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: Bench Memos - National Review Online

After November

Presume, for a moment, that Republicans have a really good election cycle this year: Control of the House shifts away from the Democrats, and a Republican (John Boehner?) prepares to become speaker. The Democrats lose, or almost manage to lose, control of the Senate (which they hold today by a nine-seat margin). Republican governors-elect and state legislators–elect prepare to take their oaths in state capitols across America.

What will our political landscape look like if that comes to pass?

#ad#The U.S. House of Representatives: The districts that change hands will most likely be the moderate ones, so the House's Blue Dog caucus is likely to be much smaller. Of the current 54 members of the Blue Dog Coalition, 32 are in districts that McCain won; most of the 22 others are in districts where Obama won narrowly.

Many members of Congress who do survive a GOP wave will probably do so by the skin of their teeth and face uncertain prospects for 2012. On the one hand, the re-election bid of President Obama could drive up Democratic turnout. On the other hand, the Obama of 2012 is likely to face tougher sledding in swing districts; he won't be able to run the same campaign as four years earlier, promising a net spending cut and running ads touting his bona fides as a moderate featuring Warren Buffett and Colin Powell.

Then, of course, there is the factor of redistricting. Demographics and polling guru Michael Barone examines that potential factor here. The governorships of Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin appear key, along with control of the legislative chambers in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Barone also notes that to maximize Republican advantages, Meg Whitman will need to be in a position to veto the Democrats' most lopsided efforts in California. He adds that district lines redrawn to favor one party aren't guarantees; over the course of the decade, voters move, attitudes change, and once-safe seats start drifting into the grasp of the opposition.

In July, the Republican State Leadership Committee -- the national committee that tracks, coordinates, and leads GOP efforts at the state-legislative level -- projected that Democrats would not take control of a single state legislative chamber in the country this year, and that Republicans would pick up four chambers, with twelve additional Democrat-controlled chambers in key states 'in play.' Their assessment concluded, 'Republicans have an opportunity to create 20–25 new Republican Congressional Districts through the redistricting process over the next five election cycles, solidifying a Republican House majority. In fact, 33 of the 75 most competitive congressional districts, as identified in National Public Radio's June report, are located in [RSLC] target states this year. If [RSLC] achieves its goals, nearly half of the traditionally swing districts will be redrawn by Republicans before the 2012 election cycle. The remaining seats will either be subject to Democrat control or part of a partisan-neutral redistricting process.'

Some House Democrats who survive the 2010 onslaught will find themselves in even less favorable terrain in 2012, while Republicans who squeak by this year may find smoother sailing by Election Day 2012. In the meantime, a Republican speaker of the House could find himself with quite a bit of leverage over these nervous Democrats.

The U.S. Senate: The senators up for re-election in 2012 won election in 2006, a strong year for Democrats, who rode voter frustration with Iraq and outrage over the Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley scandals to many unexpected victories. These Democrats will, in all likelihood, find themselves facing a tough political environment. Retirement may seem like a tempting option.

In Nebraska, Ben Nelson has already felt the need to run ads explaining his vote for the health-care bill; his defense has already cost the DNC almost $1 million. In December, Rasmussen found that only 40 percent of Nebraska voters had a favorable opinion of Nelson, while 55 percent had an unfavorable view. In a world that has seen party departures and switches from Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, and Parker Griffith, one has to wonder how strong Nelson's party loyalty will be in the coming two years.

#page#One of the current cycle's biggest surprises came in North Dakota, where Democratic senator Byron Dorgan suddenly retired and effectively handed his Senate seat to the GOP. Next cycle, 62-year-old Kent Conrad will have to decide whether he wants to run for another term; he has represented the state in the U.S. Senate since 1986. An early-August Rasmussen poll in North Dakota put Obama at a 42/58 approval/disapproval split in the state.

In Montana, Democrat Jon Tester's victory over GOP incumbent Conrad Burns was one of the closest of the cycle; his margin of victory was 3,562 votes out of 406,505 cast, a margin of less than 1 percent. The limited polling indicates Tester has suffered less than some other Mountain State Democrats, but he may face a top-tier challenger in GOP congressman Denny Rehberg.

