There is no doubt that the Republican Party, writ large, is incredibly high on their own supply of bullshit, which leads them to be much too overconfident about their electoral prospects in November. They could do very well in the midterms, but nothing is baked in the cake right now.
Nonetheless, their political consultants are encouraging a course we might dub the “don’t fuck it up” strategy. The way they see it, if they don’t do something stupid like threaten to default on our sovereign debt again, they are almost assured of retaining the House and taking control of the Senate. Of course, they also want to avoid nominating “loser” candidates.
I agree that they’ll do better if they don’t nominate “fools” and refrain from more hostage-taking, but those two things are insufficient to win them the midterms.
They need to figure out not why they lost Senate elections with “loser” candidates, but why they lost them with decent candidates. Why did Jon Tester and Joe Manchin get reelected in Montana and West Virginia, respectively? Why did Heidi Heitkamp win in North Dakota? Why did Tammy Baldwin skunk Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin? What allowed Dean Heller to beat Shelley Berkley in Nevada?
Most Republican incumbents are properly considered safe bets for reelection, but Mitch McConnell is not going to beat Alison Lundergan Grimes unless he offers some positive vision.
Yet, the more difficult task will be to challenge Democratic incumbents or take over open seats previously held by retiring Democrats. There a reason that Republicans have a goose-egg record of winning statewide office in West Virginia despite the fact that it has been getting more and more Republican-friendly in presidential elections. There is a reason that the Democrats have consistently won statewide elections in the Dakotas and Montana, despite the fact that those states are very conservative. These election results are not easily explained, and, in most cases, have not involved horribly flawed candidates.
So, even though the Republicans are targeting newly-open seats in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, there is no reason to assume now that the Democrats can’t compete in those states in November.
They think they can knock out some incumbents in red states, like Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Mark Pryor in Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, but incumbents are not easily defeated.
The biggest advantage the Republicans have is that it is easier for them to turn out their base in midterm elections than it is for the Democrats. But I don’t think Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, or Mark Begich are unhappy not to be sharing the ticket with Barack Obama, as they were in 2008 when they were last elected. This time around, they aren’t afterthoughts who have to overcome John McCain’s advantage in their states. They can stand alone on their own merits, and that’s an advantage to them.
The GOP can certainly damage their prospects by resorting to more unpopular antics, but the country doesn’t live in their media bubble, and it won’t vote as if it does. To win the midterms the way they hope to win them, they will have to develop a positive message.
Some of that bullshit comes from places like this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/did-john-boehner-win-the-shutdown-in-the-end/282
810/
Ugh! Confused as to how Ms. Ball comes by her conclusion. There is not much in there that is very convincing to me, or that even resembles a persuasive argument. She doesn’t even attempt to connect her dots. She simply throws a few pieces of information in a bowl, stirs it around a little, and VIOLA!! Boehner wins!!
Ha ha ~ underpants gnomes theory again.
OK, a thirteen point swing in two months is pretty impressive, but the election isn’t tomorrow. That kind of swing shows that public opinion is pretty volatile, so there’s no reason to think it can’t swing back. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine how it could swing back just as sharply, like if they keep nominating rape apologists.
The trouble with the “don’t fuck up” strategy, though, is that the only way they can avoid fucking up is by not to do anything. Except that not doing anything will be fucking up too, so they’re kind of in a spot.
If the House passes an immigration reform bill that includes a pathway to citizenship, that will be a major fuckup with the Know Nothings. But of course if they don’t even act on immigration reform, that will be a major fuckup with Latinos.
Yes. The article gives no context for any of the points she makes. And if history is any indication, the crazies will not be able to help themselves over the coming months. Her thinking that somehow Boehner now has a firm grasp on his caucus is just lunacy. All it will take is one missive from Limbaugh, or even just some talk among the semi-crazy Republicans to try and actually do some legislating this year that might, HORROR OF HORRORS, include talking to, or working with, Democrats.
The crazies continually reinforce and re-prove the old truth about people always being unable to keep from touching wet paint, in spite of a prominent sign displayed telling you not to do that very thing. The more they talk about not fucking up, the greater the likelihood that they will.
I’m not sure about the swing. It DOES happen that statistics will catch up with you and you get a bad sample. Granted, you can’t bank on it (like the R’s did in 2012), but it does happen.
Even if the results are more-or-less accurate, without some texture they mean nothing. Ex: a 12 point swing in NH/ME/LA is BIG trouble. In AL? Not so much.
