Congress: Are the Democrats staging a comeback?

For the Democrats, there are “glimmers of hope” that Election Day “won’t be Doomsday,” said Christopher Wills in the Associated Press. Polls and pundits had predicted for months that voters would punish the party in power for the country’s moribund economy, with the Democrats losing control of the House and perhaps even the Senate. But there are now signs that many congressional races are narrowing. A Washington Post/ABC poll found that the Republican advantage in a generic poll—Which party do you plan to vote for in November?—had shrunk to six points, down from 13 points a month ago. “I think what you’re seeing around the country is that the [Democratic] base is starting to come back,” said Bill Pascoe, a Republican political strategist. It may be too little, too late, said Jules Witcover in the Baltimore Sun. But the shift in momentum is “fanning Democrats’ hopes of weathering the impending negative storm so widely predicted.”

I don’t buy it, said John Dickerson in Slate.com. It’s true that “Republicans peaked too early,” and that Democrats are regaining some momentum by stepping up voter outreach in critical swing districts. These factors might prevent a total blowout. But voters are still “extremely glum” about the economy and the direction of the country, and many Democrats are “defending seats in historically Republican territory.” The GOP needs to win only 39 of about 87 hotly contested races to seize control of the House, and for the Democrats, “the math still looks bad.’’ The biggest factor in this election, said statistician and poll analyst Nate Silver in NYTimes.com, is the “enthusiasm gap” between the parties’ bases. Republican voters are showing an “unprecedented level of political engagement,” and say they can’t wait to register a vote against Obama’s policies. “My best guess,” based on an analysis of all the data, is a Republican gain of 48 House seats.

And what if the GOP becomes the majority party in Congress? said Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic Online. It could have a “silver lining” for President Obama. Control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, would force Republicans to “compose and defend detailed legislation,” rather than simply opposing all Obama’s policies with bumper-sticker rhetoric about “lower deficits” and “smaller government.” When already unpopular leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner actually have to specify what programs they’d cut—Social Security? Unemployment insurance?—the public will sour on the GOP, and quickly. Don’t be surprised if power-drunk Republicans overplay their hand, said Michael Tomasky in The New York Review of Books. Once they control House committees, party leaders will start a dozen investigations of Obama and the White House. In fact, Republicans may even impeach Obama on some pretense or other, which would backfire politically.

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Sorry, my liberal friends, said George Will in The Washington Post, but there will be no upside for Obama in this election. If the Democrats lose Congress in November, it’ll be seen as straightforward rejection of the president’s policies; he’ll spend the next two years politically wounded and unable to get anything done. If by some miracle the Democrats narrowly hold onto the House, it would force Obama, in 2012, to “seek re-election while being perceived as responsible for everything in Washington, where everything is perceived to be dysfunctional.” So there it is: “If Democrats lose big, he loses big. If they lose smaller, he loses bigger.”