The Fine Art of Compromise ... and Lost Opportunity

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"The trusts and combinations — the communism of pelf — whose machinations have prevented us from reaching the success we deserve should not be forgotten nor forgiven."

Letter from Grover Cleveland to Rep. Thomas C. Catchings (D–Miss.)
August 27, 1894

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I have mentioned here that I have been studying the presidency most of my life.

And Grover Cleveland has always fascinated me. He always stood out because he was — and still is — the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. (He was also president half a century before presidents were limited to two terms — so, presumably, he could have sought a third term in 1896, but his party repudiated him. More on that in a minute.)

I have found it fascinating, too, to observe all the different presidents in American history to whom Barack Obama has been compared.

That didn't really begin with Obama. Incoming presidents are almost always compared to presidents from the past. I don't know why. Maybe to try to get an idea of what to expect. There have been no other black presidents so Obama couldn't be compared to anyone on a racial level.

When he was about to take the oath of office for the first time, Obama was compared, at different times and for different reasons, to great presidents from American history like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Lincoln, of course, was a natural, having presided over the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. There were some comparisons, as well, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, mostly because FDR had taken office during the most perilous economic period in the nation's history, even to John F. Kennedy, perhaps because both were young and their elections made history.

Over the course of his presidency, Obama has been compared to less accomplished presidents. In recent years, it has frequently been asked if he is more incompetent than Jimmy Carter, who is generally regarded as the most incompetent president in recent memory.

Six years ago, about three weeks before Obama took the oath of office the first time, political scientist Michael Barone suggested that Dwight Eisenhower might be the more appropriate comparison, and I wrote about that.

Barone's point was that Eisenhower had done little to help his fellow Republicans, many of whom "grumbled that Ike ... was selfish.

"Eisenhower, I suspect, regarded himself as a unique national figure," Barone wrote, "and believed that maximizing his popularity far beyond his party's was in the national interest."

I was reminded of that tonight when I heard Obama's speech on immigration. Many congressional Democrats are supporting the president — publicly, at least — but some are not. Regardless of the negative ramifications of his executive order — and a poll conducted Wednesday night indicates that nearly half of respondents oppose Obama's acting via executive order — Obama seems determined to prove that he is still relevant.

Coming a mere two weeks after Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections, it seems to me a president who was more concerned about his party's future than his own would act more prudently. Bill Clinton, after all, lost control of both chambers of Congress in the midterms of 1994, and Democrats didn't regain the majority in either chamber for 12 years.

Clinton did manage to retake some his party's lost ground when he ran for re–election in 1996 and then again after surviving an attempt by the Republicans to impeach him before the 1998 midterms, defying all logic.

I've always felt that a lot of that was because Clinton was appropriately chastened by his party's massive losses in the midterms. I felt, at the time, that many of the voters who had voted Republican in 1994 believed Clinton had learned an important lesson and were more open to supporting him and the members of his party in 1996.

Obama has now been through two disastrous midterm elections, and he has emerged from the second not chastened but defiant. He appears to be entirely ready to do everything on his own, completely ignoring the role that the Founding Fathers intended for Congress to play. An opportunity to let compromise and cooperation be what the Founding Fathers envisioned in their fledgling republic is being squandered.

Once such an opportunity is lost, once such a president takes this kind of approach, it is hard, if not impossible, to establish a rapport with the other side.

Obama isn't the first to do this, which brings me back to Grover Cleveland. A little background information is called for here.

Cleveland was first elected president in 1884. He was the first Democrat elected to the office in more than a quarter of a century — in spite of the revelation that Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock. It was close, but Cleveland managed to pull it off.

Four years later, when Cleveland sought a second term, conditions were good. The nation was at peace, and the economy was doing pretty well, but there was division over the issue of tariff policy. The election was another cliffhanger. Cleveland again won the popular vote by a narrow margin, but his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, received enough electoral votes to win.

So Cleveland left the White House in March 1889, but he returned as the Democratic nominee in 1892 and defeated Harrison. It was the second time a major party nominated someone for president three straight times. The first one, Andrew Jackson, also won the popular vote all three times; like Cleveland, though, he was denied the presidency once because he lost the electoral vote.

Perhaps it was the experience of having been returned to the White House after losing the electoral vote four years earlier that contributed to Cleveland's messianic complex. To be fair, it would be hard not to feel that there was an element of historical inevitability at work.

But that doesn't really excuse how Cleveland approached the outcome of the 1894 midterms.

One cannot tell the story of the 1894 midterms without telling the story of the Panic of 1893 for it defined Cleveland's second term as well as the midterms. It was the worst economic depression the United States had experienced up to that time. Unemployment in America was about 3% when Cleveland was elected in 1892. After a series of bank failures, it ballooned into double figures in 1893 and stayed there for the remainder of Cleveland's term.

The depression was a key factor in the debate over bimetallism in 1894. Cleveland and his wing of the Democratic Party were known as "bourbon Democrats," supporters of a kind of laissez–faire capitalism. They supported the gold standard and opposed bimetallism, in which both gold and silver are legal tender.

The economy was already the main topic of the campaign, and a major coal strike in the spring didn't help. In fact, it hammered the fragile economies of the states in the Midwest and the Northeast. Republicans blamed Democrats for the poor economy, and the argument found a receptive audience.

Republicans gained House seats just about everywhere except the Southern states, which remained solidly Democratic, and states where Republicans already held all the House seats. Democrats went from a 220–106 advantage to a 104–226 deficit. It remains the most massive shift in House party division in U.S. history.

Under circumstances such as these, a president has two choices — he can be conciliatory and try to move to the political center, as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did, or he can dig in his heels and be even more intransigent.

Much as Obama is doing 120 years later, Cleveland chose the latter approach after the midterms in 1894. Perhaps he felt he had no allies in Washington anymore, but I've always felt his go–it–alone approach was a big reason why he was repudiated by the Democrats in 1896. The fragmented party chose instead to go with William Jennings Bryan, who would be nominated three times and lose each time. In fact, with the exception of the Woodrow Wilson presidency, no Democrat would win the White House for the next 36 years.

