{"id":2737,"date":"2010-09-16T06:55:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T10:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2737"},"modified":"2010-09-16T10:35:24","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T14:35:24","slug":"post-primary-prediction-democrats-will-salvage-majority-in-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/09\/16\/post-primary-prediction-democrats-will-salvage-majority-in-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-primary prediction: Democrats will salvage majority in the House"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been predicting for months that Democrats will fare far better in the November midterms than most pundits predict, and now that the fall ballots are set, I’m sticking to that contrarian view.<\/p>\n

Again, for the record, I stink at predictions.\u00a0 People much better at reading the tea leaves than me think my take on all this is nutty.<\/p>\n

Here’s why I think they’re wrong.<\/p>\n

The polls for Democrats are grim, but they’re also really grim for Republicans.<\/p>\n

And because of the prevailing zeitgeist in Washington, pundits keep focusing on one side of the ledger, and not the other.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example.<\/p>\n

Today’s Politico leads<\/a> with the glaring headline, “Battleground Poll:\u00a0 Voters see GOP takeover of Congress.”<\/p>\n

The influential on-line journal punctuates the message with a photograph of Republican House leader John Boehner, looking, well, like the next House Speaker.<\/p>\n

And it’s true that by a 9-point margin, voters think Republicans will take control of the House, according to this survey.<\/p>\n

After all, that’s what the media has been telling them for months.<\/p>\n

But the poll also says this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In a generic matchup between the two parties, those surveyed were split 43-43 when asked if they would back a Republican or a Democrat on Election Day.<\/p>\n

This is good news for Democrats and at odds with many other public polls, which have shown Republicans holding a single-digit edge.<\/p>\n

Better yet for Democrats, in several key regions with numerous House and Senate seats in play \u2014 namely, the Midwest and Northeast \u2014 they hold a 5-point advantage, suggesting the party\u2019s congressional fortunes aren\u2019t nearly as grim as the media coverage might suggest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, today’s CBS-New York times poll gives Republicans only a 2% edge among likely voters.\u00a0 And a PPP poll released the same day actually gives Democrats a 1% edge.<\/p>\n

Polls show Republicans hold strong advantages in the South and the Rocky Mountain West.\u00a0 Indeed, Democrats are so unpopular there that it tends to skew the national statistics.<\/p>\n

But in other regions of the country — the West, the Midwest, the Northeast — where many of this year’s key races take place, Democrats remain far more popular.<\/p>\n

Still, Democrats will lose a ton of seats, no doubt.<\/p>\n

That’s what happens to most parties in midterm elections when they’ve just won the White House and the nation is struggling with a down economy.<\/p>\n

But Republicans will struggle to capitalize on those advantages because their own movement remains deeply divided and deeply unpopular.<\/p>\n

Here’s a startling statistic<\/a>:\u00a0 63% of Americans disapprove of Democrats in Congress.\u00a0 But 73% of Americans disapprove of Republicans in Congress.<\/p>\n

More than a third of Americans describe themselves as Democrats.\u00a0 But only a quarter of us say we’re Republicans.<\/p>\n

As the GOP muddles into the fall, they are trying to focus on victory over Democrats, but find themselves entangled in an ideological feud with the tea party.<\/p>\n

That dynamic has redefined races from the North Country’s 23rd House district all the way to Senate majority Harry Reid’s re-election battle in Nevada.<\/p>\n

Finally — and this is more than just a sop to In Box readers who hate horse-racey stuff — I think Republicans have once again managed to stumble outside the American voter’s comfort-range on policy.<\/p>\n

A straight-forward message of middle class tax cuts and smaller government might have sounded like a fairly easy pill to swallow, the perfect antidote to Democratic overspending.<\/p>\n

But most Americans don’t support maintaining tax cuts for the wealthy.<\/p>\n

They’re not comfortable with the ultra-conservative social views held by many of the GOP’s top-tier candidates.<\/p>\n

And they’re anxious about the end-times and revolution rhetoric that has come to define the tea party.<\/p>\n

So here’s my post-primary prediction:\u00a0 Democrats take a beating, and even lose a handful of seats here in New York, but retain a razor-thin majority going forward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been predicting for months that Democrats will fare far better in the November midterms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[886],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2739,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions\/2739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}