As we get closer to the election, I like everyone else am asking what all of the scandals, from the lies about Iraq to the phony terror alerts to the grabbing of breathtaking presidential power from a flaccid Congress to the stealing, corruption and now sex scandals of the GOP, will mean the day after the November election.
For what it's worth, here's how I think the various GOP ills will play in November.
1. Iraq
Voters seem genuinely ambivalent on this one. A clear majority now regret supporting the invasion, and in hindsight, think it was a mistake (duh, people...) But I think a lot of people are also afraid that if we simply pull out of there, it will leave an even bigger mess. The result: I think that the Democrats would be wise to coalesce, and do so firmly, around a combination of the Korb and Biden plans: in other words, redeploy the troops to Kuwait and Kurdistan to get them off the streets of Baghdad and Ramadi; force the Iraqi governmetn to take responsibility for its own internal security, while providing some sort of guarantee of its external security courtesy of the U.S. military, and allow the country to be divided in three, with automous regions and a weak central government, to keep them from killing each other. But as far as the election goes, I have a feeling most voters in red and purple states won't be voting directly on Iraq, even if they're now sick of the war.
Net impact on the Republicans in November: neutral.
2. The economy
Sorry, wingers, but only Wall Street insiders and tycoons think the economy is good. Those 51,000 jobs the economy just created are largely part-time, low paying or government gigs. Real people -- middle class people -- are struggling like crazy, and they're not going to believe the economy is great, no matter how many times you say that it is.
Net impact on the Republicans in November: negative ... big time.
3. Corruption
The Abramoff scandal stinks to high heaven, but most people just glaze over when they try to dig into it. Bottom line, people get that the GOP has been corrupted by lobbyists. Unfortunately, they also get that if the Dems had been in charge, the big corporations would have been taking them to Scotland for golf trips, too.
Net impact on the Republicans in November: slightly negative.
4. Terrorism
"There's an old saying in Texas ... I think its in Tennesee too... it says, fool me once, shame on ... you ... you fool me can't get fooled again." In other words, most of us (except for the really psychotic authoritarians, who seem to feed on fear of Muslims like Hummers feed on unleaded regular,) have figured out that the orange alerts and Osama videos are part of the strategic propaganda. The "security moms" have gone back to caring most about the economy. And yeah, we know we'll be on high orange right around November 1st. And those who do start hiding under the bed every time Al Gonzales announces that we've detained another bunch of karate-masters and paint ballers from the hood, are so far gone that they now bleed Kool-Aid ... and they'd be voting Republican, anyway.
Net impact on the Republicans in November: neutral.
5. Foleygate
The GOP's attempts to smear the pages, the media (including "Path to 9/11" network sibling ABC News), George Soros (apparently because he has given money to CREW), and whoever else they can think of on the fly is a wasted, stupid stragey. As Chris Matthews said on "Hardball" on Friday, the public doesn't care where the truth came from when it comes to the Mark Foley scandal. They just know they don't like what they're hearing, as the latest polling shows, and they "get" this sleazy sex scandal and the clear attempts by House leadership to cover it up, in their gut, perhaps more than they're able to sort out their feelings on, say, what we should do about Iraq.