For that matter, they didn't regain the majority in the House until the 1910 midterms, but they lost that majority six years later in spite of the fact that President Wilson was at the top of the ballot. It took the stock market crash of 1929 to restore Democrats to majority status in the House in the midterms of 1930.

That is one cautionary tale that emerges from this year's midterms. Another is the exaggerated importance given to the turnout. I know it is a popular excuse to use after a party has been slammed in the midterms, but it is misleading.

In 2006, when Democrats retook the majority in both chambers for the first time in 12 years, they treated it as a mandate for change. But roughly the same number of voters participated in 2006 as participated in 2014. Granted, there has been an increase in the overall population in those eight years so the share of registered voters who participated is different, but the overall numbers are the same.

Republicans, too, pointed to low turnout in 2006. My advice to them would be not to duplicate the Democrats' mistake. They believed their success was permanent — and it never is in politics.

It can last longer, though, if you lead.

No Way to Run a Railroad

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"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."

John Maynard Keynes

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And so it begins again. One political party was slapped down by the voters, and everyone wonders if this is the end of that party. Eight years ago, they wondered the same thing about the Republican Party. It has happened several times in my lifetime. It will happen again. That is the one sure thing about politics in America. Success is never permanent, yet still the recriminations come. The finger pointing begins.

In spite of evidence to the contrary, people always want to believe that one party or the other is on the verge of eliminating that party. In the aftermath of Watergate, it was popular to wonder if the Republican Party was dying. A decade later, when Ronald Reagan and the Republicans were ascendant, people wondered if the Democrats were finished. The pendulum seems to swing one way, then the other about every 8–10 years.

The finger pointing happens every election cycle, though. It's like clockwork. Every election. Doesn't matter which party is judged the overall winner and which is judged the overall loser — or by how much (although I think everyone pretty much agrees that this was a decisive setback for the Democrats). At one time or another, each has been both, and the same scenario has been played out.

Well, this time it is a little different. Most of the time, whoever the president happens to be is usually humbled, chastened by the experience because it is almost always the president's party that suffers in the midterms — especially when the president told the world that his policies were on the ballot even if he wasn't. That's like when Gary Hart dared reporters to follow him in search of evidence of infidelity. Then they did and found out that he was being unfaithful to his wife.

And that was the end of Gary Hart's presidential ambitions.

Most presidents have been too smart to remind voters that their policies were being judged — and hand the opposition a neat little sound bite in the bargain — especially when their approval ratings were in the crapper.

In light of the fact that Obama did precisely that, though, there really is no other way to view Tuesday's results except as a rejection of those policies from sea to shining sea. This wasn't simply the South throwing a tantrum. Polls showed Senate races in the South to be close; they weren't. Polls showed Democratic incumbents outside the South had a good chance of winning. They didn't.

This wasn't merely a wave election. This was a tidal wave election.

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The numbers on the federal level tell a somber story for Democrats. When Obama first took the oath of office in January 2009, Democrats have lost more than 60 seats in the House and about 15 seats in the Senate. The numbers won't be official yet, but that is how it is looking. On the state level, Democrats were expected to gain ground with Republicans defending more than Democrats, but Republicans picked up some governorships. That is about the worst showing for any two–term president in American history, and the losses weren't just on the federal and state levels, either. They were local, too.

For a party that insists on living in the 19th century, the Democrats have, appropriately, fallen to controlling "the lowest number of state legislatures since 1860," reports Reuters. This was across–the–board, top to bottom repudiation.

The president says he will work with the members of the victorious opposing party — because that is clearly what the voters want, and it is probably what most expected from Barack Obama's post–election press conference.

"No one reasonable expected the president to grovel," wrote Megan McArdle for BloombergView, "but it seemed reasonable to think that he'd seek whatever narrow ground he and Republicans can share."

Think again. This president has burned so many bridges with the Republican leadership that one wonders if there are any left. If there is one left standing, it seems to me it is the immigration issue. There is common ground to be found there, and presidents with experience in consensus–building — like, for example, Bill Clinton — would see this as an opportunity. But Obama seems determined to drench this bridge in gasoline and strike a match before anyone tries to cross it.

The prudent thing for a president to do in this situation would be to encourage compromise. Obama's presidency only has two years left, and, like it or not, this is the Congress with which he must work. Both sides must be willing to give a little to get a little.

But that is a lesson in leadership that Obama never learned.

Prepare Yourself for the Sixth-Year Itch

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When I was growing up, political observers spoke of Election Day as if an invisible army of voters marched to the polls on that one day. It was often referred to, informally, as Decision Day.

But since the advent of early voting, Election Day really is more of a deadline, a finish line if you will. Election Day in the United States is on November 4 this year. In most states, voters have been trickling in for weeks. For the most part, I guess the only ones left who haven't voted really are undecided — or they have been prevented from voting early for any of a number of reasons, like work or illness or family obligations.

In short, the decisions have probably already been made in many places. We just won't know the outcomes until sometime Tuesday night when the official counts are known.

And so the suspense, such as it is, continues.

There is no suspense in the House. Republicans are all but sure to retain the majority, perhaps even add to it. Conventional wisdom holds, though, that Republicans probably already control nearly all of the districts in which (officially or unofficially) Republicans outnumber Democrats. After the 2010 midterms, Republicans held 242 House seats, their highest number since the first Truman midterm in 1946, when the GOP held 246 seats.

Two years ago, the Republicans lost eight seats in the House so their total now is 234, which is still greater than the number of seats Republicans held after the 1994 midterms. They would need a net gain of 12 seats to match their postwar high.

I don't really pay much attention to House races besides the one in my own district. They aren't very good barometers of national trends or moods. They're primarily local races, especially in the big cities where they may cover only a few square miles — as opposed to the mostly rural Arkansas district in which I grew up, which encompassed (and still does) several counties. However large or small they may be geographically, a district's issues tend to be local in nature. What matters to voters here in Dallas County, Texas, probably will not matter at all to folks in King County, Washington, or Franklin County, Missouri.

