Midterms DA – DDI

Midterms DA – DDI	1

Dems good 1NC	2

Dems good 1NC	3

Dems good 1NC	4

Dems bad 1NC	5

Dems bad 1NC	6

Dems bad 1NC	7

***DEMS WIN	8

Dems win – not enough threatened seats	9

Dems win – general	10

Dems win the House	11

Dems win – Tea Party	12

Dems win – polls	13

Dems win – momentum	14

Dems win – A2: economy	15

Dems win – popular policies	16

Dems win – base energy	17

***DEMS LOSE	18

Dems lose – general	19

Dems lose – general	20

Dems lose – economy	21

Dems lose – enthusiasm gap	22

Dems lose – anti-incumbency	23

Dems lose – Obama unpopular	24

Dems lose – spending	25

Dems lose – too far left	26

Dems lose – legislative wins don’t help	27

Dems lose – polls	28

Dems win – empirics	29

Dems lose – Rangel	30

Dems lose – brink	31

Dems lose – Gibbs	32

Dems lose – A2: cash advantage	33

A2: Polls	34

***DEMS GOOD INTERNAL LINKS	35

Withdrawal hurts Dems	36

Afghanistan withdrawal hurts Dems	37

Liberal foreign policy hurts Dems	38

Liberal foreign policy hurts Dems	39

Focus link – foreign policy focus hurts Dems	40

Weak foreign policy hurts Dems in midterms	41

Weak foreign policy hurts Dems in midterms	42

Popular policies don’t improve Obama popularity	43

Policies can’t excite Democrats	44

Link only goes one way – withdrawal can’t gain votes	45

Obama strong on security now	46

Obama is vulnerable on security	47

***DEMS BAD INTERNAL LINKS	48

Liberal foreign policies help Dems – base support	49

Troop Withdrawal Mobilizes Base	50

Base Key	51

Withdrawal helps Dems – anti-Bush	52

Afghan withdrawal key to Dems	53

New popular policies ( Dem win	54

Liberal policies help Dems	55

Obama weak on security NU	56

***GENERAL INTERNAL LINKS	57

Policies don’t affect midterms	58

AT: Policies don’t affect midterms	59

Economy overwhelms the link	60

Economy outweighs the link – foreign policy insignificant	61

Foreign policy irrelevant to midterms	62

Foreign policy key to midterms	63

Foreign policy won’t affect Dem base	64

Midterms = Referendum on Obama	65

Midterms = Referendum on Obama	66

Midterms = Referendum on Obama	67

***DEMS GOOD IMPACTS	68

GOP win bad – govt shutdown	69

GOP win bad – govt shutdown	70

Shutdown kills the economy	71

Gridlock Bad- Kills Response efforts	72

Gridlock bad – deficits	73

GOP win ( impeachment	74

GOP takeover doesn’t solve spending	75

***DEMS BAD IMPACTS	76

Gridlock good – economy	77

GOP Good - Divided Government	78

GOP Good – Proliferation	79

No shutdown – only gridlock	80

***FLEXIBILE IMPACTS	81

GOP win kills Obama’s agenda	82

GOP win kills Obama’s agenda	83

Dem win ( Obama agenda	84

GOP win kills Obama’s foreign policy	85

Dem win ( immigration reform	86

GOP win kills immigration	87

Dem win ( cap and trade	88

GOP win kills cap and trade	89

GOP win kills cap and trade	90

GOP win kills cap and trade	91

Midterms not key to cap and trade	92

Dems ( taxes	93

GOP ( SKFTA	94

GOP ( SKFTA	95

GOP kills peace process	96

GOP takeover kills health care	97

GOP takeover doesn’t kill health care	98

***A2: IMPACTS	99

No impact to GOP win – they’ll moderate	100

No impact to GOP win – provokes long-term Dem majority	101

No impact to Dem win – filibuster kills agenda	102

No impact to Dem win – filibuster kills agenda	103

No midterms impact – Dem control inevitable	104

Yes filibuster reform	105

Yes filibuster reform – Biden/Reid	106

No filibuster reform – Dems	107

Dems good 1NC

Democrats will recover in the midterms, but new controversial issues doom them

Ed Hornick, CNN political analyst, 7/21/10, Democrats agenda running out of gas as midterms approach, http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/21/democrats.agenda/ , AL

