boss, but, as a writer, I give her credit for the things she can do with words.

I've never really bought into this media bias stuff that she and the other right–wingers like to peddle. Oh, sure, I'll concede that there is some bias in the media, most of it in broadcasting. Perhaps that is at the heart of my problem. My experience in journalism has been confined to print — well, except for a couple of years that I spent appearing on a weekly cable access sports program as a representative for the newspaper for which I was working at the time.

But mostly I get the sense, from reading what I have read lately, that most people are looking at raw numbers and simply trying to reconcile those numbers with what they see on the ground. Obama insisted, in his post–election press conference, that the fault was not with the agenda but with communication.

That has a nice "shoot the messenger" sound to it, but the ultimate responsibility rests with the president — except that this president, like his predecessor, won't take responsibility for his errors in judgment.

So who does Obama suggest we blame?

• If there isn't an answer to that by November 2012, the messengers who seem likely to get blamed, along with Obama, are the Senate Democrats who must face the voters in that election.
  
  Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post–Gazette — who, incidentally, disagrees with Shrum about Obama's trip to India — is one of those to write recently about those senators.
  
  "Democrats who didn't drown in the Republican wave had to be dismayed by the news conference President Barack Obama held Wednesday before jetting off to India," Kelly wrote. "Particularly unhappy, I suspect, are the 12 Democrats in the Senate from states that voted Republican Tuesday who are up for re–election in 2012.
  
  "In essence, what the president said (in many, many more words) is that he heard what the voters were saying, but would ignore it."
  
  Those 12 Democrats — Bill Nelson of Florida, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Jim Webb of Virginia and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin — are clearly at risk in 2012.
  
  Now, the Class of 2006 was always going to be at risk, simply because of the numbers. Only about one–third of the Senate's seats is on the ballot in any election year. There are more in some years because senators die or resign, and special elections must be held to choose their successors.
  
  Because 2006 was such a good year for Democrats, that means more Democrats will be defending their seats in 2012. The same, actually, will be true of 2014, when the Democrats who were swept in on the Obama wave are up for re–election.
  
  These politicians — the president and these 12 senators — are going to have to unite behind a message. They need to be laying the foundation for that message now and building their cases, as individuals and as a group, for another term.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, though, and those Democrats simply cannot afford for the president, the man at the top of their ballot, to be their weakest link. In 2012, Obama and the national Democrats may well find themselves stretched too thin as it is by the endangered Senate seats they must defend and the Republican–held House seats they must pursue in hope of either reducing the GOP's advantage or eliminating it altogether.

Since he was elected two years ago, pundits have compared Obama to the most successful presidents in American history — and some of the least successful as well.

Where Bill Clinton stands on that scale is, of course, a matter of opinion, but the fact remains that he survived a disastrous midterm in 1994 to win re–election two years later — and eventually turned over a budget surplus to his successor. He just might have some useful insights for the current occupant of the White House.

In his memoir "My Life," Clinton recalled that the Democrats "got the living daylights beat out of us."

Clinton's recollections sound eerily familiar to what Obama and other Democrats said both before and after the election: "The Republicans were rewarded for two years of constant attacks on me," he wrote. "The Democrats were punished for too much good government and too little good politics.

"... Moreover, the public mood was still anxious; people didn't feel their lives were improving and they were sick of all the fighting in Washington."

Has a familiar sound to it, doesn't it?

But the setback of 1994 reminded Clinton of 14 years earlier, when he was defeated for re–election as governor of Arkansas. "I felt much as I did [then]," Clinton wrote. "I had done a lot of good, but no one knew it. ... I had forgotten the searing lesson of my 1980 loss: You can have good policy without good politics, but you can't give the people good government without both."

And Clinton went about adapting himself to the new political landscape.

It is something other presidents needed to do midway through their terms in office, but not all have.

Will Obama have the wisdom to see what he must do?

Celestial Navigation

Do you remember the last year or so of George H.W. Bush's presidency?

He was like a moth on a summer night, frantically drawn to whichever light beckoned to him from the many competing beams that seemed to be shining. And, for the last painful months of the first Bush presidency, he was bouncing from one light source to another, only to discover they were never among his famous "thousand points of light."