So I don't spend much time on House races — unless there is clearly an illogical imbalance that seems likely to be reversed. There was a time, earlier in this election cycle, when the popular mindset among Democrats was that they would hold the Senate and perhaps seize a majority in the House. Those hopes took a pounding when Republicans won a special election to fill a House vacancy left by the death of the Republican incumbent, who had won more than 20 consecutive elections. Democrats believed they had a good chance to win the seat because the district voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — and the idea of making that seat flip fueled hopes of an unlikely midterm shift in the direction of the president's party.

No one spoke of that after the special election. Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, which is almost always accurate in its predictions, says the GOP is on course to gain nine seats, which would create the Republicans' second–highest total since World War II, eclipsing the number of seats the Republican held after the 2010 midterms.

There is no real suspense in this year's House races, except for a handful of districts, many of which are open seats.

There is, however, a lot of suspense surrounding Senate races. The Republicans need to win six seats to seize control of the chamber. Five would produce a 50–50 split, and, since vice presidents vote in case of a tie, a vote that goes straight down party lines would end up voting the way Democrats want because Joe Biden would break the tie.

The only way Republicans can avoid that is to win an outright majority. That seemed much more problematic for them a year or so ago, but today Sabato says Republicans are likely to win between five and eight Senate seats. He says it is all but certain Republicans will win open seats in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, which have been generally conceded to Republicans for months now, as well as the seat in Arkansas.

Sabato also thinks Republicans are in a position to win Democrat–held seats in Alaska, Colorado and Iowa, but polls have been showing those races as neck and neck.

And, to further complicate matters, there are those races in Louisiana, Georgia and Kansas. Louisiana and Georgia could go to overtime, so to speak, if no one wins 50% of the vote on Tuesday. In Kansas, the incumbent Republican is facing a serious challenge from an independent who has been coy about which party with whom he would caucus if elected.

Republicans insist that North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan is in trouble — indeed, recent polls show her lead within the margin of error. Heading into the final weekend of the campaign, the North Carolina race is regarded as too close to call.

As I have been saying all along, a president's approval rating is always a factor in any midterm election — but especially when it is a president's second midterm election. I'm sure everyone remembers the 2010 midterm election, when Republicans took more than 50 seats from the Democrats. Barack Obama's approval rating was in the mid–40s just before that election. It's two or three points lower than that now.

OK, let's look at the approval ratings for presidents who were midway through their second terms. That doesn't apply to everyone, of course — only those presidents who were in office for two midterm elections. One–term presidents like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are excluded.

In 2006, George W. Bush's approval rating was mostly in the upper 30s when voters went to the polls. Democrats gained a net of six Senate seats and 30 House seats in that election.

In 1998, Bill Clinton's approval rating was in the 60s just before the election. He managed to buck the trend of the so–called six–year itch, in large part because of the public's perception of congressional Republicans having overreached in their attempt to impeach Clinton. The numbers in the Senate were unchanged as each party took three seats from the other. Democrats won a net of five seats in the House.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan's approval rating was in the 60s when the elections were held, but his party still lost eight seats in the Senate and five seats in the House.

In 1974, Gerald Ford had to preside over the midterms in the wake of Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation. Ford's approval rating plummeted after he pardoned Nixon, but it was still in the upper 40s, even lower 50s when the elections were held. In what was likely more backlash against Nixon (as well as Ford's pardon), voters gave Democrats 49 House seats that had been held by Republicans and three Senate seats.

In 1966, Lyndon Johnson was in office for his first midterm, but it was the second of the Kennedy–Johnson years. Johnson had been elected by a landslide in 1964, but the public mood had soured in the subsequent two years, and Johnson's approval rating was in the mid–40s. Johnson's Democrats lost 47 House seats and three Senate seats.

President Eisenhower was pretty popular through most of his presidency. In 1958, his approval rating was in the low to mid–50s, but that didn't help his party in his sixth–year midterm. Republicans lost 48 House seats and 13 Senate seats.

Harry Truman wasn't elected to two terms, but, after succeeding Franklin D. Roosevelt three months into his fourth term, it was pretty close. He was president during the midterm of 1946 and again during the midterm of 1950. His approval rating in late October 1950 closely mirrors Obama's today. Democrats lost 28 House seats and five Senate seats.

That is the trend just since the end of World War II, but it has been repeated throughout American history. Prior to the end of World War II, the last two–term president whose party did not lose ground in both chambers of Congress in the sixth–year midterm was Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, who succeeded the assassinated President William McKinley in the first year of his second term. In what would have been the second midterm of McKinley's presidency (and the first of Roosevelt's), Republicans did gain ground in both the House and Senate.

All that predates approval rating polls; we do know, however, that Roosevelt's party won three Senate seats in the 1906 midterm but lost 28 House seats. And Woodrow Wilson's Democrats lost ground in both chambers in 1918. Eight years later, in the sixth–year midterm of the Harding–Coolidge administration, Republicans lost ground in both the House and Senate.

Even Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats lost ground in the House and Senate in the second midterm of his presidency in 1938, two years after he was re–elected by a landslide.

The odds are always against an incumbent president's party in the second midterm of his presidency. To beat the six–year itch, a president has to have phenomenal approval ratings, which Obama doesn't have, and extremely favorable domestic and foreign conditions, which he obviously doesn't have.

I'm going to predict that Republicans win the Senate seats in (1) the three states that have been conceded to them all along — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — plus (2) the Democrat–held Senate seats in Arkansas, Louisiana, Colorado, Georgia and Iowa. I also think they will hold on to the seats in Kansas and Georgia. The Louisiana and Georgia races might come down to a runoff, but, in the end, I think the Republicans will prevail.

I think Kay Hagan might be re–elected in North Carolina simply because she appears to have run a smarter race than most of her colleagues.