It’s quite possible that the is coming from disgust of the sane right in the south, followed by a “come to Jesus” moment of realizing they were approving of the teh Black Muslim Communist.
As I read it, Molly Ball’s halfway arguing BooMan’s prediction about how Boehner sidelines the crazies. That means that Boehner won over his rightwing and the GOP is better positioned now against the Democrats than in October.
That’s true as far as it goes, but it’s still a long time until November and the other shoe drops when people have actual experience with billing under Obamacare.
The worst mistake they can make (and typically do) is to imagine that they represent more than half the country.
The worst mistake we could make (and sometimes do) is to imagine that they represent less.
The game is won by the losing team’s mistakes.
The Republican Party is convinced that it represents a supermajority, so large that small-d democracy requires the inauthentic and illegitimate rump to be driven out of the public sphere. They have, as they see it, two problems: a corruption problem (huge numbers of outright fictitious votes) and a turnout problem. The remedies for these two problems do not everywhere coincide. But at this point, structurally, the only electoral strategy they can imagine is maximizing base turnout. Beyond that, at a very deep level, they do not want crossover votes: those are bad people, their votes are bad votes, they ought not be allowed to vote.
I remember seeing something once about positive vs. negative campaigning (can’t find it, Google isn’t my friend today) that showed that the results were mixed regarding which candidate had the higher approval/likability rating but the results were overwhelmingly conclusive that the candidate with the highest negatives lost every time. If this is true then it would suggest that the GOP needs to make the Democrats look worse than the Republicans in each targeted race to the eyes of the targeted voters – people may or may not vote for someone that they like, but they will definitely vote against someone that they hate.
Mitch McConnell is hated here in Kentucky…
[blockquote]What allowed Dean Heller to beat Shelley Berkley in Nevada?[/blockquote]
literally,
it was NONE OF THE ABOVE – an actual choice, that made the difference
Well, that and the fact that Berkley, IIRC, had a bit of an ethical cloud around her. If Dana Titus had run against Heller, I feel pretty confident that the Democrats would have won the seat. Instead, we flubbed that one and now give Heller a chance to build up his bona fides as an incumbent.
There is a reason that the Democrats have consistently won statewide elections in the Dakotas and Montana, despite the fact that those states are very conservative.
Conservative in what ways? Tester ran his first campaign explicitly around repealing the Patriot Act, among other things.
Anyone else remember this:
The Patriot Act is largely favored by TEA Party activists and institutions, as well as the Republican Party establishment. Obama’s support for the security state, and his Administration’s aggressive pushing of the Patriot Act envelope, is dividing conservatives on the issue a bit, but opposition to the Patriot Act is NOT a conservative movement principle.
when this debate was filmed, W. Bush was the President and opposition to the Patriot Act was a liberal movement principle. So I’m not sure what the point is here with Senator Tester.
If GOP consultants are advising Republicans to play safe and bland, that means that the Democrats cannot mirror that strategy. Democrats must press the advantage (yes, here goes the litany again).
Democrats must campaign on:
Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and be strong in their defense of it.
Raising Social Security payments by 20%.
Eliminating co-pays and deductibles in health care insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Ending the subsidization of the high-stakes testing industry and reallocating education money to public schools.
As they will be asked how they are going to pay for that, the answer is:
Eliminate the payroll tax cap.
Pass a financial transaction tax of $1 per $1 million on financial transactions.
Capture the savings from people getting treated when they need to be treated and not when they are ER cases.
Tax capital gains the same as wage income.
And be bold enough to force the GOP to defend the continuing stagnation of wages that have resulted from their obstruction.
And with the revenue generators, all of those proposals can be PAYGO for the government and still be stimulative.
I think you have winning strategies there, but it will never happen. The corporate masters of the Democratic Party will not allow that to happen. That is the lesson of Howard Dean. We are well and truly fucked. We can only hope the crazies continue talking about rape babies as “gifts from God”, so that we get some DLC lackey that won’t totally shred the safety net, only poke a few holes in it.
Then the election is a draw at best–which is just how the lobbyists like it.
Indeed
The GOP has no message beyond fear and loathing.
It’s a bit too soon to be worrying about this but after all the nonsense of the last few years… I just find it astonishing that the people of this country would see fit to give the GOP more control over government. It’s very hard to understand even now. And if the GOP does get control of the Senate, it will be very hard to care what happens to America. We’ll pretty much get what we deserve.
If the Republicans hope to take the Senate, they will need to run a more effective campaign then Romney did.