Moths, they say, are attracted to light because they fly using a form of celestial navigation so they zero in on a light source and that keeps them flying in a reasonably straight line. It's an act of faith, I suppose ... inasmuch as moths are capable of having faith in anything.

Anyway, back in 1992, Bush was drawn to whichever light seemed to promise him guidance to victory in the election. I guess they were all dead ends or mere reflections of light (and not actual light sources) because Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton in a big way, and his party was reduced to a minority status that was almost identical to the one in which Republicans found themselves after the 2008 elections.

After Clinton took office, the hard times lingered. Despite different policies, improvements were slow. And, with the passage of time, Clinton — to use a phrase that has gained popularity in recent years — took ownership of the economy in the eyes of the voters. He insisted on reminding voters that he inherited the bad economy, but that point was irrelevant. Two years after Clinton was elected and Democrats took huge majorities in Congress, the voters handed legislative power to the Republicans.

Now, in terms of the numbers (of displaced workers, of sluggish economic performance, general severity, etc.), comparing the economy of the early '90s to the one facing this country today is like comparing tinker toys to steel girders.

But today's Democrats — and their leader, Barack Obama — have insisted on treating the steel–girder recession like it's the tinker–toy recession. Their words may have said one thing, but their actions have said something else.

Their actions — whether intended or not — have conveyed an inattentiveness to, an utter disinterest in the plight of the unemployed.

As I have mentioned on several occasions, Obama never said a word in public about unemployment on Labor Day weekend 2009 (when his approval ratings were still in the 50s), but he's been singing a much different tune in 2010, when those approval numbers have slid into the low 40s.

And, with polls showing Democrats on the brink of a hammering that may be historic in terms of its scope, he seems to be emulating "41" (as the elder Bush was affectionately known) by bouncing from one topic to another in what can only be seen as politically motivated moves.

In less than eight weeks, the American people will go to the polls. And Obama, in true George H.W. Bush style, has been indulging in his own "Message: I care" moments — i.e., this week's transparent push for new economic proposals — that are intended to mollify the voters until they've voted for the party in power.

Then the voters can be forgotten again.

I really have a hard time following the logic. A year ago, you might have been greeted with, at least, an incredulous look if you had suggested that the voters might be on the verge of giving legislative power to the party that has been in the minority since January 2007. But not so today.

Today, the conventional wisdom and the polls favor a Republican electoral wave in November that may well exceed the one that swept the Democrats from power in 1994.

The warnings seem to be everywhere — like that week in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina was crossing the Gulf of Mexico or the post–9/11 claims from intelligence sources that the terrorists' electronic "chatter" was deafening in the summer of 2001.

The warnings have been out there for months.

Byron York writes about it in the Washington Examiner. York is a conservative, but I could hardly have expected a gentler treatment of the subject from anyone at the other end of the political spectrum.

"The American people don't expect Obama to perform miracles," York writes in describing the bewilderment of Republican strategists. "They know he inherited a mess. They don't think the unemployment rate will magically fall to 4.5 percent. But they do expect the president to devote himself completely to the economy, and they want to see signs of progress by election day. By 'progress,' they mean not just a good month but the clear sense that the economy is moving in the right direction.

"Instead, they got policy potpourri and 'Recovery Summer.' "

Conventional wisdom suggests that it is much too late for anything to happen domestically that could turn things around for the Democrats. When I was studying political science in college, we talked of how voters' attitudes tend to "harden" about five or six months before an election. In my experience, that has been true. It certainly seems to have been true in 1994.

Speaking of 1994, I learned from that experience. I've been a Democrat most of my life (until earlier this year, in fact). I've been studying voting trends most of my life, too.

I was a registered Democrat in 1994. And, frankly, the tsunami that washed over the country that year came as a shock to me, coming as it did only two years after Democrats won huge congressional majorities, as well as the presidency itself.

But, as I say, I learned from that experience. And one of the things I learned was that, when a president takes office in the midst of hard times, that president must address the issues that are of the most concern to the most people. Usually, that means encouraging job creation.

