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chris_gerribYogi Berra is supposed to have said "predictions are hard, especially about the future." Well, I'm about to make a prediction, based in part on a couple of observations.
The first observation is from E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post, who notes that For weeks now, our national political conversation has been driven by 86,441 voters and a margin of 5,548 votes. A bit of perspective: When John McCain lost in the 2008 presidential race, he received 59.9 million votes. Dionne's talking about the Tea Party, that maybe 20% slice of Americans who spent the 1990s looking for black UN helicopters under their bedsheets, and now want to "take our country back" (from whom, nobody knows).
The second observation is that the Republican Party will probably win the House of Representatives. Giving the keys to the same folks who drove us into the ditch isn't a good idea, and I hope I'm wrong, but that's the way the cookie appears to be crumbling. Having said that, making Speaker Boehner actually have to do something with with a 10 to 12 seat majority is probably better than saddling Speaker Pelosi with a 1 or 2 seat majority.
But my prediction isn't about 2010, it's about 2012. In 2012, the Republicans lose, and by a lot. First, incumbent Presidents aren't beaten - they beat themselves. So, absent a major Obama gaffe, he beats whomever the Republicans run. Every indication is that the Republicans will do to Obama what the Democrats did to Reagan in 1984 - run a bog-standard Party loyalist (Tea- or regular-flavored, doesn't matter), operating on the belief that all that is needed to win is to not be Obama.
In congress, after the Republican shutdown (which will happen) and the inevitable compromise that restarts government, the Republicans will also lose big. The Tea Party won't accept compromise, and they'll force primary fights on whomever they blame for not winning total victory. That plus the added votes from an on-year election will mean Democratic wins.
The big question will be 2016. Will that be a rerun of 1988 or 1992? In other words, will the Republicans figure out that the game has changed?
But all of this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
The first observation is from E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post, who notes that For weeks now, our national political conversation has been driven by 86,441 voters and a margin of 5,548 votes. A bit of perspective: When John McCain lost in the 2008 presidential race, he received 59.9 million votes. Dionne's talking about the Tea Party, that maybe 20% slice of Americans who spent the 1990s looking for black UN helicopters under their bedsheets, and now want to "take our country back" (from whom, nobody knows).
The second observation is that the Republican Party will probably win the House of Representatives. Giving the keys to the same folks who drove us into the ditch isn't a good idea, and I hope I'm wrong, but that's the way the cookie appears to be crumbling. Having said that, making Speaker Boehner actually have to do something with with a 10 to 12 seat majority is probably better than saddling Speaker Pelosi with a 1 or 2 seat majority.
But my prediction isn't about 2010, it's about 2012. In 2012, the Republicans lose, and by a lot. First, incumbent Presidents aren't beaten - they beat themselves. So, absent a major Obama gaffe, he beats whomever the Republicans run. Every indication is that the Republicans will do to Obama what the Democrats did to Reagan in 1984 - run a bog-standard Party loyalist (Tea- or regular-flavored, doesn't matter), operating on the belief that all that is needed to win is to not be Obama.
In congress, after the Republican shutdown (which will happen) and the inevitable compromise that restarts government, the Republicans will also lose big. The Tea Party won't accept compromise, and they'll force primary fights on whomever they blame for not winning total victory. That plus the added votes from an on-year election will mean Democratic wins.
The big question will be 2016. Will that be a rerun of 1988 or 1992? In other words, will the Republicans figure out that the game has changed?
But all of this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
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Date: 2010-09-23 05:14 pm (UTC)Firstly, I think we've gone from a certain loss of both houses to the Democrats keeping the Senate - cheers Tea Party, and from a potential 30+ seat loss of Congress to something in the realm that you're describing.
I also noticed that the news "shifted" yesterday, the first batch of healthcare changes were actually enacted yesterday and it looked like Obama had suddenly appeared back in the media again looking calm and in control.
I happen to think that a Republican grid-lock can only do good things for Obama and the Democrats in 2012 as they're ultimately going to end up having to compromise in order not to completely implode.
Likewise, like the British Tories found in 1997, shifting hard right only really pleases your core base and just annoys everybody else. The Tea Party are getting a lot of air time, but there's no evidence anywhere that they can actually win general elections - if anything, the polls are suggesting they're sucking the air out of elections that should have been a complete cakewalk for the Republicans.
I still think there's a real risk for the GOP that between ego and Fox News distortions, we'll see Bachman, Palin and others actually believing that they're the new force in Right of Center politics and doing to whoever they run in 2012 what Ross Perot did to Bush 1.
My, how I would laugh.