Congressional Democrats have had a fairly successful time pushing through their agenda since taking control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. Congress passed items backed by President Obama such as health care reform, a financial regulatory bill and economic stimulus measures. The most recent wins came Tuesday when Senate Democrats broke a Republican filibuster on extending unemployment benefits to some Americans, and a Senate committee approved Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan. But that might be the last victories Democrats see in Congress for a while with both parties starting to pay more attention to midterm elections than legislation. Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said that there isn't any time left on Congress' calendar this year to tackle controversial issues such as climate change and immigration reform. "I just don't think there is going to be the time or the ability to develop political consensus on those issues," he said. "I'm not even sure it's smart politically given that the White House has had three major sweeping legislative reforms. I think there's only so much the system can take at one time." Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, noted Democrats are exhausted after pushing through their legislative agenda. "The Democratic majority simply does not have the will or the ability to push through any more significant policy changes through Congress," he said. "If Capitol Hill was an airport, the legislative runways are jam-packed -- but there's no jet fuel to allow them to take off." The reason? As the political phrase goes, "It's the economy stupid." With high unemployment and worries over the federal debt, other issues seem to pale in comparison. "Some may see immigration and energy as being very important but second to the issue of creating jobs," said Epstein, former chief minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. "It's always difficult to push through immigration reform. It's especially difficult to push through the reform when you're facing 10 percent unemployment." A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released in May found that 42 percent of those surveyed said the economy was the most important issue facing the country today. Only 5 percent said that energy was a top issue; immigration didn't even make the list. In a June CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 73 percent said things were going badly in the country; 27 percent said things were well. Those statistics are undoubtedly front and center for members of Congress as they head back home to campaign for November elections. The time for legislative work will likely be pushed to the side. For Democrats in close races, any work on controversial issues could hurt them in November. "Vulnerable and conservative Democrats are tired of carrying the president's water on left-wing policies," Bonjean said. "They would rather focus on how to attract independents to vote for them in November." Epstein said that Democrats could turn it around -- with the help of Obama. "What I think the White House needs to do is a better job at selling what they've done. They've got a pretty impressive package of accomplishments: the stimulus, health care and financial regulation. And they should be proud of those accomplishments. I still think there is a more effective sales job they need to do on it." Even if Democrats lose their control of Congress in November, Epstein said it's important for the White House take a page from President Clinton's playbook. "They need to take a look back at the Clinton years. President Clinton was very, very effective in making both the liberal base and the moderates believe he was secretly on their side. The way he did that was he had a legislative agenda that sent the right signals to both of them."

[plan unpopular]

Dems good 1NC

Keeping foreign policy off the radar is key to victory. Obama needs to keep the focus on rebuilding domestic support

Bill Schneider, National Journal, 12-12-09, http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/pl_20091212_7690.php