Thus, my prediction is that Republicans will gain eight Senate seats — enough to give them the majority in both chambers of Congress.

Why Do Obama's Approval Numbers Matter?

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As of today, we are less than 100 days away from Election Day. A little more than five years ago, Democrats were fawning over the first 100 days of the Obama presidency. Today, they are considerably less enthusiastic about the next 100 days.

Nothing is cast in stone yet, but the sands are running rapidly through the hourglass for the Democrats.

Over and over, I have been asked the same question: Why do Barack Obama's approval numbers matter in the 2014 midterms?

Usually, I am asked this question by folks who still haven't gotten over that "Yes, we can" mindset from 2008 — some things matter because we say they matter, and other things don't matter because we say they don't matter — and they can't comprehend what has changed.

Well, there's this matter of delivering on one's promises — and presidents always seem to get the short end of the stick on that one. Either they haven't delivered on their promises, and folks are upset about that — or they have delivered on their promises, and folks are upset about that.

A voter's preference is a moving target. It all really depends on whose ox is being gored.

Some people don't understand that a single election never settles things, once and for all — and that no president can count on the same kind of support for his subordinates that he received two years earlier. Those subordinates are charged with implementing the president's policies via the legislative branch. When the policies ain't working, all involved are held accountable.

If the president isn't on the ballot, disgruntled voters will do as George Wallace used to encourage them to do — Send 'em a message. By proxy if necessary.

I'm sorry if this refresher civics course seems elementary. I mention it only to remind folks that this is a democracy, and people make no lifetime commitments to candidates, causes or parties. Well, some do, but many do not, and that really is perplexing for some.

They find the independence of the American voter bewildering.

Obama isn't on the ballot, they point out. He is barred by law from seeking a third term. The election isn't about him. It's about keeping the Senate and winning the House. (OK, even the diehards aren't mentioning that last one anymore. It's become one of those "in a perfect world" kind of things for modern Democrats. Holding on to the Senate is enough of a challenge.)

Well, technically, I suppose, that is true. We aren't electing a president in 2014. We are electing one–third of the Senate and all of the House, just as we do every two years. Every four years, we throw a presidential election into the mix — but not this time.

We're midway through the current four–year presidential term — hence, these are the midterm elections.

Historically, midterms have served as electoral adjustors. They almost always go against the party that occupies the White House, and that tendency is even more pronounced in a president's second midterm. In recent years, it has been referred to as a fatigue factor. There was talk of "Bush fatigue" in 2006 and "Clinton fatigue" in 1998. I can even remember talk of "Reagan fatigue" in 1986.

(If Watergate had not ended his presidency early, Nixon might well have encountered "Nixon fatigue" in November 1974. In hindsight, that might have been better for the Republicans. As it was, they lost five Senate seats and four dozen House seats in the Watergate backlash.)

I'm not really sure why it is that presidential fatigue seems to settle in at this point in a two–term presidency. I just know that it is so. Except for extremely rare circumstances, a president's party is radioactive two years after his re–election.

George W. Bush was extremely unpopular just before the 2006 midterms. Polls consistently showed his approval in the mid– to upper 30s prior to the election, and his Republicans lost six Senate seats and 32 House seats.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was very popular. About a week before the election, his approval rating was 63%, according to Gallup. His popularity took a major hit after the election — when the Iran–Contra scandal was in the news — but Reagan's party still lost control of the Senate for the first time in six years (as well as five seats in the House).

Bill Clinton's second midterm in 1998 probably should have been a disaster for the Democrats — after all, in Clinton's first midterm, his party lost control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years — but 1998 was one of those extreme circumstances of which I spoke earlier. Republicans were perceived as having overreached in their attempt to impeach Clinton, and voters gave Democrats a four–seat gain in the House.

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that Republicans are more engaged than Democrats, but they aren't as enthusiastic as they were in 2010 — or as Democrats were in 2006.

There may be good news and bad news in that for both parties. If Republicans are not as enthused as they were four years ago, they might not be as inclined to show up at the polls. Good news for Democrats.

Pew also finds that, currently, there is virtually no difference in party preference. Forty–five percent of voters prefer Republicans, 47% prefer Democrats. More good news for Democrats.

The enthusiasm gap for the out–of–power party is not as great this year, Pew reports, as it was in 2010 or 2006.

But that is how it stands in July. Unfortunately for Democrats, the election isn't being held in July. Numerous surveys over the years suggest that most Americans don't start paying attention to political campaigns until around October.

More than three–fourths of Republican–leaning voters say they definitely will vote this year whereas about two–thirds of Democrat–leaning voters say they definitely will vote — but those numbers are slightly lower for Republicans and a little higher for Democrats than they were four years ago. Again, more good news for Democrats.

However, about half of those Republican voters say they will vote against any and all supporters of Obama's policies, which is not much different from this point in the election cycle four years ago.

People still point to polls showing record–high dissatisfaction with Congress, and that can't be denied, but it can be misinterpreted. Yes, the American people aren't happy with Congress. But they never are. Dissatisfaction was pretty high in 2006 and 2010, too, but most incumbents who sought re–election were re–elected.

Typically, when people say they are not satisfied with Congress, they mean other people's senators and representatives, not their own. Anti–incumbency is said to be running high today, but it hasn't shown itself much in this year's party primaries.

And conventional wisdom holds that undecided voters are more inclined to break for the challenger in the closing days and weeks of a campaign. Thus, the likelihood that the voters will throw the bums out in November is very low.

What can Obama do? Well, in some cases, the best thing he can do is stay away entirely. He will continue to be a factor in the midterms — presidents just are, that's all there is to it — so he needs to respect the wishes of Democrats who are trying (in some instances, desperately) to hold on to their seats in red states like Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina.

Observers are already referring to races in red states like Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, where Democrats are retiring, as sure things for the GOP — which would put Republicans halfway to their goal of six seats to seize control of the Senate. Defeating Democratic incumbents in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina would give them the majority — assuming Democrats don't win one of a couple of Republican–held seats in which they are perceived as competitive.

