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In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday. Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers beat out Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, by a 54%-46% margin, a spread that several Republican strategists on Capitol Hill characterized as a startling wake-up call for a party in dire straits. ~Reid Wilson
This seems to be a very clear indication that the NRCC’s efforts to make the House races into a national contest, invoking the dread spectre Pelosi to scare the voters into obedience, are completely useless and probably counterproductive. The public mood is so bad and so hostile to the national GOP that drawing direct connections between their candidate and the national party, as they did constantly, seems to have done more to doom Davis’ chances than help them. The ham-fisted attempt to link Childers to Obama (“Childers said nothing!”) gave off the scent of desperation, and rural Mississippians in the district who were already inclined to vote for one of their own against a ridiculous-looking suburban mayor weren’t buying it. Childers did make a point of focusing his campaign on local concerns, and rejected any connection with Obama. The party is in dire straits, and it is going to suffer many losses, but I would still insist that LA-06 and MS-01 are special cases with respect to the South. Whether or not the ballot listed partisan affiliations, by the time of the run-off it seems likely most voters knew that Childers was a Democrat. This suggests that the GOP can no longer expect the regular support of rural and small town voters on the basis of the party brand and the old one-trick pony of warning about godless Californian liberals coming to get you.
House incumbents in safe districts do not typically lose their seats, and most other Southern Republicans in the House are in safe districts. The GOP’s problem is that it is defending over two dozen open seats and has shown no ability to defend them. We could very easily see a repeat of the 30-seat losses of 2006, and this number could go higher depending on how badly the economy is doing in the summer. I suspect we’re going to start seeing a lot of split-ticket voting this fall.
Filed under: politics
” I suspect we’re going to start seeing a lot of split-ticket voting this fall.”
Which brings us back to the main question. There is going to be a Democratic Congress with larger majorities come January of 2009. Does a Democratic Congress hold a Pres. Obama’s feet to the fire and push hard for withdrawal from Iraq on an aggressive timetable?
Illinois was another special case?
Does a Democratic Congress hold a Pres. Obama’s feet to the fire and push hard for withdrawal from Iraq on an aggressive timetable?
Very much so. Only Bush’s scare tactics stop them from withholding funding.
But I doubt Obama will need prodding.
“Very much so.”
And if he “looks at events on the ground” as he has promised to do in speech after speech, and determines that now is not the best time to commence a substantial drawdown? Which member of the House or Senate, do you think, is really going to go to the White House and start twisting arms?
davegnyc, you and I have been round and round on this issue, but I don’t see any substantive reason that a President Obama would do such a thing, and many reasons to think that he would not. He has flat-out promised to leave troops in Iraq (this is his counter-terrorist strike force), and flat out refused to promise that all troops would be out by January 2013. More simply put, he has been hedging on the central policy initiative of his campaign for some time now. The pressures he will get if/when he assumes office will be greater by many orders of magnitude, and the incentives that a Democratic congress will have to apply any pressure to a brand new Dem president will be meager at best.
Hi Daniel. I noted the GOP’s peril last week, but don’t feel like much of a prophet. The evidence of their decline is pretty unmistakable.
IL-14 had Oberweis and was, well, in Illinois, which has someone running for President from the other party, as you may have heard. Democrats did *not* win a special election in northwestern Ohio and won a very closely contested MA-05 race that should never have been close at all. I didn’t think Ogonowski’s better-than-expected performance signalled a Republican resurgence, and I didn’t think the failure to pick up the Ohio seat changed the national picture for Democrats. We’re lending races that turned on local factors a national significance they may not necessarily have. That doesn’t mean the GOP isn’t in trouble–it’s going to get slaughtered in the House and Senate elections–but you can understand these special election defeats better by looking at the specific candidates and the race between them. Do Childers and Cazayoux survive in November? If they do, then we might be able to start talking about how meaningful these wins have been.
Daniel, why do you think a retread like Oberweis was the best they could do? Not being able to recruit strong candidates is an indictment of the brand, not an act of God. I think the argument should go the other way – they have systematically betrayed core principles and as a result cannot find good candidates.