The president may not want to devote his time and energy to jobs. He may have grander ideas for his presidency. Most presidents, it seems to me, are driven by a desire to lead, but when times are hard, they must do what may be counterintuitive to them and follow — follow, for as long as it takes, the will of the people. Respond to their needs and concerns.

A president can't choose the times in which he serves, but he can choose how he handles the challenges of his times. And the nature of the times is almost always dictated by the state of the economy. Bad economies require a focus on pocketbook issues. If the voters don't get that from their leaders, they will choose new leaders.

If, in the last 20 months, the voters had gotten what York calls "the clear sense that the economy is moving in the right direction," they might have been more receptive to the things for which Obama clearly wants to be remembered. But they haven't gotten that sense.

"Wait a minute!" Obama's defenders say. "Isn't the president pressing a bold economic plan even as we speak?"

Yes. But York has a compelling response: "If these are such great ideas, why wasn't the president pushing them earlier?"

It's a fair question. And today, I can see no circumstances — other than an international incident — that can save Democratic lawmakers in November. Perhaps — by the sheer grace of God — they may be able to salvage either the House or the Senate.

I don't think they will be able to save both. I think they're more likely to lose both.

But unless they can save both, I expect a fight in Congress next year over the repeal of the health care reform package upon which Obama gambled his presidency. And a prolonged fight over health care reform is going to delay any efforts to encourage job creation.

Sure, you can find the Pollyannas of the Democratic Party, like Susan Estrich, who wrote, in a recent column for Creators Syndicate, that, no matter how grim things may seem, the Democrats do have a thing or two on their side.

Nevertheless, Estrich did feel compelled to give a disclaimer, "What all this means is not that Democrats will hold on to the House come next fall, but that they can."

Her experience as Michael Dukakis' campaign manager 22 years ago must have taught her the value of spin because she quickly added that "even if they don't, it hardly spells doom for the president. The one area where the gap between the parties is clearest is that of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm comes from activists and ideologues. Instead of attacking them, this president and his team have to remember to spend some time wooing them."

Is it just me, or does that sound reminiscent of Obama's attempts last year to appease the Republicans in Congress? Well, we all know how well that worked, don't we?

So, logically, it will work even better, now that it's the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who are on the ropes. Right?

That kind of logic reminds me of a monologue I saw David Letterman give on The Tonight Show before he became a late–night host.

In the monologue, Letterman observed that, if a patron complained about the quality of the food, the approach at many restaurants at that time was to bring that patron more of that item.

"If there's anything better than bad food, it's lots of it," Letterman said.

I guess, if you're going to apply that line to current political tactics, you could say that "if there's anything better than bad legislative strategy, it's lots of it."

Well, I guess you could say that if you're a Republican. Not if you're a Democrat.

If health care reform is repealed, the centerpiece of Obama's presidency will be gone with no chance to get it back before Obama himself must face the voters. Without health care reform, what will be the basis for his argument to be given another four years?

And if voters continue to get the sense that the economy is not moving in the right direction in 2011, as they almost surely will not if the administration must constantly engage in skirmishes on Capitol Hill over health care reform — the issue that won't go away and can't be resolved — Obama can forget about a second term.

It didn't have to be this way.

I've seen this coming. I've been warning about it on this blog since before Obama took office. I've seen other people warning about it, too.

But I've been increasingly frustrated by the dawning knowledge that today's Democrats are intent upon forgetting (or ignoring) the recent past.

I could understand their hesitance to take decisive steps that could at least mitigate the damage in a midterm election — which almost always goes against the party in power, anyway, but not always decisively, as seems likely this year — if they were farther removed from the last time the opposing party took control of Congress. In 1994, it had been 40 years since the last time Republicans were in the majority in both chambers.

Most, if not all, of the Democrats who lived through the flip in the 1950s were gone by 1994. They couldn't warn the new generation of Democrats.

But, in 2010, the Democrats are only 16 years removed from the last time that happened. Joe Biden was a senator for more than 30 years. He's seen presidents from both parties wrestle with hard times. He lived through the 1994 midterms. And, when he was in the Senate, he tended to be blunt about what was needed to reverse the tide. But he's been the enabler–in–chief as vice president.

They couldn't have forgotten so quickly, could they?

