Financial Times -Democrats are facing a drubbing

By Clive Crook

Two months before the US midterm elections, Democrats are bracing themselves. Recent economic indicators have been grim and the poll numbers have been worse. A “wave election” like the rout of 1994 that reset the Clinton presidency is all but taken for granted

Hardening expectations pose a risk for Republicans. At this rate, the party will feel it has failed if the Democrats merely do very badly and retain the barest majorities in House and Senate. Conversely, Democrats will greet any drubbing short of catastrophe as both a triumph and a mandate to plough on.

We shall see. For the moment, attention is fixed on the likelihood that the Democrats will lose control of at least the House, and the question is how the party of Barack Obama ever came to be in this mess.

The main thing of course is the economy. The recovery has slowed to a crawl. On Friday it emerged that non-farm payrolls fell by 54,000 in August. That was a smaller drop than expected; another consolation was that the private sector added jobs, albeit at a subdued pace. Still, this was the third consecutive month of decline in overall employment. The jobless rate ticked up again to 9.6 per cent, and the picture of a stalled recovery was confirmed.
Compounding the political problem, the administration oversold its remedies. When the stimulus passed, the White House said unemployment would not rise this high. Later it talked of a “recovery summer” as prelude to the midterm elections. These errors helped shift the blame for the recession from the Bush administration to Mr Obama and his team. The Democrats’ flailing efforts to shift it back have become counter-productive: they protest too much.
Though the recession is doubtless the main reason for Democrats’ dismal prospects in November, it is not the only one. The party has made a habit of supporting unpopular policies, and selling them ineffectually. This yielded nothing on energy, for instance: carbon cap-and-trade had to be abandoned. But the Democrats won the day on healthcare. They assumed that by now opinion would have swung behind that ambitious reform. Not so. Most Americans remain opposed.

Two other points deserve more attention than they have received. First, most commentators see the midterms as a referendum on Mr Obama. This is wrong. The elections are a referendum on the party in power — that is, on the president’s partnership with Democrats in Congress led by Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate.

The distinction is important. All things considered, Mr Obama is not polling all that badly. Despite the economy, he is better liked than Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan at the same point in their presidencies.

But look at polls that ask voters which party they will vote for. The Democrats’ performance on this measure is awful: a recent Gallup poll gave Republicans their biggest advantage since the firm started asking the question in 1942.

That particular poll may be an outlier, but the basic point stands. Given the economy, Mr Obama’s unpopularity is within bounds. The greater unpopularity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid alliance is what threatens disaster for the Democrats in November.

Mr Obama should have kept his distance from his allies on Capitol Hill. It would have been better for him, and better for them. Centrist voters embraced Mr Obama in 2008 because they thought he would temper a polarised and dysfunctional Congress. He let them down. The reflexive opposition of Republicans is much to blame, but Mr Obama did not try very hard. Pragmatic he may be, but unlike the instinctively centrist Bill Clinton, he leans left. If Ms Pelosi and Mr Reid could deliver irreproachably liberal policies — on healthcare, energy, the stimulus, whatever — that was fine with him. As it turned out, they often had to compromise, but that was because of a sliver of conservative Democrats, not Mr Obama.

The Democratic party in Congress stands to the left of most US voters, just as Republicans stand to the right. If, with his party in control on Capitol Hill, the president will not act as moderator, then divided government starts to look attractive. Force the president to work with Republicans instead. This is how many centrists will approach the election.

Strangely, it is not just the centre that is disappointed. Another potentially decisive factor in November is sagging enthusiasm in the Democratic base. You need not look far for the reason. For nearly two years, media progressives have whined about the administration and its works. The White House showed its frustration at this recently when spokesman Robert Gibbs attacked the “professional left”. He was rebuked by progressives, but he was correct. Turn-out in the midterms will be crucial, yet the left has talked itself into apathy.

Historians will look back at this and scratch their heads. The Democrats have done a lot – often, as I say, against the grain of the electorate’s wishes. All by itself, and flawed as it may be, the healthcare reform is a historic initiative, one that eluded Democrats for decades. The country did not want it, and got it anyway. Yet progressive commentators are deeply unimpressed. Sell-out. Half-measures. The Democratic base is telling pollsters that it cannot be bothered to turn out in November.

As Oscar Wilde observed about the death of Little Nell, you would need a heart of stone not to laugh.

clive.crook@gmail.com