I don’t think Oberweis was the best they could do, and neither did a lot of GOP primary voters who wanted someone else. Oberweis didn’t have to be the nominee, but managed through his superior resources, name recognition and heavy-handed advertising to bully his way to the nomination. The primary fight for IL-14 was bruising and drove up Oberweis’ negatives as he tore down the other guy. This was not a case of someone “recruiting” Oberweis–plenty of people in Illinois would never want to recruit him for anything political. Recruiting is terrible across the country, yes, but Oberweis is evidence of what happens after fratricidal primary fights, not what results from bad recruitment. Details are important.
Yes, we have gone around and around.
You think Obama is hedging because he is not going to get the troops out. I think he is hedging to protect his flank. Only time will tell.
I think I am right, however, becuase Obama is taking as hard a line as he can considering the forces up against him. Even his modest attempts at articulating a fair middle east policy created the smear job discuss herein.
You have got to give him credit for not completely folding when folding would be easy.
There will be zero political cost for getting the troops out and huge political gains. Who is being elected on a pro-war agenda? Nobody.
Who is going to hold the line on the Iraq war?
Even if Iraq goes to hell, people just won’t care. And any fallout will take place during the first half of his administration. He will have plenty of time to recover and the people will be very happy not to be there in the end.
The netroots are going to go cash in their check with the democratic party and Obama is going to owe them because the democratic machine was basically against him. And with the huge majorities in congress even the few democratic “obstructionists” are not going to be able to hold the line.
We are getting out of there my friend.
“You have got to give him credit for not completely folding when folding would be easy.”
“There will be zero political cost for getting the troops out and huge political gains. Who is being elected on a pro-war agenda? Nobody.”
I’m not sure why I should be giving anyone credit for something for which there will be zero political cost. There’s a bit of contradiction between these two statements but I sincerely, truly hope…
“We are getting out of there my friend.”
…that you’re right about this, and Obama’s hedging on this matter is simple political positioning done by a craftier that we think Chicago-pol.
Although I must confess, I am currently pondering an Obama vote strictly from the perspective that I want the current pro-war instincts in the current GOP utterly defeated and repudiated, its spokesmen and boosters humiliated and banished into outer darkness, to wander in the political wilderness with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, etc. 5 1/2 months should be ample time to weigh the merits of voting strictly out of spite for the top of the ticket.
His name recognition was as someone who had run for office unsuccessfully twice before. How did that help him bully his way to the nomination?
We probably won’t agree on why this specific candidate ended up as a nominee, but I believe a terribly damaged brand produced a weak field. This stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
I won’t deny that Republicans are generally fielding weaker candidates than they have in the past, and this is exacerbating the effects of the anti-GOP mood that’s already out there. Because there are fewer people identifying with the party, the party label doesn’t count for as much, and without a compelling candidate these newly-labeled independents will be reluctant to jump back on the GOP bandwagon.
But it’s worth trying to understand why Latta won in Ohio, the land where Republicans go to die these days, and why these others have lost. The party brand is no less damaged in Ohio than it is elsewhere, and is, in fact, much, much more damaged, so how did Latta win by 14 points?
Yes, I should have been more clear on the cost issue.
There is cost in that the few who are still for the war will attack Obama using the pages of the NYT, Washington Post, Fox news and various right wing noise machine outlets to attack you on UNRELATED issues, smears etc.
Why they are able to command so much ink and TV time after being so wrong so many time is another topic.
Also, raising money is another issue as the pro-Iraq/Iran war crowd does have some heavy donors including Haim Saban.
But, for taking the position that we should get out of Iraq and/or actually doing so, there is no political cost. Just upside.
Ask Hillary Clinton, who moved too slowly on Iraq and lost her dream of becoming the first female president because of it.
As it happens, I live in Ohio and I can assure the Republican brand is alive and well here. Sure, DeWine lost to Brown and they lost some important state offices in 2006 (most notably governor). But they still control the Statehouse, Taft is a memory and everyone is feasting on the still-living corpse on Mark Dann. I wouldn’t say “much, much more damaged” at all. Comparably damaged, which means they stand to lose at a comparable rate. Which means, they’ll still hold on to plenty of solidly red areas. Just not all of them.
On Latta:
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole credited Latta’s tough message on border security and anti-tax message for the victory.
It is worth noting that the victorious Dems in the southern districts took the pro-borders position, although in Chicago the Democrat supported “comprehensive” immigration reform.
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