Can Republicans Take Back the House?

I continue to have a sense of deja vu as we limp through the summer economically watching the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico as the result of corporate greed and regulators ready to turn a blind eye in exchange for future industry employment or outright bribes. It feels like the summer of 2009 with the lead up to Virginia's statewide races that witnessed a debacle for the Democrat candidates and the election of the most extremist GOP slate in likely decades. How did this happen? Democrats simply failed to give the party base any reason to be excited and motivated. And it's happening again. The GOP minority continues to out maneuver the spineless Democrats who continue to wimp out and fail to deliver properly on campaign promises. Meanwhile, the increasingly insane base of the GOP is enthused and motivated. Political pundit Larry Sabato - who graduated from UVA with me as an undergraduate - has some prognostications at his "Crystal Ball" website that ought to galvanize Democrats to action, but I fear it won't. Since the Democrats have delivered so pathetically on their promises, Sabato may well be right. Here are some highlights:
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With less than five months left until Election Day, many political commentators are asking whether this year’s midterm elections could be a reprise of 1994 when Republicans picked up 8 seats in the Senate and 54 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of both chambers for the first time in 40 years. There is almost universal agreement that Republicans are poised to make major gains in both the House and the Senate. And while the GOP’s chances of gaining the 10 seats needed to take control of the upper chamber appear to be remote, the 39 seats required to take back the House of Representatives may be within reach.
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There are some striking similarities between the mood of the American people today and the mood of the country 16 years ago. The most important similarity is that President Obama, like President Clinton in 1994, has seen his approval ratings fall below 50 percent which is generally considered the danger zone for an incumbent president and his party. The Democratic-controlled 111th Congress, like the Democratic-controlled 103rd Congress, is very unpopular with an approval rating of 21 percent in a May Gallup Poll. And only 24 percent of Americans according to the same poll are satisfied with the way things are going in the country. Given these results, it is not surprising that Republicans have been running either even with or ahead of Democrats when voters are asked which party they want to control the next Congress. That was true in the summer of 1994 as well.
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If we project the 1994 loss probabilities onto the 2010 distribution of Democratic seats in terms of party strength and incumbency status, we would expect Democrats to lose 42 of their current seats in November. Since Democrats are given a good chance of picking up at least three current Republican seats (one each in Hawaii and Louisiana and the at-large seat in Delaware), we would expect a net loss of 39 House seats, leaving Republicans with the narrowest possible majority: 218 seats to 217 for the Democrats.
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As I continue to state, the Democrats need to do things to motivate their base - and that means delivering on the campaign promises of 2008.