How do we know the economy is behind Obama's drop in the polls? It happened in late November, before the president announced his new Afghanistan policy. The CNN poll found that the decline was sharpest among blue-collar white voters, where Obama suffered an 18-percentage-point plunge (from 54 percent approval in mid-November to 36 percent in early December). Those voters are keenly attuned to economic issues, and they are hurting. Obama's new Afghanistan policy does not seem to have done him any harm -- quite the opposite, in fact. In the post-speech CNN poll, 62 percent of the public said they favored his plan to send about 30,000 more troops to the country. An even larger majority -- 66 percent -- said they supported Obama's plan to start withdrawing troops in 2011. In the same CNN survey, only 46 percent said they favored America's involvement in Afghanistan. Unpopular war; popular strategy. The president's Afghanistan policy is not modeled on President Bush's Iraq policy of 2003, which stressed democracy and transforming the Middle East. Rather, Obama's move is more like Bush's Iraq policy of 2007, the "surge." That escalation triggered an outpouring of rage from Democrats. The 2006 midterm had been a referendum on Iraq, and the result was a decisive repudiation of the war. Bush's surge two months later looked like a gesture of contempt toward voters. Politically, however, the surge worked. The military situation in Iraq stabilized, at least long enough to give the United States cover to start withdrawing troops. Consequently, Iraq began to disappear from the U.S. agenda. The Iraq war never became popular; it is still overwhelmingly regarded as a mistake. But by the time of last year's presidential election, Iraq was no longer a major issue. Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified at a congressional hearing last week that Afghanistan "will look a lot like Iraq, where some districts and provinces will be able to be turned over fairly quickly, with the U.S. in a tactical and then strategic overwatch -- sort of cavalry over the hill, if you will, for a time." What the Obama policy explicitly rejects is Bush's original Iraq policy of nation building, an approach that Obama seemed to endorse for Afghanistan as recently as March. Then came mounting U.S. casualties and the Afghanistan election in August. Americans began to ask why they should be fighting and dying to save a government that steals elections. "The nation that I am most interested in building is our own," Obama said on December 1, as he explained his Afghanistan policy. This is the first time a Democratic president has sent U.S. ground troops to fight a war since Vietnam. "The president made a courageous decision knowing full well that people in his own party would be the most vocal critics," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told The New York Times. Sounds like triangulation. Congressional Democrats are worried about going into the 2010 midterms with a demoralized base that feels betrayed by Obama's Afghanistan policy. For the moment, however, the polls show that both Democratic and Republican voters favor that policy -- Democrats because they support Obama; Republicans because they approve of sending more troops. Independents share neither sentiment and are the least enthusiastic. The White House is hoping that this surge will do what the last one did: get the issue off the political agenda. Two days after his Afghanistan speech, the president shifted his spotlight to the economy with a White House jobs summit. A recent Pew Research Center poll asked people which is more important for Obama to focus on, foreign policy or domestic policy. Seventy-three percent said domestic policy. That's the highest number since the beginning of President Clinton's second term.

GOP victory collapses the economy – sends a signal that the US has no interest in closing the deficit

Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics, New York Times, 7-16-10

Why should this scare you? On paper, solving America’s long-run fiscal problems is eminently doable: stronger cost control for Medicare plus a moderate rise in taxes would get us most of the way there. And the perception that the deficit is manageable has helped keep U.S. borrowing costs low. But if politicians who insist that the way to reduce deficits is to cut taxes, not raise them, start winning elections again, how much faith can anyone have that we’ll do what needs to be done? Yes, we can have a fiscal crisis. But if we do, it won’t be because we’ve spent too much trying to create jobs and help the unemployed. It will be because investors have looked at our politics and concluded, with justification, that we’ve turned into a banana republic. Of course, flirting with crisis is arguably part of the plan. There has always been a sense in which voodoo economics was a cover story for the real doctrine, which was “starve the beast”: slash revenue with tax cuts, then demand spending cuts to close the resulting budget gap. The point is that starve the beast basically amounts to deliberately creating a fiscal crisis, in the belief that the crisis can be used to push through unpopular policies, like dismantling Social Security. Anyway, we really should thank Senators Kyl and McConnell for their sudden outbursts of candor. They’ve now made it clear, in case anyone had doubts, that their previous posturing on the deficit was entirely hypocritical. If they really do have the kind of electoral win they’re expecting, they won’t try to reduce the deficit — they’ll try to make it explode by demanding even more budget-busting tax cuts.

Dems good 1NC

Nuclear war

Mead 9 – Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (Walter Russell, “Only Makes You Stronger,” The New Republic, 2/4/09, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-

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History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.

