Democrats, There's A Big Defeat In Your Future

Things are getting clearer.

Image credit: Mostlyrecords/Wikimedia

It's official. At least, it's as official as it gets. If nothing substantial changes between now and November, the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives. Here's what Nate Silver had to say the other day:

In my piece a couple of weeks ago, I wrote that there was only a 1 in 10 chance that Democrats would lose more than 55 seats in November. Having now looked at this issue in somewhat more detail, that clearly seems to be a lowball estimate. While there is other statistical and anecdotal evidence that one can point toward that is relatively more favorable to Democrats, and while there are other techniques, like a district-by-district analysis, that could be applied to this problem instead -- if you could get 9:1 odds (a 1-in-10 chance) on the Democrats losing more than 55 seats in the House, that would be a good bet.

And what if, for example, the Rasmussen case comes into being? Rasmussen has the Democrats losing the generic ballot by 9 points (and has had similar numbers for awhile). A 9-point loss in the House popular vote would translate into a projected 65-seat loss for Democrats. Or, if we adjust the Rasmussen poll to account for the fact that the Democrats' performance in the popular vote tends to lag the generic ballot, it works out to a 12.4-point loss in the popular vote, which implies a loss of 79 seats!

Generic Ballot Points Toward Possible 50+ Seat Loss for Democrats

As Nate goes on to emphasize, these are not the most likely scenarios, but anything more than a 40 seat loss will mean the House reverts to Republican control. That's very likely, given the news from Gallup today:

Americans' favorable rating of the Democratic Party dropped to 41% in a late March USA Today/Gallup poll, the lowest point in the 18-year history of this measure. Favorable impressions of the Republican Party are now at 42%, thus closing the gap between the two parties' images that has prevailed for the past four years.

Democratic Party Image Drops to Record Low

Just two weeks ago, Gallup rated the generic Congressional ballot as being a virtual tie. Like the Republicans before them, all the Democrats needed to do was to be in power for a while to show how ineptly they'd handle that responsibility.

I could go into a long explanation about how congressional races are inevitably conservative, as in things don't tend to change much, because people tend to like their own congressman, but not anyone else's. This makes no rational sense, of course, but we're talking about American voters here. It doesn't matter. There's enough apathy on the progressive side, and enough anger and hostility on the conservative side, that this will probably be an even more Republican turnout than usual in a mid-year election. Plus, as the Gallup poll indicates, Democrats are losing popularity among independent voters.
Image credit: Gallup Poll

For reasons I've explained already, this is going to be a bad year for Democrats.

If it hadn't been for the recent health care debacle, I might see a silver lining in all this, which is that many of the seats the Democrats will lose will be Blue Dogs and DLCers. That would make the numbers more favorable for progressives to influence House Democratic policy. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to change things very much. What the House Progressive Caucus did by capitulating to the conservative Democrats during the health care bill campaign was tell its constituency to go screw itself. That's not going to go over well. In essence, they've sold out to the conservatives and the lobbyists. It's no more likely that they'll be inclined to work for progressive causes in the future than it is that the rank and file progressives will be inclined to forgive them for selling out so thoroughly. Sure, the limousine liberals will support them, but most liberals don't ride in limousines. Those who do will just have to content themselves with calling the rest of us stupid for not seeing the light. These days, that's about all they're good for.

So, the Democrats will lose the House, and they won't learn anything from it if nothing else changes. Of course, that also means that Nancy Pelosi will lose her job as the leader of House Democrats. That, too, could be seen as a good thing, but somehow I'm not thinking it will be. Steny Hoyer is the next in line, and the logical successor. I don't see any reason to prefer him over Pelosi. He's less progressive, and more blatantly partisan than Pelosi. Neither attribute strikes me as an improvement. The leadership of the House Progressive Caucus, as I've already mentioned, will not be a factor. They're too weak to matter, no matter how numerous they become.

It's not a pleasant future, but that's the one we're in for. I suppose the only question is what we can, or should, do about it.