Apparently, the answer to that is a resounding "yes they could."

And, in 55 days, we will find out exactly how much they have forgotten.

What Else Is On the Line?

Many people — too many, in fact — think the 2010 midterm elections are only about which party controls the House and/or the Senate.

To be sure, that is one of the critical things that will be decided in November.

But there are other races that, in their own way, could have a longer–lasting influence on American government.

I am speaking about the races for governor. The winners of those races may wield important influence for the rest of this decade in the form of congressional redistricting based upon the eventual findings from this year's Census.

Yet hardly anyone speaks about this.

Here are the facts:

In 36 of the 50 states, the state legislature is responsible for coming up with a plan for redistricting. Whatever plan the legislature comes up with must be approved by the governor in many of these states.

A few states leave the task of redistricting up to an independent commission. A couple of states let such a commission come up with a plan, which then must be approved by the legislature.

Currently, seven states have populations that are so small that they only have one at–large representative in the House — and, for them, redistricting is not an issue, unless the Census shows that one (or more) of those states has grown enough to qualify for a second House seat.

If that happens, it is possible that the existing legislature might have to draft and vote on a law that spells out how redistricting is to be done. It might be an entirely new experience for a state.

But right now, I know of no state that is thought to have grown so much that it would qualify for a second House seat.

The statehouses are almost split down the middle as we head into the general election campaign. Democrats are governors in 26 states, Republicans are governors in 23 states and one Republican–turned–independent is a governor as well.

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball now predicts the Republicans will gain eight governor's offices, thus taking a majority just when redistricting for this decade is due to commence.

In last week's projection, the Rothenberg Political Report was only slightly more restrained, anticipating that Republicans will add 6–8 statehouses to their total. But, even if the GOP has to settle for the low end of that range, it still comes out to a projection that there will be more Republican governors than Democratic governors by next January.

Barack Obama and the Democrats appear to be focused exclusively on what will happen in the congressional races in November. And that is something about which they should be concerned. It's also a nice change from the somewhat smug state of denial in which so many Democrats seemed to exist until the ill–fated "Recovery Summer" proved to be anything but.

And now, I think, the reality of the magnitude of the losses staring them in the face has frightened many Democrats. The president, as his party's leader, must try to do what he can to minimize losses in the statehouses as well. It won't be easy, and he probably won't succeed. But he must try.

He won't like having to do it. In the last 20 months, Obama has proven to be as artless at governing as he was artful at campaigning. But he could be the outsider in 2008. As president he has often exposed himself as not really having a taste for the way the game of politics is played.

It's really too late now to be acquiring that kind of touch. But if he doesn't, he will pay a price for it in the second half of his term, and the tab will come due in November 2012.

He will probably have to pay that price no matter what happens between now and November. But what he does may well decide whether his successors must continue to pay for it as well after he has left the Washington scene.

When You Promise Change, You'd Better Deliver

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And pronto.

Sometimes I think Barack Obama and the Democrats would rather not talk much about the 2008 campaign — unless it means an easy opening for bashing George W. Bush some more.

But that "hope" and "change" rhetoric is going to ring rather hollow in the ears of the vanishing middle class, especially those who have been out of work for awhile.

I have no doubt that Obama's diehard supporters will insist that he has delivered change in his first 19 months in office.

The validity of that position, I suppose — to borrow another president's words — depends on what your definition of is is.

Perception — as I have said many times — is reality. So I understand the rationale of those in the Obama camp who believe they can reason their way out of an electoral disaster.

And, for them, it may be sufficient to recite those achievements in the apparent belief that the voters simply need to be reminded who was running the show when the economy imploded and what the Democrats have been doing to try to salvage it.

For the most part, theirs seems to be a record that is consistent with their apparent objectives and beliefs (whether stated or unstated).

Obama and his fellow Democrats did enact a massive stimulus, even though unemployment continued to go up through 2009 and now appears stuck between 9.5% and 10% (not counting those whose benefits have expired or who are part–timers or otherwise "underemployed") — and even though many economists said at the time, and continue to say, that it wasn't large enough.

He pushed through a massive health care reform package — which, actually, won't be implemented for several years.

