By John Harwood - New York Times
Published: 07-08-08
Summer is the season of political dreams. And this summer Democrats are dreaming big up and down the ballot.
Senator Barack Obama the Democratic nominee-apparent has started a broad approach to the general election against the presumed Republican candidate Senator John McCain. Exploiting his fund-raising edge Mr. Obama has pledged to run campaigns in all 50 states many of them well-fortified Republican redoubts.
Mr. Obama’s initial 18-state advertising campaign underscored the point. It touched improbable targets like Alaska (Republican. victory margin in 2004: 25 percentage points) and North Carolina (Republican margin: 12 percentage points despite the presence of former Senator John Edwards a North Carolinian on the Democratic ticket).
Fellow Democrats have embraced Mr. Obama’s strategy for reasons beyond the electoral math of the presidential race. In Alaska North Carolina and several other staunchly Republican states Democratic candidates for the House and Senate stand to benefit from the Obama campaign’s work in registering and turning out voters.
The Obama strategy “fits like a glove” with the party’s larger aims said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Expanded Democratic majorities in turn could give a President Obama a more powerful fist on Capitol Hill.
Shifts in Congress
The election calendar alone hands Democrats a big advantage in Senate races. Just 12 seats they now hold are up for re-election this year while Republicans must defend nearly twice that many.
By conventional calculations the triumph of Democrats in 2006 in recapturing the House would suggest a tougher 2008 battle. History has shown that the weakest House winners swept into office in one lopsided election often drift out to sea in the next.
Yet the political winds that swept Democrats into power on Capitol Hill have gotten stronger. Although voters’ anxiety about the Iraq war has receded their anxiety about the economy has crested sending President Bush’s approval rating to roughly 10 percentage points lower than two years ago.
The result: the political handicapper Charlie Cook envisions Democratic gains of up to 20 House seats and 7 Senate seats close to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to break filibusters by the minority.
The resources that accompany Mr. Obama’s “expand the battlefield” strategy augment the robust fund-raising of Democratic House and Senate campaign arms. Even in states Mr. Obama has little chance of carrying “we will ask our supporters to focus their energy on registering thousands of new voters and helping increase turnout” said Steve Hildebrand Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager.
That’s good news for Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage who is challenging Senator Ted Stevens Republican of Alaska and State Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina who is challenging another Republican incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole. On Monday Mr. Obama himself returns to North Carolina where he began an economic-themed campaign swing last month to discuss “economic security for America’s families” in Charlotte.
In states like Mississippi Democratic strategists anticipate that personal campaigning by Mr. Obama the first black major party nominee for president might drive up turnout among white conservatives for Mr. McCain. Mississippi’s former Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove is counting on Mr. Obama’s campaign workers to maximize black voter turnout in his effort to oust the Republican incumbent Senator Roger Wicker. The same is true in competitive House races in states like Alabama Louisiana and Texas.
Limited Dreams
Republicans sense the onset of Democratic overconfidence. “It’s a mistake to assume that Obama’s money equals a win for the Democratic candidates down ballot” said Senator John Ensign of Nevada who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Privately some leading Democrats also fret that hubris could trip up Mr. Obama’s team just as his primary campaign stumbled against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton after victories in February. If Mr. McCain remains within striking distance the expanded battlefield is likely to shrink to conventional dimensions.
But those are the hard calculations of the fall homestretch not the dreams of summer.
