Let’s consider this:
Republicans say the 2014 election will be a referendum on Obama, the controversies that have plagued his second term and the implementation of the new healthcare law.
A referendum is a “general vote by the electorate on a single political question that has been referred to them for a direct decision.” I’m not nitpicking the author of this piece’s usage. The Republicans really do see the upcoming midterms as a kind of referendum. They won’t be decided by a “single political question,” but the battle will be waged over only a few discreet issues. Is the president doing a good job? Is ObamaCare working?
That’s pretty much delusional thinking. The one advantage the Republicans have is that the battle will take place on primarily red turf. For the Democrats to retake the House, they will have to win seats that were drawn to be safe for the incumbent Republicans. And for the Democrats to retain the Senate, they will have to protect incumbents that serve in states that Romney won, some of them very decisively. That means that the Republicans can conceivably do pretty well just by speaking to their base. But there are real limits on how much mileage they can get by limiting their message to a negative one about a president who is not on the ballot and will never again be on the ballot. The electorate is getting very frustrated with gridlock and inaction. The Farm Bill is a good example of how Republicans are alienating the very rural voters who form their strongest base of support.
Democrats passed a multi-year, bipartisan farm bill through the Senate last year, but it stalled because of opposition from conservative House Republicans, a point Democratic leaders repeated in the final weeks of the 112th Congress.
Democratic aides said last year’s battle over the farm bill highlighted Republican obstruction and helped them expand their majority.
Sixteen Republican senators voted for last year’s Farm Bill, including the senators from both Kansas and Wyoming. Don’t think continued obstruction on agricultural issues won’t be a factor in next year’s midterms, especially on the Senate level. People don’t realize how the rural vote played a part in the election of Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota or Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin.
The sequestration budget that we’re operating under is frustrating and angering countless people who are culturally inclined to support the Republicans. Contracts are being cancelled and delayed. Workers are being furloughed. Funding is drying up. Runways are being closed down. Electing more Republicans only promises more of this dysfunction. This opens up new avenues of attack for Democratic challengers and incumbents. The 2014 midterms are not going to about Benghazi or the IRS alone. In fact, I don’t think most people are going to be thinking about those issues except when they are reminded about them. In many cases, people are going to be most concerned about why the federal government isn’t doing something.
I think people will be trying to figure out how to change the status quo, and the Democrats are going to have the better argument on that score even in red districts and red states. The more the Republicans try to make it a referendum about the president, the more out of touch they are going to seem.
The farm bill is pretty much the single most important barrel of pork to come out of Congress. Using it as another opportunity for a tantrum seems…yeah, kinda shortsighted.
I thought the 2012 election was a referendum on the President’s job performance. Are the Republican stuck in a loop where they keep refighting all the battles they’ve lost? They’ve already repealed Obamacare 37 times in the House… now this?
Yes
Planned Repub Playbook: “referendum on Obama….second term controversies….new healthcare law…”
Always rightwing rage and distractions about the past and their phony victimhood. Nothing but (unspecified) nilhilism for the future.
“continued obstruction on agricultural issues….electing more Repubs only promises more of this dysfunction….”
Flawlessly logical. Irrefutable. Great message. Who’s gonna start delivering it? David Plouffe?
Same old, same old–but it does rally the base at higher numbers than Democrats achieve from their base.
You are making the assumption that the Democrats have a national strategy to support state party efforts. I think that the states have been tapped out to support national campaigns. And in state after state, state parties are in disarray and fighting state-level defensive battles with no help from the national party’s resources or framing.
I’m not disagreeing with your analysis of the GOP. I’m just saying that we are likely facing another missed opportunity because of all the focus on DC.
This is absolutely the case in Wisconsin. The Democratic Party organization here is nothing but a husk.
You mean they basically folded the tent after the recall election?
The operative phrase is “If you seek to kill the king, you had better succeed” or “That which does not kill you makes you stronger”.
Walker and the Repukes are stronger now. The idiots who ran the recall could not finish him off, and now he is stronger. The issues of the recall, overreach, anti-worker crap, and so forth, have been neutralized.
Recalls are not a good approach. The gunsuck wack gunloving assholes in Colorado are trying the same thing. I hope that the dems are ready. If we lose a legislator who voted for gun safety in a recall election, we are looking at a generation until gun safety can be increased.
Yes although the Democrats’ problems go farther back to the Tommy Thompson years when they essentially rolled over for two of the signature program initiatives of the right wing to come out of Wisconsin: voucher schools and AFDC “reform” (that Clinton later signed on to).
The Obamacare law has had one unintended consequence – the reduction in hours for many workers. This is an absolute disaster for many workers who do lower end jobs. If you get cut to 29 hours / week for your job, you can be in a world of hurt. And if this is then blamed on Obamacare, we could end up with the very people that Obamacare was intended to help voting against those who support the law.
This pernicious and unfair practice has got to be stopped, somehow.
Yes, Baucuscare has many “unforeseen” consequences. The complexity of working through 50 state exchanges is a feature, not a bug. Likely so is this.
This is going to be part of many ads in the next cycle. “Obamacare is why your hours got cut”. “Obamacare made you too expensive to keep on”.
You heard it here first…
Holy crap. It’s June 2013. Does this mean we’re going to have to endure SEVENTEEN MORE MONTHS of the Republicans going on and on and on and on and on about Benghazi and the IRS?
At the same time, if this is their strategy, it sends a pretty clear signal that they don’t plan to DO anything during the 113th Congress except go on and on and on and on and on about freaking Benghazi and the IRS.
Meanwhile, reality keeps marching forward. It isn’t possibly to predict what kinds of crises will emerge over the next 17 months, but we can be fairly confident about some of them. I keep coming back to two:
I want to believe.
I really, really want to believe that red-state Republicans will vote for Democrats because of farm issues.
But, then, every two years, Republicans want to believe that religiously-inclined minorities will vote for Republican because of cultural issues.
At some point, the Democrats are going to annihilate the Republicans. But we’re not there yet. As Booman said, this midterm is not on favorable ground. Plus it’s a midterm, which tends to disproportionately turn out older, more Republican voters. Obama’s not on the ticket, which results in reduced Democratic turnout. I predict a tough election. We’ll have to work hard to prevent a rout.
Oh, good, the Senate passed something:
Roll Call.
Pork for some insider company.
Nope.
The conservative voters hurt badly by sequestration blame the Democrats, socialism, the blue-state takers, blah, blah, blah.
They don’t blame the GOP.
They endlessly whine about the biased liberal media blaming the GOP.
They bellow about tyranny and fat welfare mamas trading food-stamps for crack.
And they demand the IRS be abolished, apparently convinced that Washington will just print money to pay them for their services when there is no more tax revenue to use.
Insane morons.