He nominated two women to the Supreme Court, both of whom were approved without much opposition.

The voters — those crummy ingrates — aren't giving the president and the Democrats the credit they deserve, Obama seems to feel, so he has been reminding voters lately of all the things he's done for them, how his initiatives are going to make things better in the future. And this looks like something he'll be doing quite a bit between now and November.

Now, all that long–term stuff is good, and all the lovely projections are nice to talk about. But let's be honest here. If you're a working man who has lost his job and can't pay his mortgage and can't feed his kids, that is what is going to dominate your agenda from one election to the next.

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A lot of those people voted for Democrats in 2006 and 2008 (especially 2008). In 2010, they're frustrated by the slow pace of job gains — which, last month, weren't gains at all — and they aren't concerned about political philosophy or anything else except jobs.

From where they sit, if the Democrats haven't been able to deliver, maybe the Republicans have learned something from spending the last few years in the wilderness. Or, like the woman in the video, they just might not bother to vote at all this time.

When you are elected president under a banner of "CHANGE," that is what the voters expect.

Now.

Clearly visible change.

The initiatives and the appointments for which Obama can claim credit may well bear fruit many years from now — and future historians may sing his praises, as modern historians do today for some one–term presidents who acted in what they believed were the long–term interests of the nation but ignored the short term by which they and the members of their party were judged.

Now, like Ronald Reagan 28 years before, Obama wants voters to "stay the course." But voters in 1982 were much like the voters in 2010. They changed parties in the White House two years earlier, and improvements were hard to see by the time the midterm elections rolled around.

That was bad news for Republicans, who had made much of the Democrats' quarter–century hold on congressional power with their "Vote Republican. For a Change" campaign in 1980 (see clip at top of post).

They had persuaded voters to give them both the White House and control of the Senate. They hadn't won control of the House, but they gained 34 seats, and Republicans were able to persuade enough of the remaining Democrats to vote with them to implement what became known as the "Reagan Revolution."

But the revolution seemed to have profited the rich and the elite, not the working class — and the working class gave 25 House seats back to the Democrats. At this point in 1982, Reagan (whose approval rating was in the 50s and 60s for most of his first year in office) had an approval rating of 41% — which just happens to be where Obama's job approval currently stands, according to Gallup.

By the time Americans went to the polls in November 1982, Reagan's approval had crept up to 43%.

A pretty face, John Lennon wrote nearly four decades ago, may last a year or two "but pretty soon they'll see what you can do."

And, at a time when Americans have been crying out for job creation, the answer to that one is, "Not much."

Tips for a Regular Guy

I was reading a syndicated column by Susan Estrich today.

If you're over 30, you might remember Estrich. She was the campaign manager for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988.

An unapologetic feminist, she supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries two years ago, then supported Barack Obama in the general election. Then she wrote endearingly of Obama on the occasion of his 100th day in office, calling him "Mr. Cool."

She's still singing in the Adulation Chorus, but she's apparently picking up on what she senses might be problems for the folks in Obama's party in November.

(Of course, Estrich's candidate fell way short of winning so she never had to deal with the antipathy voters typically show to the party in the White House in midterm elections. As it was, 1990 was not a rabidly anti–White House year, unlike this year, but Estrich's party came out ahead in November, anyway — and the fact that her candidate lost two years earlier may have had something to do with it. Nevertheless ...)

She starts off defending Obama's decision to proceed with vacation plans in Martha's Vineyard, even though she knows what a public relations snake pit that is apt to be.

And she's right, of course. The president has a demanding job, one that was already going to be more demanding than usual when he took office last year, and rational people don't begrudge him the right to some R&R. But sometimes he seems a little too eager to be distracted — like when so much attention was paid to his NCAA tournament picks nearly two months after he took office.

(Incidentally, some people criticized me last year for criticizing Obama for not focusing his attention on job creation. I even remember one fellow saying to me that Obama's interest in sports was proof that he was a "regular guy," which reminded me of arguments that were made when George W. Bush was running against Al Gore in 2000. "Which one would you rather have a beer with?" Bush's supporters asked, a question that I found irrelevant. I don't vote for a drinking buddy. I vote for a president.

