We are ten months away from the midterm elections. Just right now, things look very bad for Democrats.
A lot could happen in ten months that would result in a shift in public opinion. The happiest and most obvious thing would be a surge in economic growth, coupled with dramatic job growth. Daniel Gross in Slate is predicting the former. That's a very smart thing for him to do, as he might be right and with everyone else saying the opposite he will look very smart. If he is not right, no one will pay much attention.
His argument is based on good basic economic theory: with all the cutting back, sooner or later demand will rebound somewhere and when it does the effect will ripple through the economy. But that assumes that other factors, like a ballooning national debt, will not absorb any such ripples. I am guessing we will see some recovery, but it will be ambiguous or anemic.
Even if the economy does recover, a little or a lot, job growth tends to lag behind recoveries. Consider this AP report from the New York Times:
At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won't happen until much later -- perhaps not until the next decade.
It seems unlikely that the economy will save the Democrats.
A less happy possibility would be some foreign crisis that causes Americans to rally around the President. George Bush experienced a powerful, if temporary revival after 9/11, and President Obama might enjoy the same in the right circumstances.
Or not. It isn't certain that the President would benefit from a crisis. With terrorism much on our minds, his leadership so far is not inspiring confidence. A new terrorist attack or foreign policy crisis abroad might well be seen as evidence of his failure. See Jimmy Carter.
Republicans are very cheery about their prospects, but they had better do some hard thinking right now about what is happening. David Brooks, who makes a living being thoughtful, has a thoughtful column in the New York Times.
The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey…
Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. During the great moments of social reform, at least 60 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Now, only a quarter have that kind of trust.
The country is evenly divided about President Obama, but state governments are in disrepute and confidence in Congress is at withering lows…
Third, the new administration has not galvanized a popular majority. In almost every sphere of public opinion, Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it. The Ipsos/McClatchy organizations have been asking voters which party can do the best job of handling a range of 13 different issues. During the first year of the Obama administration, the Republicans gained ground on all 13.
It's one thing for Americans to lose faith in one of the two major parties. But Brooks argues, persuasively, that there is a general loss of faith in American leadership across the board. If the bankers or the economists, the politicians or the professors, nor let us forget the news media are in favor of something, for that reason it is suspect to a large and expanding group of voters. The question now is whether this anti-establishment sentiment can be absorbed by the current party system, as generally happened in the past.
The Democrats cannot hope to assimilate it, if only for the reason that most of the politicians, almost all of the professors, every reporter or news executive not employed by Fox News, (and more of the bankers and economists than you might imagine) are Democrats. The Democrats are, in almost every realm of American culture, the establishment party. The current health reform project, pushed in opposition to public opinion, seals the case.
But the Republicans face a daunting task. The most visible expression of public disaffection is the Tea Party movement. As Brooks points out, it has more passion than any other movement right now and it is polling better than either of the two major parties. But the Tea Party people are united only by what they oppose. Can the Republicans give them something to be for?
Think back on the recent decades of American history — the way the hippies defined the 1960s; the feminists, the 1970s; the Christian conservatives, the 1980s. American history is often driven by passionate outsiders who force themselves into the center of American life.
In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party. It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction that suburban voters will not tolerate. But don't underestimate the deep reservoirs of public disgust. If there is a double-dip recession, a long period of stagnation, a fiscal crisis, a terrorist attack or some other major scandal or event, the country could demand total change, creating a vacuum that only the tea party movement and its inheritors would be in a position to fill.
If the Republicans can absorb, moderate, and focus the Tea Party movement, they will inherit the government. If they fail at any three, all of us are in for big trouble. Welcome to 2010.
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