Big Swing&" Elections Tend to be About Public Rebuke of Party in Power

Whether Republicans surge into majority control of one or both chambers of Congress next week or just end up settling for significant gains their rapid backswing of the political pendulum is the product of a potent coalescence of forces.  Here are two:    

1. A stagnant economy has made independent voters fearful & dissatisfied and
2. A movement of ideologically driven conservative activists on the other.

But now its entirely possible the Republicans will do much better than the 39-seat gain they need to attain the majority and could crest the 51-seat gain mark in a single day of balloting. Thats because Republicans are seriously competing to take 82 seats away from the Democrats and have long-shot takeover possibilities in 20 more districts. The Democrats by contrast have a chance of taking away just nine seats at the outside from the GOP. Enraged by President Obamas agenda which Republicans condemned from the outset as socialist" and leftist and dismayed by the Republicanism that came into favor under George W. Bush Republican party clearly has staged a comeback in this years midterm campaign after the huge setbacks in the past 4 years. On their own in prosperous times such ideologues would not have gotten all that far. Their rhetoric was extreme their candidates raw and in less tumultuous years many would have been dismissed as part of an unelectable fringe.

But the economy flatlined and people favored by the new activists emerged sometimes from obscurity to become unorthodox major-party candidates.

When voters are dissatisfied with the party in power the wave of public protest is like a hurricane that washes away everything in its path" said Ron Faucheux president of the Clarus public opinion research firm in Washington. Unintended Assist Even in the highly charged political environment this year national Republican strategists had serious doubts about the electability of some of the tea party favorites and so pushed to secure the nomination of alternatives all veteran party insiders who presented milder demeanors to the public. In doing so they demonstrated that the factions within this nascent coalition are not necessarily on the same page. Those who associate themselves with the tea party demand absolute fealty to the conservative principles they identify with the Republican Party. Their candidates if elected appear likely to pull already strongly conservative GOP caucuses even further to the right in a Senate and House already divided sharply along partisan lines. Still Republicans stoked the sense of populist rebellion this year with rhetoric verging at times on the apocalyptic. And South Carolinas Jim DeMint who says hed rather be in a Republican Senate minority made up entirely of conservative true believers than in a majority made of mushy" moderates saw his star rise this year as several long-shot conservatives hed endorsed won their GOP primaries. In fact many Democrats view the high pitch of Republican rhetoric as their last best hope for cutting their losses on Nov. 2 and perhaps hanging on to control of one or both sides of the Capitol. Furies Unleashed If the GOPs short-turnaround rebound seemed highly improbable just a few months ago so too were the events that have overtaken the previously triumphant Democrats turbocharged the Republicans revival and unleashed political furies that have never been far below the surface during this long era of partisan rancor. Obama and congressional Democrats led by Reid in the Senate and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House moved quickly to leverage what they thought was significant political capital to implement an ambitious policy agenda.

But they quickly found that they had greatly overestimated the political honeymoon period with a public anxious about the state of the economy. Democrats did deploy a powerful turnout operation during their strong campaign years of 2006 and 2008 and have been using the databases they built to reach out to millions of their base voters this fall. But according to John J. Pitney Jr. a political scientist at Californias Claremont McKenna College The least likely outcome is a ground game that can overcome national trends. Thats like trying to fix the Titanic with spackle." If there is one serious potential flaw in the conventional wisdom that this is dead certain to be a big Republican year it is this: Theres no way before Election Day of guaranteeing the assumption on which the conventional wisdom is partly based that Democrats will at most vote at the normal modest levels typical of midterm elections while angry Republicans will show up in droves. Yet most veteran election observers are convinced that any late Democratic rally will have only a marginal impact on what they see as a pretty grim outlook for the majority party. Rapid Reversal An assessment of each of the 37 races for the Senate and of the contests for all 435 of the seats in the House reveals just how successful the resurgent Republicans have been at reversing the dynamic of the past couple of campaign years. In 2006 and 2008 it was the Democrats who managed to expand the playing field of winnable races and force the Republican Party into a mostly defensive posture. This time it is the Republicans who are on the offensive with the Democrats mainly struggling to hold on to the seats they have. The competitive imbalance is not as overwhelming in the Senate and the GOP will not be able to match the 14 seats the Democrats netted in the previous two elections. To gain the 10 seats they need to claim the majority Republicans will have to win almost all of the dozen contests in which theyre waging competitive bids for seats now held by Democrats while staving off almost all of the serious Democratic efforts to take away eight seats now belonging to Republicans. But in a campaign year marked by volatility a Senate GOP sweep cant be completely ruled out as the Democrats know from their own experience. Most of the hotly contested Senate races broke their way during their own surges in 2006 and 2008. Partisan and nonpartisan observers alike agree that the nations economic troubles are the starting point for any discussion of the Democrats election year struggles. This is all because the economy is genuinely bad and Democrats have overpromised and underdelivered in the view of most voters" said Larry J. Sabato director of the University of Virginias Center for Politics. He firmly predicts that the Republicans will get the 39 seats they need to reclaim the House majority they lost in 2006 and will at least come close to the whopping 10-seat gain they need to reclaim the Senate majority they surrendered the same year.

People know what they see and they use midterm elections to send their public officials a message. This is a classic message-sending checks-and-balances election generated by a deeply dissatisfied public" Sabato added. Or as expressed by Darrell West director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution it is difficult to get voters to believe your agenda is effective when there is nearly double-digit unemployment." The Mandate Trap and 2012 Even if voters do give the Republicans a share of power in Washington next week its not necessarily a harbinger of a one-term presidency. Obama and his fellow Democrats might be able to make a better case that the economic policies that voters this year determined had failed were both necessary and in the long run successful. The 44th president doesnt have to look far for evidence. Economic problems and public opposition to President Bill Clintons ambitious legislative agenda sparked the Republicans takeover of Congress in the 1994 Contract With America" election but a resumption of healthy economic growth enabled Clinton to win a second term easily in 1996. Similarly President Ronald Reagans Republican Party already in the House minority lost 26 seats during the 1982 recession. Then an economic rebound that prompted the GOPs campaign slogan Its morning again in America" jump-started Reagan to a landslide re-election in 1984. So Obama may need some help maintaining his footing. And history suggests he may get it from the Republicans if they like the Democrats of the 111th Congress are seen as overreaching by a critical mass of voters. Over the past 20 years and pretty much throughout the nations history big swing" elections have tended to be more about the public rebuking the party in power than an affirmation of the challenging partys agenda. Yet the winning party tends to act as though it has a mandate and ends up getting punished by voters for doing so. It will be difficult for Republican leaders to avoid the presumption of a mandate if their party gains control of even one-half of Congress. The driving force in the midterm is an uprising of activists who believe fervently in bringing fundamental conservative change to Washington just as liberals believed in the progressive change promised by Obama and fellow Democrats. The dilemma for Republicans if victorious will be the fact that these conservative activists are only part of their 2010 coalition. The unaffiliated voters and the handful of disaffected Democrats who the polls show flocking to their side do not necessarily subscribe to an entire full-throated conservative agenda that includes:

1. Cutting the size of government
2. Maintaining all current tax cuts
3. Including those for the wealthiest Americans
4. Throttling back on business regulation
5. Reconfiguring major entitlement programs such as Social Security & Medicare; and
6. Tightening restrictions on abortion same-sex marriage & embryonic stem cell research.

True believers are there to implement their beliefs" Edwards said. They will soon find out that Americans really reject many of these views."