(When people have told me that one thing or another is proof that Obama is an ordinary guy, I am reminded of an episode of The West Wing, in which Toby the speechwriter and Charlie the president's personal aide are talking about a fight the president and first lady have been having. "It's a typical marriage," Toby says. "I've been there." And Charlie replies, "Well, I haven't, but he's the president of the United States so my guess is, no, it probably isn't a typical marriage."

(See, that's the thing about presidents. They aren't regular guys. They may wear regular–guy clothes and have regular–guy interests. And they're almost always married — or have been — so they have that experience in common with others, too.

(But, they don't have regular–guy issues to deal with.)

To those who might question Obama's choice of vacation spots, Estrich explains that Martha's Vineyard was chosen "[b]ecause he likes it. Because he knows people there, has friends there, enjoys himself there."

We all have places like that, don't we? Some people are lucky enough to live in the place they like best in the world — and all their closest friends live there, too. But most of us aren't that fortunate.

Even so, Martha's Vineyard is a rather exclusive vacation spot. Bill Clinton used to vacation there when he was president. And a certain amount of grumbling about that could be heard from his adversaries then, as well.

But unemployment wasn't even close to being the national catastrophe it is today. For jobless Americans, worried about paying the rent or the electric bill in this blisteringly hot summer, it seems a little unfeeling for a president to be hobnobbing with the rich and famous while they're struggling to make ends meet, a task that was made that much more difficult for many by two months of dithering in Washington over extending unemployment benefits.

(Congress finally rectified that, but the passage of the extension in late July didn't mean that benefits magically appeared in the pockets of the jobless right away. In fact, it may take up to another month before payments resume.)

Well, Martha's Vineyard isn't really the issue, and I think Estrich knows that.

But she also seems to realize that, as I have said before, perception is reality for most people. And she frets that "a second vacation to a place other than the hard–hit Gulf is an invitation for people to think what too many of them already think: The president just doesn't get it."

And, she concludes, that ain't good.

"The danger for Democrats," she writes, "is that if people keep thinking the president doesn't get it (and that's what I am hearing, particularly when those golf course shots hit the front page), the easiest way for them to send him a message, since he's not on the [ballot], is to vote against the Democrat who is."

She doesn't have any sage advice to offer Obama that might help him avoid what is more and more frequently being called inevitable — perhaps, because, at this point in the campaign, there really isn't anything that anyone can recommend.

Maybe the best advice she can offer to some Democrats is something that she says many already are doing — distancing themselves from the president. They don't mind receiving financial assistance, but many Democrats in what Estrich calls "marginal districts" are trying to, as Estrich says, "keep it local."

Predictably, Republicans will want to drag Obama into the political discourse at every opportunity. I suppose that comes as something of a shock to Democrats who had become accustomed to George W. Bush being the punching bag in the last couple of elections — and I'm sure that, when cornered, many Democrats will resort to blaming Bush.

But that seems to be wearing thin. After all, this is the third election cycle that's been used. The first time, Democrats reclaimed control of Congress. The second time, they expanded their majorities and captured the White House.

Americans feel they have given "ownership" of the nation's problems to the Democrats. What more do they need? If the Democrats are still talking about how everything was Bush's fault, that sounds to many voters like a non–admission admission that they don't know what to do.

In 2006 and 2008, whipping George Bush made sense, given the national mood. But, in 2010, it's lost much of its appeal.

This ought to be something with which Estrich has at least a passing acquaintance. Bush's father's campaign in 1988 is remembered for its racist commercial featuring Willie Horton — but the advertising campaign that contributed to Dukakis' defeat also included one ad that attacked Dukakis' economic record as governor of Massachusetts by casting doubt on his environmental record.

Dukakis claimed to have presided over the "Massachusetts miracle," a period of economic growth and expansion in the 1980s, and Republicans didn't want him to take credit for that so they ran a commercial that showed unflattering images of pollution in Boston Harbor and warned that Dukakis "wants to do for America what he did for Massachusetts." The commercial concluded with the line "America can't afford that risk."

The campaign worked in the generally calm environment of 1988, but four years later, when Bush sought another term, as the economy was struggling, he tried to use that same tactic against Bill Clinton.