That kind of thing — where the party that is fighting the electoral tide succeeds — doesn't usually happen in midterm elections, but, as Larry Sabato reminds us, "every election is different."

Earlier, Sabato was inclined to think that 2014 would be another "wave election," like the midterms of 2006 and 2010, but so far, he writes, "this election hasn't gelled quite the way it earlier appeared on paper."

Republicans are also fantasizing about picking up Democratic seats in Iowa, maybe Michigan and Oregon, too. These were seats that, not so long ago, were regarded as safe for the Democrats.

The fact that they are no longer seen as safe should send a chill down every Democrat's spine.

The Point of No Return

I was listening to some political pundits discussing the midterm elections the other day, and I wondered something.

At which point do we acknowledge what everyone seems to know but relatively few are willing to admit — that the midterms are going to be bad for Democrats?

Some people insist on drawing a line between bad and very bad. While I am not exactly inclined to designate degrees of bad, there is — and always has been — a way to distinguish a bad outcome from a very bad outcome. Bad is when you do not achieve your goal. Very bad is when you not only fail to achieve your goal but your adversary does achieve his. The Democrats' goal in 2014 is to take the House from the Republicans. The Republicans' goal is to take the Senate from the Democrats.

And, as I observed a few months ago, for Democrats to win control of the House, they need to take 17 seats from the Republicans. The constituencies of House districts are more compact — and easier to predict — than statewide constituencies, and nearly all districts are predisposed to vote one way or another — until the next census makes redistricting necessary. It is why I am 100% certain that, although House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was beaten in the Republican primary, the district will remain in Republican hands. The mood among the electorate in 2014 is not anti–incumbent; it is anti–Democrat.

If voters really were in an anti–incumbent mood, we would be seeing more congressional incumbents lose on both sides of the aisle.

It's been clear since March — when Democrats lost a special House election in Florida — that their 2014 objective simply was not going to happen. But still they nursed the hope that they could do well enough to turn the midterms into a no–win for everyone.

Here we are, roughly four months from the election, and nearly all political observers see Democrats making few, if any, gains in the House, where they are already outnumbered by 33.

That could change, of course. Four months can be an eternity in politics. But, barring a major event, it seems very unlikely that anything will change.

Bad outcome for the Democrats. Plan B = avoid a very bad outcome.

To keep it from becoming a very bad outcome, the Democrats must focus all their attention and resources on denying Republicans the six Senate seats they need to win control of that chamber. To do that, my guess is that Democrats will need to resort to negative campaigning.

It is going to be a tall order. My guess is that Democrats will find ways to blame the immigration crisis on Republicans — even when the Republican in the race is not the incumbent — and they will try to whip up anger over secondary — and, in some cases, nonexistent — issues. Because the biggest problem Democrats face in this year's Senate races is the fact that so many are in Democrat hands.

This is the crop of senators who were elected six years ago when Barack Obama won his first term as president. Remember the atmosphere? The economy imploded in September 2008, and Democrats seized nine Senate seats from the Republicans, winning an outright majority for the first time in 14 years.

Two years earlier, when George W. Bush's Republicans lost control of both chambers, most polls showed Bush's approval numbers in the upper 30s and low 40s.

Obama's numbers have been hovering in the low 40s for months now. Will improved jobs numbers help the Democrats? Or will the Benghazi hearings — and further revelations about the IRS, VA, NSA, etc. — erode any political gains the Democrats might enjoy?

That would almost certainly increase the problems for the Democrats, who are already fighting an uphill battle with a metaphorical avalanche coming down around them.

When do we reach the point of no return?

We're Five Months Out ...

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... and the landscape is looking pretty good for the Republicans.

There was a time when Democrats believed — or said they believed — that they could recapture the House and hold on to the Senate in 2014, giving the president a Democratic Congress with which to work in the final two years of his presidency.

But that idea seems to have disappeared. (I have a Democrat acquaintance who would call such a statement "rabid right." I think he's been drinking a bit too deeply from the left–wing Kool–Aid.) Presidential approval numbers have been stuck in the low to mid–40s for a year, and a president's party almost never fares well in midterms when the president is struggling.

That's from the lofty perspective of history, which is not infallible. Conventional wisdom said a black man could not be elected president, yet one has been elected president — twice. Conventional wisdom once said a woman could not be elected president, but two women have been nominated for vice president, one in each party, and it appears likely that, at some point, probably in the near future, a woman will be nominated as the standard–bearer for one of the parties.

The conventional wisdom is that midterms are difficult for every president, even the popular ones, although there have been cases in which the president's party did well in a midterm — and it is the hope for that miraculous victory, like Truman's upset win over Dewey in 1948, that always encourages losing candidates and parties. Typically, though, a political miracle like that in a midterm requires some sort of backlash against the other party or some other unusual circumstance (like the September 11 terrorist attacks) that prompts voters to rally around the flag.

Realistically, such a thing is still possible — and will remain possible until the votes are counted — but we're only five months out ...

... and, on the ground, the Rothenberg Political Report currently sees anything from no net gain to the gain of a few seats by the Republicans in the House. Sabato's Crystal Ball sees Republicans gaining between five and eight seats. The Cook Political Report doesn't see a great likelihood of a shift.

The Republicans already hold a 33–seat advantage; Democrats, as I say, believed — at one time — that they could wrest 17 seats from the Republicans and claim a slim majority. The closer we get to November, though, the more it looks like the Democrats will be lucky to avoid losing ground.

Republicans, meanwhile, have been keeping their eyes on the Senate, where flipping six seats would give the GOP a slim majority. Numerically, it seems like an easier task, doesn't? Truth is it's more of a challenge when you look at it as a percentage of the legislative body. Seventeen House seats represents less than 4% of the membership; six Senate seats is 6% of that body's membership.

