American politcs are something of a hobby of mine, but I haven't done anything on it for a while, and the mood has changed since my last artilcles on the subject. Back when I left it, the Democrats had won an enormous victory, it looked like bipartisanship was on the rise, and it also looked irrelevant whether it really was as the Democrats had total control of congress anyway.
It's amazing how much can change in a year.
Spineless Democratics legislators and extremely effective Republican obstructionism have done what seemed impossible, and made 2009 and even more bitter and hateful year in American politics than any in the Bush era. Healthcare reform, once the lynchpin of Democratic reform policy, went from debate over which type of public option to whether there was going to be a public option to what was going to replace the public option and now to whether there's even going to be any reform at all. The scale of defeat for the Democrats on this cannot be overstated, and it's hit them hard in the off-year elections.
While they held out in NY-23 against the Conservative Party candidate, they lost in Virginia, New Jersey, and now (preposterously) a senate seat in Massachusetts! The last was a seat I really thought they'd hold, but a rotten Democratic candidate, a solid Republican candidate, and a Massachusetts electorate tired of being taken for granted by an entrenched Democratic establishment put a Republican in office.
But while things are bad for the Democrats, this article isn't about them. This is about the Republicans, a party that is now resurgent. Retaking the House of Representatives seems like a decent possibility (though they've a fair mountain to climb still) and the Senate is a remote but not unthinkable possibility. I still think their chances could be scuppered though, and there are a few reasons why.
Barack Obama's Q&A session in front of the house Republicans was a disaster for them, one so bad that Fox News actually cut off their coverage 20 minutes early, presumably because they couldn't take any more of it. Various right-wingers bloggers and talking heads have been harping on about Obama's use of teleprompters for a while now, saying Obama had no speaking skills above reading the words that were put in front of him. It seems this was a rhetorical talking point repeated so often that the Republicans legislators actually started to believe it. So when they got Obama in front of them for a Q&A session, live on television, unscripted, with no teleprompters, they thought it would be easy. They peppered him with bumper-sticker talking points, and expected Obama to fold like tinfoil.
The result was entirely predictable, and a lesson in why you should make sure not to believe all of your own talking points. Obama was better at answering questions than any Republican legislators had expected, and his answers very neatly addressed several lies and distortions that I've heard over and over this past year. Overconfidence came back to bite the Republicans here, and they must be sure not to underestimate their opponents so much if they want to make gains in 2010.
Republicans keep going on and on about how the Democrats are ruining the economy. Really? Out of recession, taxes for most people down, back into growth, with unemployment sure to be going down by summer? They talk a lot about the spiralling national debt, but there are two problems with this.
First is that the projections I've seen in the blogosphere show an exponential growth ending in national debt at 188% in 2035, a highly implausible worst case scenario. The figures from the Congressional Budgetary Office paint a far more sober picture, with national debt peaking in 2012 and falling later on. I'd be more inclined to take the latter seriously, and a rise in national debt during a recession is something that has always happened, going right back to the 19th century.
Second is that national debt really doesn't focus on many people's minds. The Conservative in the UK are campaigning on cutting the national debt in a sitution that is actually even worse than in the US, and it doesn't seem to be doing them all that much good. I doubt it will play all that much better in the US on a national level, with people more concerned about keeping their jobs, paying the mortgage, and taking care of their personal debt. On that level, I really do think the Democrats have the edge when it comes to connecting with the electorate.
Either way, I think the Republicans are still singing the wrong tune when it comes to economics. They lost in 2008 because the Democrats were seen as better on the economy, they can't let that happen again in 2010. Economic recovery over the next year is not just possible, it's likely, and that will help the Democrats.
This is something I've been talking about in some blogs comments and forum posts for a while, but Peter Bainart did it much better than me in The Republicans' Reagan Amnesia (which you should really read) when he said "Party activists always want to believe they can win elections without compromising their ideological purity, and the GOP’s recent string of off-year victories has convinced the conservative base that most Americans are tea-baggers at heart. But the tea-bag movement is dominated by graying white Anglos, at a time when the American electorate is growing less white, less Anglo and less gray. Demographically, American politics is being transformed by the dramatic growth of Hispanics, and by the emergence of a vast (and heavily non-white) “millennial” generation, larger in number than the baby boomers. Both groups went heavily for the Democrats in 2004 and 2008. And in their economic and cultural views, both are light years away from the tea-bag GOP".
The above is simply a better version of my main point in this article. National elections are won on 'big tent' strategies, bringing together various causes under one party banner to get enough support behind one candidate to win an election. Reagan did it, Clinton did it, Bush II did it, and Obama did it. But many Republicans seem to believe they don't have to, that they have enough national support to run an ideologically-narrow 'small tent' strategy and still win. Hence the attempt to 'primary out' many Republicans they believe to be ideologically unacceptable in favour of candidates more amenable to their ideology, which invariably means a major shift to the right, across the whole nation.
This is just suicidal. Doug Hoffman lost in NY-23 because he was too right-wing for a moderate district, Scott Brown won in Massachusetts because he was a liberal as it's possible for Republican to be (he's easily to the left of Olympia Snowe, previously thought the most liberal Republican in the senate). The Democrats have nationwide appeal because they field liberal candidates in liberal areas, and moderate candidates in conservative areas. But the more radical elements of the Republican Party want to run 'true conservatives' everywhere, and go on witchhunts against anyone who doesn't fit their image of this 'true conservative' ideal.
Not all Republicans are bad though. I once saw an article (which I can no longer remember the location of) talking about how Democrats (I counted myself under this banner) hated "strong Republican women" like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Meghan McCain because we saw women as owing a debt to the Democrats, and them aligning with the Republican was a betrayal (or something along those lines, it's not really that important).
I immediately noted that I did hate Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, but disputed the rationale. I hate Sarah Palin because she seems both unknowledgeable and unwilling to ever learn, either meaning she's unable to learn (in which case she has no place in politics) or considers it unimportant (which is a deplorable stance, and also means she has no place in politics). On the other hand, I hate Michele Bachmann because she seems to be a pathological liar, telling people that the constitution only requires that they state how many people live in the house on their census forms (a blatent lie, which was never true, and an illegal act if performed).
Meghan McCain had me stumped though, my first thought being that I couldn't possibly hate her because I didn't know any of her views or opinions at the time. One day though, I decided to look her up, and immediately took a liking to her when I saw My Beef with Ann Coulter. Partly becuase any Republican willing to take on the foul-mouthed Skeletor lookalike that is Ann Coulter can't be all bad, but mostly because she seemed to be a moderate voice. Like some writers I found in The Times, she was a contrarian voice that I actually like. A persuader who writes in a style that makes me reconsider my own opinions, and sometimes even change them. I actually found a Republican that doesn't insult me, doesn't talk down to me, doesn't get hysterical all the time, and feels like someone I could stand to work with in a political sense (something addressed further in Me and Meghan).
But while Meghan and others like her could represent the future, they don't represent the present. Meghan's only one year older than I am, and moderate Republican voices seem to be drowned out currently by the fabled 'Tea Party', who it seems will broker absolutely no compromise. My advice to them? None at all. They seem too overconfident and too hysterical to be listening to me, and they will do what they want in 2010 regardless. I can only hope they fail because of one or more of the above factors, but it's still impossible to tell at this point. I look forward to writing more about this election cycle as it develops though, as I think there will be a lot to write about.