If you watch the 1988 and 1992 commercials, you will see that the images are very different — but the text being narrated is practically the same. The only real changes were references to Clinton (instead of Dukakis) and Arkansas (instead of Massachusetts).

The commercial even ended the same way. Clinton, the narrator said, "wants to do for America what he did for Arkansas. America can't afford that risk."

It didn't work a second time.

I get the sense that Estrich doesn't think whipping Bush for a third straight election is going to be successful, either. But she's at a loss for what to do — and so she grasps for whatever she can.

"[T]he Republicans also have their problems," she says, adding that "[i]n tough times, do you go with someone who is unknown, inexperienced and maybe a little bit too far off the beaten track?"

Hmmm. She didn't seem to have a problem with that two years ago.

Split Decision

You know, history really does repeat itself. Not precisely, though. You have to look for it, but patterns certainly seem to emerge.

More than two years ago — when Democrats had held Congress for a little more than a year and Republican George W. Bush was in his final year as president — I wrote about the virtue of divided government.

On that occasion, I was offering my take on a column written by political analyst Charlie Cook for the National Journal, in which he also wrote about the disparity between the popular vote and the electoral vote. While I do believe the Electoral College should be scrapped — or, at the very least, revised — that's not what I want to discuss in this post.

In April 2008 — which, it is worth noting, was several months before the economic meltdown virtually guaranteed Democratic victories that fall — Cook said both parties had "self–destructive tendencies." If either controlled both the legislative and executive branches of government, it was like a "ticking time bomb; it's only a matter of time before it explodes and the party loses, and loses big."

That time appears to be at hand for Democrats who were so cocky after the 2008 elections. Everyone seems to be in agreement on that point. The disagreement, at this stage, centers on how extensive the losses will be — whether the Democrats will, in Cook's words, "lose big."

I can picture their spinmeisters, already working on the party's excuses for whatever lies ahead. I'm sure racism will be a prominent one. It's a very handy excuse for this president, one that hasn't been available to any of his predecessors — although I'm sure some variant of it has been applicable to a few (i.e., John F. Kennedy, who was not the first Catholic presidential nominee but was the first Catholic to be elected — and could conceivably have used anti–Catholic bigotry if he had lived to run for a second term).

But, even though racism is likely to be used as an excuse for congressional losses, is it valid? In some instances, perhaps it is. But not in most.

Well, two years ago, I wrote something that I still believe: "I've seen more efficiency under a divided government. Each side gets some of what it wants sometimes. But when one party controls the White House and the Congress, things get sloppy, inefficient — and expensive."

I've seen nothing in the last two years that refutes that. Precisely the opposite, in fact. Divided government promotes the art of compromise. Everyone gets involved. No one feels left out — and, consequently, feels the need to obstruct everything the majority tries to do because you just might need some of those folks on the next issue — and you have a realistic chance of winning over some of them — and you don't want to risk alienating them.

When voters elected Barack Obama president and, at the same time, expanded Democrats' majorities in both houses of Congress, there was much rejoicing.

I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I had serious doubts about the collective wisdom. In the aftermath of the economic meltdown, I felt the voters were having a (probably justifiable) tantrum against Republican rule, and I felt torn over the prospect of installing a one–party government to replace another one–party government.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am second to no one in my utter disdain for the George W. Bush administration (well, both Bush presidencies, actually, but let's stick to the most recent one).

And the only electoral decision in which all voters participate is the election of the president. Senators and representatives are chosen, as always, by states and districts.

No "decision" was made in 2008 to give huge majorities to the Democrats, just as no decision was made nearly a decade before that to turn over control of both the White House and the Congress to the Republicans. It's just how it worked out.

And I worried in 2008 that it would make things worse. Democrats seemed to have forgotten how disenfranchised they felt when Republicans controlled the national debate — and how that led the Democrats to become more energized about taking back what they had lost.

In such an adversarial environment, neither side ever seems to be willing to budge even an inch. Isn't that what we've seen in Washington in the last 18 months? Isn't that what we saw in Washington five years ago, in first the Terri Schiavo affair and then the Hurricane Katrina experience?

Not sayin' either side was right or wrong. Just sayin'.