Dems bad 1NC

Republicans will win midterms

Stuart Rothenberg is editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, 7/19/10, We Don’t Need a DNC Lecture on Midterms, http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003704432&cpage=2

Of course, for every national poll number that seems to lend credence to the DNC’s argument, there is one that it happens to omit that undercuts the memo’s fundamental point. For example, while the DNC memo uses the president’s job performance numbers from two recent polls that showed him with a net positive rating (50 percent approve/47 percent disapprove in the ABC/Washington Post poll and 52 percent approve/44 percent disapprove in Bloomberg’s survey), the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (45 percent approve/48 percent disapprove) and Gallup’s July 5-11 survey (46 percent approve/47 percent disapprove) showed a net negative approval for President Barack Obama . Gallup’s most recent Obama weekly approval rating of 46 percent (July 12-18) is identical to President Bill Clinton’s 1994 pre-election Gallup approval rating (Nov. 2-6), just days before the Democratic Party got slaughtered in Clinton’s first midterm. The DNC memo addresses generic ballot results only in passing, noting that “generic support for Republicans this year is nowhere near that of Democrats in 2006.” In October 2006, the Washington Post survey showed Democrats with a 13-point advantage, but the most recent ABC/Post survey had Republicans only up by a single point. Apparently someone at the DNC hasn’t figured out that that’s a 14-point swing in the generic, and a swing that large is likely to produce a considerable swing in House seats. Interestingly, Gallup’s generic ballot, which the firm asserts has proved to be a “highly accurate predictor of the national vote for the House of Representatives in midterm election years,” has shown the two parties roughly even among registered voters throughout the year. If you take that as good news for Democrats, think again. This far out from Election Day, Democrats usually have an advantage. But midterm elections are all about turnout, and Republicans normally have a turnout advantage. That’s why the folks at Gallup note that “the closer the registered voter results get to an even split, the better Republicans can expect to do, given usual turnout patterns.” This year, of course, Republican enthusiasm is high — the highest since Gallup started asking its relative enthusiasm question in 1994 (“Compared to previous elections, are you more enthusiastic about voting than usual, or less enthusiastic?”). Moreover, Gallup’s net enthusiasm score is “the largest relative party advantage Gallup has measured in a single midterm election-year poll.” I should note that some of the DNC’s observations are on the money. Yes, the Republican Party’s image is still in the tank. And yes, Obama is more popular now than President George W. Bush was at the time of the 2006 midterms. But those statistical realities are not news to those of us who follow elections, and they may have only a small effect on the size of the Republican wave in November. Finally, it’s interesting that the DNC memo relies solely on national survey data. Trying to understand the fight for the House and Senate by looking only at national numbers is like driving a car with one eye closed. District-level and statewide poll data show Democratic candidates in anywhere from dangerous to terrible shape. The Democratic generic ballot has dropped precipitously in most competitive Congressional districts, and many Democratic incumbents, both in the House and Senate, are performing horribly in ballot tests. How bad are the Democratic numbers? About as bad as they were in 1994, and about as bad as Republican numbers were in 2006. We have no way of knowing for certain how badly Democrats will be punished by voters in November. But unless things turn around completely, the damage will be severe. Both the House and now the Senate are at risk. Gibbs may have been undiplomatic to admit the obvious. But Democrats don’t look in touch with reality when they waste their hard-earned credibility distributing memos that guarantee that their party will “maintain strong majorities” in both chambers of Congress.

Dems bad 1NC

Dems needs to make a genuine commitment to left-wing foreign policy to get crucial base turnout – it’ll swing the election

Alexander Bolton, The Hill, 12-3-09, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/70355-liberals-warn-obama

