’)
Glenn Reynolds, after being beaten up by Rush Limbaugh for straying a little too far from the conservative plantation, is pushing a comparison of 2002 polls which showed Democratic advantages that resulted in losses in order to throw a bone to his right-wing readership.
I may disagree with folks like Chris Bowers on the attitude Dems should take going into election day – I feel you should always have the mindset that you’re 10 points down so you fight that much harder (This probably stems from me being a football fan. Inevitably the team that acts like its going to win 16 games misses the playoff while the quiet team without the big names and salaries who’s the underdog wins when it counts.) – 2006 is a world away from 2002. I remember sitting down with a friend who is even more of a partisan Democrat than I am to watch the ‘02 election. She was optimistic, I had a strong sense of doom and not only because I had seen Shannon O’Brien whizz away the Massachusetts gubernatorial election in a horrible debate with Mitt Romney.
In 2002 the Republicans were beating the war drums. Bush was high in the polls and Iraq was supposedly minutes away from nuking us all into oblivion. The Democrats were crumbling in opposition. They had this cockeyed strategy that completely conceding the Iraq issue to the Republicans and trying to shift the election back to domestic issues would somehow work. I know of not a single person outside of the DC elite who thought this could be a good thing. In 2002 the question for Democrats was really a matter of how many seats we would lose, not if we would lose any at all.
In 2006, the Dems still aren’t where I wish they would be. Many of them are still afraid to bite the bullet on Iraq (though a few campaigns are) and the DNC’s media operations are mired in the mid-70s (show up on cable news? why would we want to do that?) but if they haven’t done the job, the electorate has done it for them. There are now 3,000 Americans who have died in Iraq for no good reason. The war on terror is such a rousing success that you can’t carry a can of Coke on an airplane. The stock market is up, but real wages, health care, and decent jobs aren’t. There’s a never ending parade of Republicans being led out of the White House and Congress in handcuffs. And they covered up for one or more congressmen preying on minors.
I don’t know if the Dems will flip the House or the Senate, but the question is how many seats will we gain and if it’s enough (in sports terms the magic numbers are 15 and 6). 2006 is being compared with a lot of other midterm elections, but it isn’t 1992, 1974 or 2002. It’s 2006, and things have changed.
ALSO: I think it’s safe to say that in 2002 Rush Limbaugh wasn’t begging and pleading with his audience to get out the vote for the sake of preserving the GOP.
Don’t think I didn’t notice that veiled jab at my Bears!
In 2004 most GOP candidates were traveling downstream in their “swiftboats” attacking every Democratic candidate that dared to criticize the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. In 2006 you not only can’t find the GOP “swiftboat”, you can’t find a Republican candidate willing to jump in and try to navigate the hapless dingy against the strong current of voter dissatisfaction with the seemingly never ending war.
One, voters appear to have decided that the President’s plan is a failure. Two, despite the fact that the Democrats haven’t actually offered a cohesive or comprehensive alternative plan, voters are convinced any change might be better than more of the same. That stands to help Democrats on November 7th…but it also means that voters are hoping for change come November 8th…and that may prove to be the beginning of an even larger problem for both parties.
In my opinion, it will behoove both parties to find some tangible solutions to the Iraq mess if they hope to have any success in 2008. If one thinks voters are unhappy now, imagine their mood if Iraq is still at the top of their list of issues two years from now.
Read more here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
I think we overemphase not having a plan for Iraq. The truth is, why have a plan if we don’t have the power to actually implement it in the first place? No matter what we say, it’s Bush’s ball and game.
As far as Iraq goes, we should simply promise oversight for now and work on something for our eventual Presidential candidate.