As I say, I felt torn on Election Night. On the one hand, I felt that someone whose very existence would be politically sensitive — such as the first black president — would need to have many members of his party in Congress in order to get anything accomplished.

On the other hand, I have seen one–party rule at several times in my life, and it never really seems to work. The party that is in power always gets too carried away with itself and sees "mandates" where they frequently don't exist. That lends an aura of credibility to everything they do.

And there is often a sense that the party in power knows best, and that clearly seems to have been a problem in the first couple of years of the Obama presidency.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that Americans are worried about unemployment.

I'm going to repeat that, with added emphasis, because I really believe it is important.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that Americans are worried about unemployment.

Now, you may argue — and not without some justification — that the opinions expressed in polls are not written in stone — and they aren't. But, when a topic consistently lands in the top spot of polls about the most pressing problems facing America today, that seems like, at the very least, a hint that it's something that Americans want to address. And a lot of them really want to address the jobs issue.

As George Carlin used to say, even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in awhile if only to feed the illusion that they're really in charge. In this case, they ain't been getting it — unless Obama and the Democrats were doing things behind the scenes to promote job creation while they were publicly barnstorming the country for health care reform.

But, if that is what they were doing, they missed an opportunity to get some visible credit for their efforts — credit they might wish they had when the voters go to the polls in November. As it is, the Democrats seem to be hoping — like Herbert Hoover at the dawn of the Great Depression — that the market will correct itself. That's not likely to be a winning strategy in 2010.

Because, unless something really dramatic happens, it is unlikely that we will see the kinds of improvements that will reverse the Democrats' fortunes in November's midterms.

It isn't that the voters blame the Democrats — but it would be terrific if they would stop obsessing about blame and focus on strategies for encouraging job creation. The five–figure job gains we've seen lately would have been great a few decades ago. They might even have been marginally acceptable a few years ago. But, since the end of 2007, we've seen waves of six–figure job losses that seemed like they would never end.

And they've left a path of destruction in their wake that is staggering.

As the voters see it, the Democrats are the ones who are in charge. If the voters aren't convinced that they're thinking outside the box in an all–out pursuit of an answer, they'll look for that leadership elsewhere. The Republicans may not be exactly what they want — but what other option do they have?

Well, anyway, I started thinking about all this when I was reading an article today by another political analyst for whom I have a great deal of respect, Michael Barone, one of the authors of what has been the best political reference for nearly 40 years, the "Almanac of American Politics," which is published by the National Journal every other year.

Barone also contributes to the Washington Examiner, where today he suggests that this year's midterms may resemble the ones in 1966.

"Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades," Barone writes. "Others compare this year to 1982, when Democrats picked up 26 House seats and recaptured effective control of the House two years after Ronald Reagan was elected president."

As I say, though, Barone's focus today is on 1966, two years after Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats swept the elections of 1964. 1966, Barone writes, "was a year when a Democratic president's war in Asia was starting to cause unease and some opposition within his own party, as is happening now."

And, he continues, "it was a year of recoil against the big government programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The 89th Congress, with 2–1 Democratic majorities, had passed Medicare, federal aid to education, anti–poverty and other landmark legislation."

The key to Republicans' success in 1966, Barone suggests, was that they "actually won the popular vote for the House in the North (defined as the other 36 states) by a 51% to 48% majority. They have only done so since in three elections, in 1968 (a virtual carbon copy of 1966 in House races), in their breakthrough year of 1994 and in the post–9/11 year of 2002."

Recent poll results indicate, Barone continues, that it could happen again this year. Generic polls asking voters which party they would support in their local House race show "Republicans ahead by a historically unprecedented margin."

And, writes Barone, "[i]f those numbers hold, and if they turn out to underpredict Republican performance in the popular vote, as they have in the past, that could mean that Republicans would win a popular vote plurality or majority in the North."

Can't happen, you say? Hmmm, tell that to Massachusetts Sen. Martha Coakley and then tell me what her response was. Coakley was an exception, you say? A terrible candidate? OK. Gotcha. How about checking back with me in a month or so, after most states have held their primaries, and tell me how things are looking?

We should also have a couple more jobless reports in by that time.