Liberals have also watched with dismay as Republicans and centrist Democrats have shaped healthcare reform legislation to reduce the affordability of mandatory insurance, limit abortion coverage to women who accept federal subsidies and levy an excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans that many union members negotiate for — often in lieu of pay increases. As a result, they have little patience and have greeted Obama’s decision on Afghanistan with strong skepticism. Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.), among the most outspoken anti-war Democrats in the Senate, said Obama’s plan to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 is not adequate because it leaves open the possibility of only a few returning home and a substantial force remaining for years. “It’s not exactly a timeline that’s meaningful to me,” said Feingold. “The White House was just trying to check a box on this and failed. I’m pleased the concept of trying to start bringing the troops home is there, but it needs far more fleshing-out to be credible.” MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy organization, sent an e-mail alert Tuesday to 5 million members around the country asking them to “Call the White House and tell the president that we want him to focus on bringing our troops home, not escalating our involvement in Afghanistan.” “There is no doubt Washington has to worry about how the base is reacting and feeling,” said Nita Chaudhary, national campaign and organizing director at MoveOn.org. “It’s incredibly important heading into next year, because the base knocks on doors, makes phone calls and gives money. “Whether they want to be involved depends on how the fight in Washington has been waged,” she said. White House officials could not excite liberal voters merely by waving a long list of accomplishments, Chaudhary warned, saying the details of healthcare reform and other legislation would determine the response. “It’s a dangerous assumption that substance doesn’t matter,” she said. A new poll commissioned by Daily Kos, a prominent liberal blog, found that the Democratic base has lost a lot of enthusiasm since the 2008 election. The survey by Research 2000 found that only 56 percent of Democratic respondents said they would definitely or probably vote in the 2010 congressional elections, compared to 40 percent who said they would definitely or likely not vote. Republican voters were much more enthusiastic by comparison, posting an 81 percent to 14 percent split. Those numbers are alarming for Democrats as various polls show anti-incumbent sentiment growing among voters. A new survey by Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville shows that independent voters are losing faith in Obama’s handling of the economy. “This is about the economy, and it is not pretty,” the strategists concluded. “The Democrats’ biggest loss has come on who would do a better job handling the economy.” Democrats facing difficult reelections next year agree with the assessment of their leaders that the voters will rally behind Democrats if they can add to their list of accomplishments. “What you do is get things done,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) when asked how his party could energize its base.

GOP control over Congress is key to stop hegemonic decline

Charles Krauthammer Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist, 10/19/09 "Decline is a Choice, The Weekly Standard, http://weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/056lfnpr.asp?pg=2, AL

Among these crosscurrents, my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline--or continued ascendancy--is in our hands. Not that decline is always a choice. Britain's decline after World War II was foretold, as indeed was that of Europe, which had been the dominant global force of the preceding centuries. The civilizational suicide that was the two world wars, and the consequent physical and psychological exhaustion, made continued dominance impossible and decline inevitable. The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We--whom Lincoln once called God's "almost chosen people"--did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world's co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon--and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever. Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States--controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.

Dems bad 1NC

Global nuclear war

Zalmay Khalilzad, (Former Assist Prof of Poli Sci at Columbia), 1995 Spring, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2; P. 84

Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

***DEMS WIN

Dems win – not enough threatened seats

Dems will maintain house- not enough seats in play

ASHLEY SOUTHALL, staff writer for the New York Times, 7/23/10, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/hoyer-says-democrats-wont-lose-house/, AL

The House majority leader, Steny H. Hoyer, said Tuesday that Democrats would not lose the House in November’s midterm elections. Mr. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, was responding to comments by the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Republicans could capture enough seats in the fall regain control of the House. “Do I think he’s right and there are enough seats in play?” Mr. Hoyer said. “Probably close. I don’t think the fact that they’re in play does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that I think we’re going to lose the House. I don’t think we’re going to lose the House.”

