The Issues That Will Swing the Election
In wake of the Mark Foley sex scandal and today's nuclear testing by the North Koreans, conventional wisdom is that next month's midterm elections will swing one way or the other based on either disgust over GOP corruption or fear of the bogeyman overseas. Ultimately, I suspect these issues will have a nominal effect come election day. Even the war in Iraq is unlikely to make the needle move too considerably. Why is this?
Because the people convinced by the arguments of one side or the other on these issues can ultimately be expected to retreat back to their partisan trenches when push comes to shove. Voters may find it unsavory that GOP Congressional leadership provided cover for online sexual predator Mark Foley, but will they reward Democratic candidates like Phil Kellam and Eric Massa for that? I can't see it. The scandal is likely to take out RCCC Chairman Tom Reynolds and secure Foley's seat for Democrat Tim Mahoney, but I'd be surprised if there were any other direct casualties. And although voters may be more inclined to believe we're quagmired in a nightmare-of-Bush's-making in Iraq, I expect the same arguments that drew them to vote for Republicans in 2004 will ultimately do the same in 2006. Ditto for the "terrorism threat" with security moms.
So what issues do stand to either resurrect Democrats or save Republicans this fall?
One of the issues works heavily to the Democrats' favor, and actually cemented a bounty of Democratic votes more than 18 months ago. That's the Social Security issue. Bush narrowly beat Kerry among seniors in the 2004 election. That is a rare feat for a Republican candidate in any election that is reasonably close. Yet less than 36 hours after winning re-election on the backs of seniors, Bush bragged about the "political capital" he earned to privatize Social Security, even though he barely uttered a word about Social Security privatization during the 2004 campaign and called John Kerry a liar when he suggested 10 days before the election that Bush was planning to do just that. The result: seniors soured on the Bush administration quickly, taking an instant dislike to his "private accounts" nonsense and rejecting his entire "ownership society" worldview. I submit that the Democrats were well poised to make tremendous gains in the 2006 midterms as early as January 2005, and the seniors who turned against Bush over Social Security have long memories. We'll see if the exit poll data bears out this thesis with larger-than-usual margins by seniors, the nation's most reliable voting bloc, in support of Democrats.
The second issue cuts decidedly in favor of Republicans, and it's one I've touched upon often on this blog. The issue is immigration. If the Republicans were smart, they'd spend 80% of the next four weeks defining the opposition's stance on immigration. If they did, they'd win the majority of battleground races. There are only two groups of people who support the Senate-sponsored McCain-Kennedy immigration bill that would allow "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and institutionalize a "guest worker program". One group is the coastal and college towns elites with visions of a multicultural utopia and nary a passing concern about the social and economic consequences of such an influx. The other group is the agribusiness and construction industry barons seeking a revolving door of cheap, disempowered immigrant labor to recycle in and out of its sweatshops and plantations, holding working-class wages and working conditions in the mud for generations. These groups constitute a tiny percentage of the overall electorate, but they have the ears of the politicians of both parties (but more Democrats than Republicans, sadly) and would advance their wildly unpopular agenda if not for the fear of intense voter backlash. The deeper one gets into Middle America, the more support the GOP is able to harness from its "get tough" immigration policy, flawed as it may be. It's actually kind of surprising that Republicans aren't working this issue harder, because it's their ace in the hole much more than terrorism.
So those are the exit poll numbers I'll be most interested in seeing on November 7. A strong senior vote is likely good news for the Democrats, spelling a long-festering backlash to Republican Social Security privatization plans (and to a lesser degree, the messed-up Medicare drug boondoggle). Meanwhile, if "immigration" is #1 or #2 on the list of "issues most important to you", the Republicans could still come out of this with their majorities.
Because the people convinced by the arguments of one side or the other on these issues can ultimately be expected to retreat back to their partisan trenches when push comes to shove. Voters may find it unsavory that GOP Congressional leadership provided cover for online sexual predator Mark Foley, but will they reward Democratic candidates like Phil Kellam and Eric Massa for that? I can't see it. The scandal is likely to take out RCCC Chairman Tom Reynolds and secure Foley's seat for Democrat Tim Mahoney, but I'd be surprised if there were any other direct casualties. And although voters may be more inclined to believe we're quagmired in a nightmare-of-Bush's-making in Iraq, I expect the same arguments that drew them to vote for Republicans in 2004 will ultimately do the same in 2006. Ditto for the "terrorism threat" with security moms.
So what issues do stand to either resurrect Democrats or save Republicans this fall?
One of the issues works heavily to the Democrats' favor, and actually cemented a bounty of Democratic votes more than 18 months ago. That's the Social Security issue. Bush narrowly beat Kerry among seniors in the 2004 election. That is a rare feat for a Republican candidate in any election that is reasonably close. Yet less than 36 hours after winning re-election on the backs of seniors, Bush bragged about the "political capital" he earned to privatize Social Security, even though he barely uttered a word about Social Security privatization during the 2004 campaign and called John Kerry a liar when he suggested 10 days before the election that Bush was planning to do just that. The result: seniors soured on the Bush administration quickly, taking an instant dislike to his "private accounts" nonsense and rejecting his entire "ownership society" worldview. I submit that the Democrats were well poised to make tremendous gains in the 2006 midterms as early as January 2005, and the seniors who turned against Bush over Social Security have long memories. We'll see if the exit poll data bears out this thesis with larger-than-usual margins by seniors, the nation's most reliable voting bloc, in support of Democrats.
The second issue cuts decidedly in favor of Republicans, and it's one I've touched upon often on this blog. The issue is immigration. If the Republicans were smart, they'd spend 80% of the next four weeks defining the opposition's stance on immigration. If they did, they'd win the majority of battleground races. There are only two groups of people who support the Senate-sponsored McCain-Kennedy immigration bill that would allow "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and institutionalize a "guest worker program". One group is the coastal and college towns elites with visions of a multicultural utopia and nary a passing concern about the social and economic consequences of such an influx. The other group is the agribusiness and construction industry barons seeking a revolving door of cheap, disempowered immigrant labor to recycle in and out of its sweatshops and plantations, holding working-class wages and working conditions in the mud for generations. These groups constitute a tiny percentage of the overall electorate, but they have the ears of the politicians of both parties (but more Democrats than Republicans, sadly) and would advance their wildly unpopular agenda if not for the fear of intense voter backlash. The deeper one gets into Middle America, the more support the GOP is able to harness from its "get tough" immigration policy, flawed as it may be. It's actually kind of surprising that Republicans aren't working this issue harder, because it's their ace in the hole much more than terrorism.
So those are the exit poll numbers I'll be most interested in seeing on November 7. A strong senior vote is likely good news for the Democrats, spelling a long-festering backlash to Republican Social Security privatization plans (and to a lesser degree, the messed-up Medicare drug boondoggle). Meanwhile, if "immigration" is #1 or #2 on the list of "issues most important to you", the Republicans could still come out of this with their majorities.
posted by Mark at 9:18 PM
2 Comments:
Sean, just as I'm surprised that national Republicans aren't hitting the immigration issue, I'm also surprised that the Democrats aren't much more forceful in reminding seniors of Bush's wildly unpopular plan to privatize Social Security....particularly the fact that Bush attempts to resurrect the private accounts plan if his party holds Congress.
sean, I would argue that Bush's alignment with Senate Democrats on immigration presents Republican candidates a unique opportunity to distance themselves from both an unpopular Republican President AND unpopular Democrats in Congress.
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