PrintNovember 19, 2009
Will 2010 Be the Perfect Storm?
Seven different indicators suggest that 2010 will be a very tough year for the Obama administration's plans to turn America into a People's Republic. If some of these indicators pointed one way and others pointed the other way, projections might be murkier. But all the winds seem to be blowing in the same direction, and the result may be a perfect storm to benefit Republicans. What are these seven indicators?
1) Public opinion polls, led by the reputable Rasmussen Poll, have shown in the summer a clear line in the "strongly approve" and "strongly disapprove" of Obama. Although the figures waggle from day to day, the trend is clear: not only is Obama less and less popular, but the intensity of support for and against Obama, which will be critical in the low-turnout midterm elections, shows a huge negative gap for Obama.
The generic congressional ballots, which usually understate the size of the Republican vote in general elections, have shown a consistent Republican lead in Rasmussen since mid-June. This lead has now climbed to six points, and Gallup now shows a four-point lead for Republicans as well.
This dovetails with polls showing Republican candidates doing well in a number of individual races around the country. Almost everywhere and in almost every poll, Democrats are doing worse than in recent history and worse than would have been expected if 2010 was a normal mid-term election.
2) Elections corroborate polling data. This means more than just the dramatic Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey this November. Republicans have been winning special state legislative elections all over the nation, often by wide margins in districts that Democrats had held comfortably for many years. Even recent municipal elections in Democrat strongholds like Albuquerque have produced stunning Republican upsets.
But elections mean more than just the election of candidates for office. Democrats have yet to explain the stunning defeat of the establishment-backed propositions in California in May, which showed the Sacramento politicians losing for some of the propositions in every single county in California. There is a pattern to ballot initiatives. Maine voters surprisingly defeated gay marriage, taking a stand directly contrary to their elected officials'. All this suggests that fiscal and social conservatism are robust and alive in the hearts and minds of voters.
3) The polling data and election results seem to have had an effect on recruiting candidates. Mike Castle, a former governor and incumbent congressman in Delaware, was the only Republican who had a prayer of winning Biden's old Senate seat. Republicans persuaded him to run for that seat in 2010, giving Republicans an excellent chance to pick up a Democrat seat. Mike Kirk, a Republican congressman from the northern metropolitan area of Chicago, is the strongest candidate the GOP could recruit, and Democrats are still floundering for a viable competitor. John Kasich has an excellent chance to recapture the Ohio governorship, having passed up a run for the office in 2006.
4) Recruitment is also helped by the enthusiasm of conservatives. The spontaneous uprisings at Tea Party and other gatherings show that there should be no problem getting campaign workers and small contributors in 2010 for candidates running against Obama. Doug Hoffman's campaign in New York took off largely because of the tremendous grassroots support of conservative voters from throughout the nation. The percentage of Americans, according to Rasmussen, who "strongly disapprove" of Obama is at very high historic levels for this young a presidency.
Leftist advocates, by contrast, see President Obama continuing (as everyone not on the far left understood) the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They see him compromising on health care issues, perhaps allowing some limitation on abortion in the bill. They listen to his rhetoric, which inevitably is less radical than they had hoped, and their enthusiasm melts noticeably.
5) Closely related to enthusiasm is the composition of the electorate who are supporting Republicans versus the composition of the Obama voters. Senior citizens, who vote in nearly all elections, are alarmed by Obama's plans regarding Medicare. The young voters and the black voters who turned out in record numbers to elect Obama were conspicuously absent in November 2009. Obama will not be on the ballot in 2010. Instead, there will be a lot of old, white, rich Democrat candidates trying to appeal to the center -- trying, in many cases, to sound more Republican than Republicans. As a consequence, the electorate in 2010 will almost certainly be much more conservative than in 2008, and that will affect results.
6) Beyond all these factors, President Obama is showing an increasing tendency to fumble and grope. The inexplicably silly remarks that he made when Cambridge police arrested Professor Gates in July revealed a highly parochial political instinct in which pummeling white police officers is considered good tactics. His bowing before foreign heads of state is another amateurish mistake. Obama went to Copenhagen to get the Olympic Games in Chicago and came back humiliated. The jobs putatively created by his stimulus bill now appear to have manifested in nonexistent congressional districts. The cumulative impact is to make Obama look more and more like Jimmy Carter, a man who could not lead.
7) The seventh and deadliest problem for Obama in 2010 will be that he owns all the bad political problems of our country. Ft. Hood was the first terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001, which means that Obama has not been able to do what Bush did. If there are more attacks, Republicans will force Obama to acknowledge the obvious: he is weaker than Bush on terror. Unemployment is at very high levels. Democrats are increasingly embroiled in scandals.
2008 may well prove to be the perfect storm for Democrats, united as they are behind a smooth, handsome young black man and running against the last dying days of a much-maligned George W. Bush Republican Party. Yes, 2010 may prove to be the complete unraveling of an overstretched Democratic Party who have yet to learn that conservatives are the huge majority of Americans.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