Dems win – general

Dems will still control the Congress- Republicans concede it will take two cycles

Nick Ottens, staff writer for the Atlantic Sentinel, 7/24/10, Republicans Unlikely to Win Back Congress, http://atlanticsentinel.com/2010/07/republicans-unlikely-to-win-back-congress/, AL

Republicans have high hopes for November’s midterm elections for Congress and for good reason. The president and his party are deeply unpopular with moderate and conservative voters, in spite or rather because of their push for health care and financial reform; monumental legislations which the opposition has been able to taint as unprecedented government takeovers. Although set to book major victories, Republicans unlikely to reclaim majorities in either house of Congress however. So many as thirty seats in the House of Representatives may change hands come November according to recent polls. In many of the states which Barack Obama carried in 2008 however, Democrats are still able to swing the balance in their favor. The same is true for the Senate although the Democrats’ majority is the upper chamber will be slim indeed. Republican candidates are expected to claim victories in the states of Delaware, Indiana and North Dakota, where incumbent Democrats are retiring, as well as in Arkansas. Traditional battleground states as Colorado, Pennsylvania and Nevada are also within the Republicans’ reach which would bring them up to 48 seats compared to 41 today. The states that will decide the election are California, Illinois, Washington and Wisconsin. In all four the major parties are virtually tied. The former, among them Illinois, the president’s home state, are Democratic strongholds; in 2000 and 2004, presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry carried Wisconsin by margins of just five and ten thousand votes respectively but the state hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since Bob Kasten was defeated in 1992. Republicans admit that a Senate takeover is unlikely to be achieved this fall. Senator John Cornyn of Texas who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledged so much last week. “I think it’s going to be a two-cycle process,” he told C-SPAN’s Newsmakers program on July 18, meaning that Republicans expect to win the Senate by 2012 when more states in the south and midwest will be up for grabs. In effect, the midterms will likely eradicate the impressive gains made by Democrats in 2008 but not prevent them from governing. Unlike the Revolution of 1994, the elections won’t allow the Republicans to derail the administration any more than they currently can.

Dems win the House

GOP can’t take back the House - too many seats

Stuart Rothenberg, Editor of Rothenberg Political Reports, 7/12/10 "NBC's First Read Misses A Key Point," http://rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com/ AL

In looking at the reasons why Republicans might win the House in November, as well as why they might not, NBC’s First Read made the following point: “winning 39 seats is a tall order. After all, when Democrats won back the House in 2006 -- during the height of violence in Iraq and after Hurricane Katrina -- they picked up 30 House seats. The GOP will need almost 10 more than that.” The numbers are right, but they lack context and, therefore, are misleading. Yes, taking over 42 or 43 Democratic-held districts is a challenge (some GOP seats are likely to fall in November, increasing the number of Republican victories needed to take over the House), and those are big numbers historically. But First Read missed a crucial point: A party’s chances of winning House seats depends on a number of things, not the least of which is where it starts in an election cycle.

Dems win – Tea Party

GOP won’t win- Tea Party splits party

Mark Halperin, staff writer, 7/12/10 “How the Tea Party May Hurt GOP Senate Prospects

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2003079,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular, AL

The Tea Party may be the best thing that has happened to the Republican Party since Barack Obama got elected President. Its members, fed up and fired up, have sacrificed their time and personal pursuits to try to alter the direction of the government and effect real change. Much like the movement that helped propel Obama to the White House, the Tea Party has challenged the establishment and injected passion into politics. But now it could cost Republicans key Senate seats in November. These dual truths spotlight the state of America's two major political parties as the country heads into the midterms, examines Obama's first two years in office and looks beyond to 2012. There are two significant differences between Obama's grass-roots upswell and the rise of the Tea Party adherents. First, Obama attracted people across a wide swath of the political spectrum, from the far left to just right of center; the Tea Party is almost exclusively hard right. Second, the Obamans were insurgent in their mind-set but downright establishment in their technology, organization, fundraising and ability to use the existing rules to beat the power players at their own game. For all its energy, the Tea Party has not had the chance to demonstrate the same sustained capacity for winning methodology and follow-through. With their unpredictable styles and imprudent mouths, the Tea Party–favored candidates, so dominant in the primaries, have put their general contests in peril at an especially critical time — when Republicans need to net 10 seats in order to win back control of the chamber. The Tea Party may display an admirable drive, but it is an indisputable reality that the same purity of views that has allowed the movement to dominate many primaries leaves the GOP vulnerable in November.