Democrat–held Senate seats in South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana currently are expected to flip, according to the Cook Political Report, Rothenberg Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

That gets the Republicans halfway to their goal. Cook sees seven tossups, only one of which is held by a Republican. Sabato sees four tossups, all held by Democrats. Rothenberg sees two pure tossups, both held by Democrats.

That suggests that the Republicans are in a good spot — and, if things proceed in this manner, they could start focusing on second–tier seats, the ones they probably never dreamed they might be able to win — until recently.

Like Tom Harkin's seat in Iowa.

Harkin is retiring after 30 years in the Senate. Alex Roarty writes in National Journal that Democrats need to be concerned about Harkin's seat. State Sen. Joni Ernst won the Republican nomination there this week; she still needs to demonstrate that she is a tough candidate, Roarty says, but she is facing a mediocre Democrat in a year that looks more Republican with each passing day, and she doesn't look like the kind of candidate who is likely to shoot herself in the foot.

In fact, recently, the one doing such shooting was her rival, who seems to have fired a machine gun at himself.

Persons who are unacquainted with Iowa's history may be inclined to look only at the returns in presidential elections; Iowa has voted for Democrats in six of the last seven, including two (Dukakis in '88, Gore in '00) who lost. But in eight of the nine elections before 1988, Iowa voted for the Republican nominee.

But what about the midterm elections since 1988? Well, Harkin was re–elected twice in midterm election years, and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was re–elected in two midterms as well.

The governor is elected to a four–year term every midterm election year, and Democrats and Republicans have split those, 3–3.

That sounds to me like a state that really could go either way. It is also a state that seems to be quite comfortable with its incumbents. Harkin survived in years when it was risky to be a Democrat elsewhere; Grassley, who was elected in the Reagan Revolution of 1980, won his second term in the decidedly un–Republican year of 1986. The popular Republican governor is now the state's longest–serving — and the second–longest serving governor in the nation's history

Iowa has four representatives in the U.S. House. Two are Democrats, two are Republicans.

Recent polls show Ernst leading — by six points in the latest Loras College survey, by one point in the latest Rasmussen survey. Her Democratic opponent was leading in surveys held before the June 3 primaries.

An Early Look at the 2014 Midterms

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States in blue are represented by Democrats in the Senate. States in red are represented by Republicans.
States in gray do not have U.S. Senate races on their ballots in 2014.

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History has shown time and time again that midterm elections are not usually kind to a president's party, especially the second midterms of a presidency.

Heading into 2014, both parties expressed optimism that they could flip the congressional chamber that is held by the other. For a number of reasons, though — including the trends of history — the Republicans currently appear to be in a better position to do that.

Assuming that either is successful.

The Republicans' goal in the 2014 midterms is to hold on to majority status in the House (where they outnumber Democrats by 33 seats) while capturing the Senate (where they are outnumbered by 10, including the two independent members who usually side with the Democrats). For the Democrats, obviously, the objective is reversed — hold the Senate and flip the House.

The Democrats face more of an uphill assignment. To win even a minimal House majority, they must retain all the seats they currently hold and win 17 seats that are currently held by Republicans.

It is hard to flip House seats because districts usually are drawn to favor one party or the other, depending upon who did the redistricting after the latest Census. State lines aren't redrawn every 10 years so Senate races are governed by different dynamics.

Incumbents tend to be harder to beat in district races than statewide races, and they become harder to beat the longer they hold office.

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Political observers are watching Florida's 13th District on the state's western coast, which is holding a special election March 11 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Rep. Bill Young, a Republican who held that seat since 1971.

On the surface, that might lead the casual observer to conclude that a Republican is a lock to replace Young, but the district is not that predictable.

It is true that Young was unopposed roughly one–third of the time during his career, and that enabled him to consolidate a reliable base that produced solid victories whenever he was opposed.

His most recent victories were not as impressive as his earlier ones, but they were substantial. In 2012, when the 81–year–old Young ran against a 38–year–old Democrat who tried to make an issue of his age, 58% of the district's voters still voted for him.

It is also true, however, that Young was more moderate than many of his Republican colleagues, especially on economic issues. He supported raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits. During what turned out to be his final House race, he supported withdrawing from Afghanistan as quickly as possible, earning praise from Democrats like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

The district has been trending Democrat nationally. It voted (narrowly) for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — and Democrats are hoping to make a dent in their House deficit by winning this election.

In short, the district that Young represented is not necessarily representative of other Republican–held districts across the country so what happens there in two months probably will have little bearing on other House races in 2014. House races have unique personalities. They're usually driven by issues that directly concern the voters in particular districts. The same issues may not be as important in other districts within the same state or region.

(For awhile, I worked for a newspaper in a county that was heavily dependent on the aluminum industry. There were two aluminum plants in that county, and they were the county's two largest employers. Issues affecting the aluminum industry were of great interest to the voters there — but not to voters who lived in neighboring counties.)

Those voters may always be motivated by local issues in every federal–level election, but their influence is diminished in statewide races. Individual districts are more concentrated.

For a few reasons, it is easy to conclude that the Democrats just might win this seat from the Republicans. The Democrat in the race is Alex Sink, Florida's former chief financial officer and the Democratic nominee for governor four years ago (she lost a squeaker to Rick Scott). The Republican candidate, David Jolly, is a former lobbyist who was also Young's aide.

Thanks to her gubernatorial campaign, Sink has far greater name recognition, which has helped her in the polls. And the district is precisely the kind of district Democrats need to seize from Republicans if they hope to take control of the House. (The problem for Democrats is, I don't see enough districts across the country that meet that description.)

Currently, it seems as if this race is the Democrat's to lose — but there is a potential fly in the ointment. Sink doesn't seem to be a very strong campaigner. That might be a problem, considering the issues that directly affect voters in the 13th.

The 65–year–old Sink seems to be trying to counter that image with a family oriented commercial featuring her father. That probably can't hurt in a district that is older than most (27% of the voters are over 65).

Recent poll results show Jolly with a four–point lead, suggesting that Obamacare may be sinking Sink. Adam C. Smith of the Tampa Bay Times writes that Sink would be wise not to underestimate her opponent.