At the same time, those on the other side who are up in arms over the Drudgy angle that at least one of the IM conversations now pinned on Foley were the result of a prank by young pages, rather than a simple predatory episode, I think doth protest too much (as do the lefties who are screaming that this isn't about Foley being a homosexual -- actually, you're damned skippy it's about Foley being gay -- conservatives are uncomfortable with the many gays in their very own closet, and the majority of Americans are, frankly, grossed out by the topic of male, gay sex... and especially by attempts on the part of some old coot to have it with teenaged boys...) Back to my point: if you are acquainted with any teenagers, or hell, if you ever were a teenager, you know that kids are pretty sophisticated when it comes to sex -- much moreso than adults give them credit for -- and I can imageine that there's nothing more hilarious to a teenaged kid, free from parental control in pre-college dorm conditions in the nation's capitol, than egging on the known House freakazoid -- a pathetic old queer whose near desperation to land a young, teen stud for sex, despite the fact that he's already in an adult homosexual relationship, is pure teenaged comedy gold -- to see just how much crazy stuff you can get him to say. I can completely imagine Foley sitting there in his boxers, eagerly IMing what he thought was one young man who, despite having a girlfriend, perhaps could be coaxed and groomed at least into cybersex, if not more, but actually sharing his innermost creepy thoughts with a room full of kids who wre not only laughing at him, but also passing the resulting IM conversations around to their friends. Remember, Foley had for years been known as the Congressman who liked teenage boys, and pages had been warned since as early as 1995 that he might get too friendly. Perhaps he got too friendly with Jordan Edmund, and Jordan and his friends decided to have some fun at Foley's expense. (Edmund's lawyer has opened the door to this scenario, backing off earlier claims that the prank scenario was impossible.)
That said, defenders of the GOP leadership's handling of the Foley mess don't have a moral or legal leg to stand on, even if the Edmund IMs turn out to be prank-driven. That's because Edmund isn't the only recipient of lurid advances or IMs from Foley. There are now between three and five victims, depending on which media accounts you read. And it's going to be tough to prove that every one of them were pranksters. In fact, allegations of Foley's inappropriate advances toward pages now appear to go back as many as ten years, and some former pages have now come forward to publicly accuse Foley of hitting on them when they were underage.
In other words, the prank scenario is perfectly plausible, and it doesn't matter a whit.
Next, though, the issue of political fallout. Jay Tea actually surprises me by mounting a pretty coherent, intelligent analysis of how this could all play out for the Republican Party:
...The effect on the November elections: I expect very little. There simply isn't a national election this year -- there are 435 state district elections and 33 or 34 (I don't feel like looking up the precise number) state-wide elections. The Democrats will TRY to hang Foley around the necks of Republicans, but the simple fact is that unless they can connect the voter's individual representative to Foley directly, he won't be a factor.
And he even managed to hold back his obligatory Bill Clinton reference until paragraph five!
I agree that for most members of Congress, the Foley scandal will have little direct impact on their election. But I disagree with Jay that the upcoming contest in November is not, in many ways, a national election. Republicans must contend -- as Democrats did in 1994 -- with an overall pall of scandal, a general sense that they, as a party, have become corrupt and immoral in large part because they are in posession of total power in Washington. If voters go to the polls believing that the GOP's problems are not that members are more immoral than Democrats, but that having no political check on their behavior has brought out the worst in them, some voters may pull the lever for divided government. Given the apathy and lack of political thinking by the vast majority of voters, we're really talking about a small number of voters who go into the polls strategically. But in midterm elections, fewer people vote overall, so small, determined numbers can do big things.
Second, in races directly tied to the Foley mess -- think Tom Reynolds in New York -- the effect on November could be to shift formerly safe seats onto the active playing field, meaning that the NRCC and NRSC will be forced to reduce its financial advantage versus Democrats in proportion to the money they hadn't planned on spending (in Florida and New York,) reducing the amount they could be spending targeting winnable seats like Bob Menendez's seat in New Jersey. With Republicans already having to spend extra to defend once safe seats like Allen's in Virginia and Santorum's in Pennsylvania, even before Foleygate, I'd wager that the overall electoral strategy for the GOP has been disrupted enough that they may be required to do more than is feasible nationwide when it comes to GOTV.
And then there is the issue of how to mobilize the most important new force in GOTV strategy for the party -- evangelical Christians -- when your party is being accused of covering for a freakish pedophile wierdo (who's also gay -- just to turn the screws in Tony Perkins' Frankenstein head even tighter...) Some Democrats have picked up on the possibilities that the Foleygate scandal brings to the table, and they're already using it the way Republicans would if the tables were turned.