Dems win – polls

Dems will maintain majority- polls prove

Michael O'Brien, political analyst for the Hill, 7/20/10, New Gallup poll shows support for Democrats ticks up on generic ballot http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/109727-support-for-dems-ticks-upward-in-generic-ballot

Support for Democrats ticked upward in a generic ballot test against Republicans going into the fall's midterm elections. A new Gallup poll released on Monday saw Democrats open up a six-point margin over the GOP, driven in part by a small bump in support by independents. Forty-nine percent of voters said they'd prefer a Democratic candidate for Congress if this November's midterm election contests were held today, while 43 percent expressed support for a generic Republican candidate. That support is up from a virtual 47-46 percent tie between Democrats and Republicans in last week's tracking poll, a change that represents the "first statistically significant lead" for Democrats since March, according to Gallup. And while independents still favor Republican candidates 43 percent to 39, that margin narrowed from the 14-point lead the GOP maintained just last week, when independents expressed support for them, 48-34 percent. The polling organization suggested that the Democratic uptick could be driven by the party's success at passing Wall Street reform through Congress in the past week, though Republican enthusiasm for voting in this fall's elections has also increased.

Dems win – momentum

Dems will win – made up 14 point gap

Chris Cillizza, writes "The Fix", a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House for the newspaper and website. Chris has appeared as a guest on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN to talk politics, 7/20/10, Democrats retake lead in generic ballot, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/1-2-former-georgia-secretary.html

A week removed from an internecine fight about whether or not control of the House is up for grabs this fall (it is), Democrats got some welcome news this morning as the party re-took the lead in Gallup's generic congressional ballot question. Forty-nine percent of those tested said they preferred a generic Democratic candidate for Congress while 43 percent said they would opt for a generic Republican. Democrats' six point margin represents a bump from the Gallup data earlier this month -- Democrat 47 percent, Republican 46 percent -- and marks the first time that Democrats have had a statistically significant edge on the question so far this election cycle. The reason for Democrats' upward movement in the poll appears to be independent voters where Republicans now hold a four point generic edge (43 percent to 39 percent), a major drop from Gallup polling earlier this month that showed the GOP with a 14-point margin.

Dems win – A2: economy

Dems will win midterms – they’ll control the spin on the economy

Alex Ogle, staff writer, 7/18/10, Biden says Democrats will 'shock' everyone in midterms, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jB2FhVbAaGzdHa1PofeVW0DadAOg

Vice President Joe Biden brushed aside suggestions on Sunday that Democrats will suffer big losses in November midterm elections, vowing that Barack Obama's governing party will "shock the heck out of everybody." Speaking on the ABC News program "This Week," Biden dismissed prevailing wisdom that Democrats, 17 months into Obama's transformative residency in the White House, would suffer a drubbing at the hands of salivating Republicans. "I don't think the losses are going to be bad at all," Biden said. "I think we're going to shock the heck out of everybody." Biden said he was "confident when people take a look at what has happened since we've taken office in November and comparing it to the alternative, we're going to be in great shape." The vice president said he believes the Obama administration will get credit from voters for helping guide the economy out of recession and passing key legislation on health care and financial reform. "It's just going to take time," Biden said. "The election is not until November. And I think we're going to have to firmly make our case." Obama has launched into campaign mode in recent weeks, hoping to transform the spectacular grassroots support from Democrats and independent voters which propelled him to the presidency in 2008 into a full-bodied platform for his party in the upcoming congressional races. In a swing through western states earlier this month, Obama sought to brand Republicans as extreme and incompetent, reminding voters the party were in charge when the economy pitched into the deepest recession since the 1930s. "I think we can make it and especially in the context of who's going to be opposing us," Biden said Sunday. "Compared to the alternative, I think we're going to get a fair amount of credit by November and I think we're going to do fine."

