I also noticed that Stu Rothenberg and Larry Sabato wrote bearish articles today about the Democrats’ chances of retaking the House of Representatives. I suppose we will read different iterations of those arguments for the next 18 months. Rothenberg’s approach is more useful because he looks more at individual districts and lawmakers than at historical trends. I’ve discussed this before but you can’t compare the second midterm of Obama’s presidency to LBJ’s (Vietnam), Nixon/Ford’s (Watergate), Reagan’s (Iran-Contra), Clinton’s (Lewinsky) or Dubya’s (Iraq/Katrina) second midterms. Our two-term presidents have been uniformly terrible in the first two years of their second terms. Maybe Obama will be as well, but there are no signs right now that he is about to blunder his way into anything close to the above list of fail.
History doesn’t matter here. What is much more significant is that the Republican Party is currently tearing itself apart over immigration and gay rights and anti-tax absolutism. It’s more significant that John Boehner has no control over his caucus. It’s significant that the country can’t do anything until the GOP gets out of the way.
We can win back the House because we have to. It may look impossible, but it may be more impossible to live with the status quo.