#ad#Several swing states appear to have passed their Democratic apex. Jim Webb won his seat in Virginia over George Allen by less than 0.5 percent, while the local media was pillorying the incumbent over his 'macaca' statement and while Webb, who served as secretary of the navy in the Reagan administration, was running on distinctly conservative themes. (One GOP wise man recently cracked, 'Ronald Reagan was in Webb's ads more frequently than Webb was.') Despite bucking his party on immigration and affirmative action, Senator Webb has been largely a loyal Democrat, with a lifetime ACU rating below 15(out of a possible 100). In a statewide race in Virginia, that is likely to be toxic.

In Ohio, Sherrod Brown benefited greatly from the scandals engulfing the state's GOP in 2006. The poll positions of gubernatorial candidate John Kasich and senatorial candidate Rob Portman suggest that clouds no longer linger over Buckeye State GOP headquarters. In a classic swing state, Brown isn't a classic swing lawmaker: His lifetime ACU rating is below nine. Public Policy Polling put Brown's job approval at 38 percent and his disapproval at 34 percent.

In Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Jr.'s wide margin of victory over incumbent Rick Santorum in 2006 suggested that the Keystone State had become unfriendly territory for Republicans. But now Tom Corbett is a strong favorite in the governor's race, and Pat Toomey leads the Senate race by a healthy margin. Casey, like Brown, is enduring generally 'meh' job-approval numbers; PPP puts him at 36 percent job approval, 35 percent job disapproval, although they had him lower earlier in the year.

Most cycles, Missouri is a classic swing state, but it narrowly preferred McCain when Obama was winning much more Republican states such as Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. Since Election Day 2008, Obama's approval rating has plummeted to miserable levels in the Show Me State. Claire McCaskill narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Jim Talent in the 2006 U.S. Senate election, by a margin of 49.6 percent to 47.3 percent. While McCaskill has worked hard to cultivate an independent image, she'll face an uphill climb if Obama's job-approval rating remains low.

Will these senators want to spend the final two years of their first term tethered to the Obama agenda? Or will they find a new level of independence, now that Obama is significantly less popular in their states? The GOP may hold only 51 or fewer seats, but the number of senators amenable to conservative legislation may be significantly higher.

The White House: Perhaps the biggest question in American politics in early 2011 will be how the Obama administration adjusts to a dramatically different political landscape.

Analysts can argue as to when the new president hit trouble: the angry town halls of summer 2009, the big wins for the GOP in the gubernatorial elections of 2009, the shock of Scott Brown's win in early 2010, the passage of health-care reform in the face of staunch public opposition this spring, or some other moment. But whatever the tipping point, the Obama administration spent much of the last year on the wrong side of public opinion, and chose to charge ahead anyway, certain that voters' minds would eventually be swayed.

#page#The same dynamic extends to the Department of Justice's lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law and Obama's whiplash-inducing statement of support for the Ground Zero mosque and subsequent revision. On the deficit, the administration seems to think the recent spike is a temporary reflection of surprisingly low tax revenues, while the public sees it as evidence of irresponsible governance. The Obama camp is convinced the stimulus's success is evident from their 'jobs created or saved' metric, while much of the public looks at the unemployment rate and deems it a failure. The president is convinced his administration's response to the oil spill was fine; in the Gulf states, it is rated worse than the Bush administration's response to Katrina. With large (and mostly loyal) Democratic majorities in Congress, Obama and his team could ignore bad poll numbers and muscle their agenda through. If the GOP has big wins in November, those days are over.

#ad#The challenge for Obama, and liberals in general, will be at least as great as the one they faced after the 1994 GOP tsunami. Until Obama, no president had enjoyed a 60-vote Senate majority for his party since 1979; liberals have more influence over Congress than they've had at any point since the years of Lyndon Johnson. Majorities that large usually take several cycles to erode. While a few progressives will probably tell themselves that the public option, an even bigger stimulus, or renegotiating NAFTA would have ensured a better Election Day 2010 for them, most will be forced to recognize that after Obama spent two years governing as a liberal, the electorate responded by punishing his party severely.

Of course, all of this depends on one big supposition: that Republicans take care of business in every competitive race from coast to coast and from the top of the ticket to the bottom.

-- Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot on NRO.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on September 02, 2010 (boomark / email).