Net impact on the Republicans in November: negative
6. Black voters
One factor that the Dems are missing, is that in key races where they have a shot at turning a Republican seat, Black turnout is going to be key, and Black turnout has underperformed expectations in every election since 2000, when the Supreme Court-directed outcome so demoralized Black voters, that I have argued that turnout has never recovered. Dems have been running on a promise of revenge ever since, but my first hand experience with Black voters and potential voters in Forida is that they largely disbelieve the idea that vengeance can be had at the polls, because many simply no longer trust the process. Given that, the Democrats should be doing a lot more to get out this vote. Trouble is, Democrats have this nasty habit of ignoring Black voters until three weeks out from Election Day, and then thinking that they can get out the vote simply by dragging Bill Clinton to a few Black churches here and there. Democratic candidates -- including the Dem gubernatorial candidate here in Florida (who has helped himself by nominating a Black running mate, even if he did so under fire for a racially sensitive vote he case in the state legislature during the 1990s, though he hasn't pressed the advantage by mounting a serious campaign to win the Black vote) -- have continued to neglect and take the Black vote for granted, failing to advertise to Black audiences through their media of choice, and using a "where have they got to go?" strategy that is both insulting and stupid. Message to white Democrats: don't assume that Black voters are going to turn out at the polls in November, if you haven't bothered to ask them to.
And then there is the growing foreign-born Black vote, which, contrary to what white Democrats tell themselves in their strategy sessions, is very much in play for Republicans who go after it.
Net impact on the Republicans in November: very, very hard to say, but if Blacks don't turn out in key counties like Broward County, Florida, the GOP will be breathing a sigh of relief on November 8th.
Regarding turnout, which is the whole ballgame in a midterm, there's also the issue of pissed off traditional conservatives and libertarians, who are mad at the GOP for other reasons, like spending and immigration. Will they turn out in force to help keep this fat, sleazy, corrupt bunch of spend-crazy pols in power? Only if they hate and fear Democrats enough, and I'm not convinced that they do, especially if divided government produces a two year cushion of gridlock, wherein the politicians can't f*** things up even more than they already have...
For all of those reasons, I think the political climate is a net plus for Democrats, although I hardly believe the hype that Foleygate alone could produce a 50 seat tsunami for the GOP. (And to be honest, I'm not sure the marginal power of a bare majority in the House or Senate is necessarily worth having, when it would be so much easier to take the White House in 2008 if you let the Republicans screw the country to the wall for another two years, as there's absolutely no doubt in my mind they would, but that's another post...) I assume that because the many-headed hydra of Iraq and scandal filling the news cycle throws off the spending and GOTV strategy (how to get the BE AFRAID OF THE TERRORISTS!!!! message in, between Anna Nicole's baby daddy drama and the pants-off Congressman...?) ... Democrats, even with a smaller pot and a lot less strategic savvy (Bill Clinton excepted), will be more financially and straegically competitive in a number of key races in November, while GOP seats are now in play that weren't in the game plan before (seats that it will cost Democrats comparatively little money to go after, given the fact that the media's saturation of the Foley scandal is doing the storytelling for them.)
The result: I see the Dems picking up enough seats to either narrowly take the House, or to put it into an effective tie (meaning the do-nothing Congress will live on -- and by the way, if the Repubs hang on, Denny Hastert is as good as gone as speaker...). In the Senate, the Dems have a surprisingly good shot at taking it back, but there again, I don't think it's a sure thing. If I had to predict it today, I'd say the Dems will wind up with a tied Senate and a bare majority in the House.
To be honest, if Terry McAuliffe were still running the DNC, I'd be ready to predict a House takeover, even 30 days out from E-day. But among the weaknesses Dems face, is the ineffectiveness, so far, of Howard Dean. Time will tell if his 50 state rebuilding strategy will pay off, but for now, his job was to raise a shitload of money and to help the party develop a unified, effective message machine. On those two fronts, he has failed. And because of that failure, he has made the party's chances of taking back the Congress that much slimmer. The big question, is which of these teetering parties will toddle past the finish with control of the committees.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
