The Three Things That Must Happen for Democrats to Win in 15 Days

There are two schools of thought popular amongst political analysts 15 days before the November 7 election. The first is that Democrats are insurgent to the point of expanding the playing field of battleground races and possibly on their way to kind of seismic victory achieved by Republicans in the 1994 midterms. The other school is that the Democrats peaked too early, on the heels of the Mark Foley incident, and have allowed Republicans too much time to regroup and retool their message, holding off the kind of serious challenge the Democrats are currently posing against them and possibly even holding onto their majorities. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, but I'm increasingly concerned that the latter scenario is closer to correct than the former. This perception is not based so much on hard evidence as much as a stone cold analysis of the horse race and what it will take for Democrats to pull out the kind of landslide they'll need to oust the GOP from the reins of power. Here's the three-item outline I came up with after that analysis:

1) The Democrats need to keep their base motivated and get them out to the polls in droves. If Democratic voters don't turn out in near unanimity (and avoid casting ballots for the 'not-so-bad' Republican incumbent in their home district the way too many usually do), they won't be able to overwhelm the opposition. Now, the conventional wisdom is that the Democratic base is enthused and eager to vote, but the premature declarations of victory from media outlets is not helping on that front, triggering overconfidence among the faithful and perhaps a mindset that it's "not worth standing in the cold and rainy November weather for three hours to cast a ballot when Sherrod Brown has it in the bag anyway".

2) A small percentage of the Republican base has to either stay home or cast a protest vote in favor of Democrats on November 7. I've never been sold on the argument that Republican voters, in numbers of any significance, are too disillusioned to vote this fall. Even if it is true now, the Republican Party's massive financial warchest will be able to spend the next two weeks convincing them otherwise. Beyond that, the Republicans' finely-tuned GOTV apparatus will personally hold their apathetic neighbors/parishioners feet to the fire to make sure they vote. There is probably some merit to the hopes that some disenchanted Republicans will vote Democratic this year, but it's not exactly good news for the Democrats that their ability to survive as a party is dependent upon hard-core Republicans changing their minds. The bottom line is that the GOP base is larger than the Democratic base, so they almost have to have dissent within their ranks in order for us to win even at full turnout from our base.

3) Independent voters have to show up at the polls...and then vote Democratic by overwhelming majorities. With the unhelpful media rhetoric about a "Category 5 storm" for the Democrats, it's probably less likely that enough Democratic-leaning independents will show up to vote because this demographic is the softest group of voters and is disgruntled with both parties to where rewarding the Democratic Party may not be the message they choose to send on election day, particularly if they think their vote will be but a single shout in a chorus anyway, as the media would like for them to believe.

A common denominator hamstringing Democrats in these final two weeks of the campaign is the artificially optimistic expectations being set for them by the media, particularly in some badly-manipulated polls released of late that oversample Democrats by as much as 24 points (as was the case with Newsweek's recent poll). The Democrats have not led in voter affiliation by 24 points in decades. Any poll that samples self-identified Democrats by more than three or four points is worse than merely an erroneous outlier, it's an offering of ammunition to the opposition party who will be glad to use it 16 days from now to declare the Democratic party officially dead if it fails to win back at least one House of Congress.

Consider this: even in the GOP landslide of 1994, the Republican generic ballot advantage was only nine points. Last week's NBC/WSJ poll would have us believe that today, in the ugly polarized political environment of 2006 that didn't exist 12 years ago, the Democratic party has a generic ballot advantage of 15 points. If the Dems were to win a generic ballot victory of 15 points, at least 75 House seats would swing. Even the sunniest optimists and media storyline hunters don't expect that to happen. The only way such an erroneous generic ballot advantage number can be attained if through manipulation of poll data, specifically stacking the poll with disproportionate numbers of Democrats. Newsweek and NBC may think they're doing the Dems a favor by showing this groundswell of Democratic "momentum", my theory is that each of the three cited groups will respond unfavorably to the wishes of Democratic Party operatives upon hearing such data. Overconfident Democrats grow irrationally cocky, frightened Republicans get off of their butts and become more organized, and independents roll over on the couch and turn the TV to Grey's Anatomy.

The element of surprise is lost. Democrats no longer have the opportunity to sneak up on the GOP as Republicans snuck up on Democrats in 1994. I'd much rather have let that sleeping dog lie than have it scared into action. Unfortunately, my gut tells me the GOP pit bull is awakening and starting to growl, perhaps snatching some of that Democratic momentum from a week ago. It's gonna be hard to keep that pit bull from biting us for 15 more days.