"This is not just another congressional election," writes Smith. "Congressional District 13 is the ultimate swing district, and both national parties will cast it as a national barometer of the nation's political mood."

Many things could affect that mood. The economic climate could change, and the nature of such a change might favor either candidate. If the next two jobs reports are as poor as the most recent one, it would be likely to help Jolly. If the reports are better in February and March, it might help Sink.

Another wild card in the race will be developments in the implementation of Obamacare, which is likely to be an issue in districts from coast to coast — and, in older districts like Florida's 13th, changes in Social Security benefits will always draw attention.

Then there is the general tenor of the campaign. Coming as early in the election cycle as it does, this special election will receive a lot of national attention. The campaign's tone will say a lot — and shrill, divisive campaigning may well backfire, given the fact that the winner will succeed a man who was seen as bipartisan by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Negative campaigning may not work as well in 2014 as it has in campaigns past (but may still work in other campaigns in other places this year).

Smith is right. Whoever wins, the victorious party likely will be doing a lot of strutting the day after votes are counted. Right now, I am inclined to think the Democrats will be doing the strutting, but, even if they are, they should remember that special elections are notoriously bad indicators of what to expect in the fall. Nearly eight months will pass between the time the Florida 13th voters go to the polls and the rest of America does. The landscape is likely to look different in November.

If Sink wins, it will simply mean Democrats need to capture 16 Republican–held House seats instead of 17 — and I believe that is highly unlikely. Historically, only Theodore Roosevelt's Republicans (in 1902) and Franklin Roosevelt's Democrats (in 1934) have come close to seizing that many House seats in an election in which the president was not on the ballot.

Realistically, it has never been done on the scale that Democrats need this year.

Currently, most observers think only one other Republican–held seat (besides the one that is the subject of the special election in Florida) is likely to flip. That may change in the months to come, but it shows the enormity of the task facing Democrats this year.

The task is less daunting for the Republicans, who need to win six seats to control the agenda in the Senate. If they win five seats, the chamber will be split 50–50, but Vice President Joe Biden casts the deciding vote in case of a tie so, technically, Democrats will retain the majority if they lose five seats.

Observers agree that Republicans are closer to achieving their goal than Democrats are to achieving theirs. Three Democrat–held Senate seats in states Mitt Romney carried in 2012 — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — appear likely to flip. Two other Democrat–held seats, in Arkansas and Alaska, are rated too close to call.

I'll add to that that I see three other incumbent Democrats (from Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina) who could be in trouble this fall. In short, Republicans seem likely to win at least three and possibly as many as eight Democrat–held seats, nearly all in states that voted against Obama in 2012.

None of the Republican–held Senate seats that will be on the 2014 ballot seems to be in danger of flipping.

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I'll probably have more to say about other Senate races later this year, but, right now, I am looking at the Democrat–held seat in my native state of Arkansas, and I have concluded that it is likely to fall to the Republicans.

When I was growing up there, incumbent Democrats faced their only serious opposition in the party primary. They didn't always face Republican opponents, and, if they did, the Republicans were little more than place fillers on the ballot.

Both of the state's U.S. senators and three of the four members of its House delegation were Democrats. It stayed that way in Arkansas long after I left the state, too, but the Republican Party has made considerable gains in recent years. Today all four of the House members are Republicans, as is one of the senators.

The lone remaining Democrat in Arkansas' congressional delegation, Mark Pryor, happens to be the son of a former senator, David Pryor, who represented southern Arkansas in the House before becoming governor and then senator.

Being in Arkansas during one of his campaigns must be like a blast from the past for many Arkansans. Mark Pryor looks a good deal like his father (not unlike the way George W. Bush resembles his father). He even uses the same design that his father used for campaign paraphernalia. I couldn't begin to guess how many bumper stickers, yard signs and lapel buttons I have seen with that red–white–and–blue background on a map of the state with Pryor emblazoned in the middle.

(The absence of any mention of a particular office meant the design could be recycled in every election. I didn't live in Pryor's congressional district, but I saw that design in his gubernatorial and Senate campaigns. Sometimes the stickers were so faded that you couldn't tell from which campaign they came.)

Pryor's father was a pretty popular fellow. He won nearly all of his campaigns and was elected to the Senate three times before he retired. I'm sure the residual good will helped his son in his first two Senate elections.

Both of Pryor's previous victories came before Barack Obama took office, though, and Obama and his agenda have proven to be very unpopular in Arkansas. Well, Obama never really was popular in Arkansas. More than 58% of Arkansans voted for John McCain in 2008, and more than 60% voted for Mitt Romney.

Mark Pryor has been a faithful supporter of Obama's agenda, voting for the $787 billion stimulus and the Affordable Care Act, neither of which is popular in Arkansas.

But Pryor has proven to be more conservative than his father, and he has been known to reach across the aisle for Republican input during legislative standoffs. That might help him in this year's campaign.

His Republican opponent is Tom Cotton, who was elected in 2012 to represent the district that Pryor's father represented in the House decades ago.

Thanks to new boundaries the district acquired after the last Census, it is a more conservative district than it used to be, and Cotton is more conservative than anyone who has represented it in the past. A friend of mine who still lives in Arkansas describes him as being like Texas' Ted Cruz.

That seems to play well in Arkansas. Recent polls suggest a close race between Pryor and Cotton.

I think it will be worth keeping an eye on for the rest of the year.

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.

Limping Along to the Midterms

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It is my understanding that the term lame duck has been in use for more than 250 years.

It hasn't always been applied to politics. In fact, I've heard its origin was financial. Sometime during the Civil War, it began to be applied to politicians.

Usually, the term is applied to officeholders who are leaving office when their current terms expire — whether they are doing so voluntarily or involuntarily.

Ever since the passage of the 22nd Amendment, which imposed term limits on the office of president, a chief executive is said to be a lame duck — one who loses influence the closer he gets to to the end of his tenure — immediately after his re–election campaign ends, whether he wins or loses.

