The New York Times’ headline said it all: “Democrats plan political triage to retain House – Fear Republican Wave.” Indeed, there will be a wave of losses for the Democrats stretching from coast-to coast this Fall. No clearer indication of that is the declared Democrat strategy for the Fall election: “We are going to have to win these races one by one.” That same strategy was declared by the Republicans in the 2006 election – an election that cost Republicans the House. Amidst even stronger resentment today, the Democrats won’t win 435 different elections either and will lose the House.
The truth about Congressional elections is that a not insignificant percentage of the population barely knows the name of their Congressman or Congresswoman. Far less know the details of the actual policy views of their representative. By the time they get to the ballot box, however, most voters know how they feel about the direction of the country, the economy and have a general opinion about the job the President and Congress are doing. That’s why so many prognosticators pay attention to the Generic Congressional ballot, consumer confidence, the Presidential approval rating and Party identification.
Further, while it is true that incumbents have a significant edge in ordinary years, when it comes to Congressional elections in this mass-media era, large swings in one direction or another are based on the pervasive feeling about the Partys in general, i.e. the Party brand – not the individual candidates. Put another way, we no longer live in an age where all politics are just local.
So in 1994, the Republican’s took over Congress not so much because Republicans had so many better candidates – although they likely did on the margin – but that the Contract with America presented an attractive brand for the Republican Party as whole and the direction it wanted to take the Country. The Democrats, on the other hand, were branded as tax-raisers. In 2006, the view the country had of free-spending Republicans as a whole was not so flattering and the Republicans wound up losing the House.
At a large meeting of Republicans insiders in early 2006, I specifically asked a Congressional election strategist whether the Washington Republicans intended to run 435 different elections that Fall or run one national election. The answer to my question was exactly what I did not want to hear.
Paraphrasing the response, we were told that the mood was too anti-Washington and therefore they would approach each House race on its own merits. Of course, we know the results of 2006. Republicans were perceived as the Party that spent too much in Congress – and that lousy branding was too much for individual candidates to overcome. As a result, so many Republicans lost their seats that the Democrats took over the House in 2006.
Today, the Democrats face the same problem and are employing the same failed strategy Republicans employed in 2006. Of course, many Democrats deserve this fate as I pointed out in my article: It’s Too Late for the Democrats to Run Away. The point of this editorial though – is to point out the significant admission by the Democrats of the state of their affairs. As the New York Times put it: “Faced with a hostile political atmosphere, Democrats said they were trying to allow candidates to use specific conditions in their districts or flaws in the opposition to overcome the disadvantage created by a sour national mood and intense opposition to the party’s Congressional agenda.”
That is a doomed strategy championed by Partys deemed intolerable by the electorate based on the actions in the preceding years. It may be all that the Democrats have this year – but that doesn’t make it feasible. The only question is whether the Republicans will provide the strong contrasting brand as they did in 1994. All indications are that they will if for no other reason than it is far easier to win one national election than 435 separate elections.
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