The latest chatter seems to be that the Democrats are in trouble come the next midterms. There’s certainly reason to think the Democrats won’t be gaining any seats next year: lack of progress on most things, the teabaggers fostering a seeming environment of anti-liberal sentiment, Obama being far less pioneering than he’d promised.
So we have, for example, this WaPo story saying that the House will feel a shift first.
Those developments led some of the nation’s leading political prognosticators, such as Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato, to predict that Democrats were headed for a world of hurt in 2010, with the loss of 20 or more House seats not out of the question. (A third respected political analyst — Stu Rothenberg — was slightly more circumspect about just how bad the environment is for House Democrats.)
They then analyze five seats the Dems are most likely to lose. A loss of 20 House seats is completely inconsequential given that the current split is 256 to 177. Changing that to 236 and 197 isn’t exactly going to sent massive ripple along. A forty seat swing might be, but twenty? Not exactly earth shattering.
But there’s a bigger problem here. All of this hinges on the notion that an increasingly unpopular Democratic Party means an increasingly popular Republican Party. But that’s far from true. Even with a 19% approval rating in Congress, the Democrats were far more popular than Republicans according to an August poll. Even on the flagship issue of the day, health care reform, 37% will blame Republicans if it fails compared to 16% who’ll blame Democrats. And Obama himself is still over 50%.
As is so often the case, it’s not just a matter of finding the numbers, but interpreting them. Let’s review. Congress has a phenomenally low approval rating. Democrats are a lot more popular than Republicans, people will blame the GOP if health care reform fails. So why, then, are Democrats losing popularity, and why is Congress’s approval rating at an all time low?
Simply put, the people are blaming Democrats for not doing what they promised, and are angrier than ever at Republicans for blockading. This is true two-way disillusionment, and if the Republicans were banking success upon being obstructionists, it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out, despite what the media says.