If he loses (i.e., Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush), he will be a lame duck for a couple of months. It is, of course, humiliating for an incumbent to be rejected by the voters. But, in many ways, it is worse to win re–election. Historically, presidents have enjoyed more power in their first terms than in their second, presumably because the aura of invincibility is gone. The loyal opposition is no longer cowed by an incumbent who will be gone in a few years.

Once the second–term midterms are over, both parties are pretty much in full election mode in anticipation of the open seat in the Oval Office — and the incumbent president becomes largely irrelevant.

(The 22nd Amendment was approved in the 1940s. Until then, presidential tenures were limited only by tradition — and voter preferences.)

That might change if term limits were imposed on all members of Congress. I don't know if such a thing would be constitutional. It might be unsustainable as a violation of states' rights. But if members of Congress were term–limited and faced the possibility of having to deal with only one president for most of their tenures, it might have a profound effect on the implementation of federal policy.

But that is another discussion for another time.

Today I want to address the chances for the president's party to take control of the House in next year's midterms — and give Barack Obama Democrat majorities in both chambers of Congress for the last two years of his presidency.

(That assumes, of course, that the Democrats will hold on to their majority in the Senate, which will be a tall order by itself, given that Democrat–held seats will be on the ballots in red states like Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina and South Dakota.)

At the very least, Democrats need to win 17 seats to take the majority in the House. The situation would be far from ideal if they won only 17. The razor–thin margin would leave no room for error in our polarized democracy, and, as the Democrats' recent setback in the gun–control debate demonstrated, Obama needs that margin for error.

Clearly, the ideal situation would be for the Democrats to have a little breathing room, which probably would require them to capture at least two dozen GOP–held seats.

That may not sound like an impossible task to modern voters, who have seen three elections in just the last decade in which that many seats (or more) flipped to the opposition party — but consider this.

In each of those elections (and two of them were midterms), the flips went against the party that held the White House.

That's the way midterm elections tend to go — and, in more than two centuries of American history, midterm elections have almost always gone against the party in the White House.

Sure, there are exceptions to that — recent ones, in fact — but there were unusual forces at work each time.

In 2002, George W. Bush's Republicans gained ground in the congressional midterms, thanks in large part to Bush's popularity in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and his appeal to patriotism in the buildup for the invasion of Iraq.

And four years earlier, Bill Clinton's Democrats picked up some congressional seats. The economy was booming, and Republicans were seen as having overreached with their attempt to remove Clinton from office.

Besides, after the historic Republican landslide in the 1994 midterms, Democrats really didn't have too many vulnerable congressional seats to defend in 1998.

If you insist on being one of those "the glass is half full" kinds of people — or if you've been drinking a lot of Kool–Aid from that glass — you might see conditions in America being considerably different a year from now than I do.

But I don't see anything like an economic boom on the horizon, not with the implementation of Obamacare coming up and the staggering unemployment crisis that has been allowed to fester (and will, in all probability, grow as a consequence of Obamacare). And, while Republicans don't speak of Obama in glowing terms, neither have they been overreaching the way their forebears did with impeachment 15 years ago; I see no similar backlash that could benefit Democrats.

Barring any unforeseen changes in the next year, 2014 is shaping up to be more like most midterms — and, historically speaking, the second midterm of a president's presidency is worse than the first.

That could be devastating for Obama. He barely clung to his party's Senate majority in his first midterm elections, losing his bullet–proof filibuster–proof advantage in the process, and the House swung to the opposition party by historic proportions.

Just because midterms typically go against the incumbent president's party doesn't mean 2014 will. But my point here is that when incumbents do post midterm gains, it is because circumstances are unusually favorable for them. The circumstances for 2014 don't look too favorable for Obama.

But let's assume that economic circumstances do change for the better. Historically speaking, the tendency for electoral adjustment in American midterms is so strong that such a change probably would not be enough. In 2002 and 1998 — and in 1934, the only other exception I have found — House gains for the incumbent's party were, at best, half of what Obama needs.

Double–digit midterm seat gains in the House have never happened for an incumbent president's party before. Does that mean it can't happen? No. But it does make it exceedingly unlikely, especially since we really only know in hypothetical terms how secure each House district really is since the redistricting that always follows a census. We probably won't have a feel for that until the next presidential election — in 2016.

But we do know a few things about the current House district alignment.

For example, only nine Democrats currently represent districts that Mitt Romney carried in last year's presidential election, and only 17 Republicans currently represent districts that Obama carried. That kind of math doesn't seem particularly favorable for a Democratic takeover.

Of course, the Democrats might not need 17 seats. If Republican former Gov. Mark Sanford's political comeback comes up short in Tuesday's special election in South Carolina's First District, the Democrats might need 16 House seats.

The math still doesn't seem to be there, though, even if Sanford loses.

Short of a dramatic improvement in the economy and/or another instance of overreaching by the Republicans in Congress, the Democrats' best bet is Obama — but he hasn't shown much inclination to campaign for others. Besides, the incumbent's popularity the last two times when the president's party prospered in midterm election was in the 60s — far above Obama, who hovers in 50–50 territory.

Is it impossible for Obama's approval rating to get into 60% territory in the next 18 months? No. Something truly remarkable could happen — the implementation of Obamacare, which is now being characterized as a "train wreck" by members of his own party, could go much better than expected — but right now it looks like a mountain too high.

I wouldn't bet the farm on double–digit gains for Democrats in 2014.

At the same time, though, I wouldn't bet the farm on double–digit gains for Republicans, either. The economy would have to worsen considerably for Republicans to have a realistic shot at that. Some people are predicting that will happen — and, after what we have seen in the last five years, I'm not about to dismiss it — but a kind of acceptable inadequacy is in force.

Unless the acceptable inadequacy becomes unacceptable — and who can say where that line is now? — I expect modest gains for one side or the other in next year's midterms, but nothing approaching double digits.