Dems win – popular policies

Dems will hold on – they can point to real legislative accomplishments and recent GOP mis-rule

Shane D'Aprile, staff writer for the Hill, 07/18/10, Endangered freshman Democrats hold cash on hand advantage over GOP, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/109447-endangered-freshman-democrats-hold-cash-on-hand-advantage-over-gop

In a polling memo Thursday, the DNC argued that 2010 is not shaping up like 1994, when the party lost control of the House for the first time in more than 40 years. "In fact, Democrats today are in a greater position of strength than Democrats in 1994 or Republicans in 2006," the memo read. "Democrats have real accomplishments that benefit middle class families and small businesses to campaign on, an economy that is once again growing and creating jobs and a public that still remembers the disastrous consequences of failed Republican policies that cut taxes for the wealthy, cut rules for big corporations and cut the middle class loose to fend for themselves."

Dems win – base energy

Dems will win midterms- Gibbs concession energized the base

Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources, 7/14/10, Midterm madness: Spokesman confirms obvious http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071401777_5.html

Thirty-nine House seats is an awful lot to win. Even in a favorable political environment, the Republicans may well fall short. So was the acknowledgment a calculated strategy on Gibbs's part? One reason I don't think so: David Axelrod was on three other Sunday shows -- in fact, I ran into him at CNN and we talked about LeBron -- and he made no such comments. If there had been a concerted White House effort to peddle this message, both officials would have been reading from the same script. Not that this has stopped everyone from reading the tea leaves. In Slate, John Dickerson examines the angles: "Did Gibbs let slip one of those truths that everyone in Washington knows but that as the president's spokesman is not supposed to admit? No. He merely articulated the White House political strategy. "In a campaign where neither party benefits much from positive messages and where the Democratic base is dispirited and less enthusiastic than its counterparts, fear is the best motivator. Since Sarah Palin isn't running for anything this time around, the best specter the president has to conjure is Republicans in control of Congress. "Gibbs was also trying to set expectations. Obama's party is on track to lose in the midterms. If Gibbs and fellow Democrats can make retaking Congress the standard by which Republican gains are judged, they shape the coverage of election night. If Republicans win big but don't take control of Congress, reporters might write fewer words about how the loss was a huge defeat for the president."

***DEMS LOSE

Dems lose – general

Democratic will lose – economy, empirics, and low approval

Jonathan Bernstein, political science writer, 7/20/10, http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/07/economy-elections-and-political-science.html, AL

So, yes, the economy isn't the only thing that matters in elections. In presidential elections, it turns out that it's not really a good idea to subject your nation to an endless, high-casualty war, especially one that you're not winning. There's also evidence that there's a general reaction against keeping the same party in office indefinitely, so it's a plus if your party has been out of the White House for three or more terms. And, yes, it's not a good idea to select someone far from the ideological mainstream -- that's really only mattered significantly with Goldwater and McGovern (and even then, only to the margin of defeat), but it probably has made a bit of difference in other elections. In Congressional elections, candidates matter to some extent. Open seats are more difficult to defend, so an incumbent party hit with a wave of retirements will tend to be hurt in November. Challenger quality matters, so a party that does a good job of recruiting a solid crop of candidates (as the Democrats did in 1974 or the GOP in 1994) will be better off than one that doesn't (such as the Dems in 2002). In other words, yes, there are systematic things that matter in elections in addition to the economy. The point is that when we talk about elections (or, perhaps, presidential popularity) to look to those things first. Beyond them? Yes, there's also some margin of error, so we can try to explain that by factors specific to particular elections. The complaint of the political scientists is that this should be done, and usually isn't done, in the context of the systematic factors. So, yes, perhaps if Barack Obama gave a few more better speeches about better subjects he might have nudged his approval ratings up a point or two. But the overall context of those approval ratings is going to be the big, systematic factors. And, in fact, Obama is basically more or less where one would expect given those factors. Similarly, the Democrats should expect to lose seats this November because of the big, systematic factors -- the biggest and most obvious of which is just that they've done so well in the House recently that they're defending lots of marginal seats, and have very few marginal seat targets.

Dems lose – general

Dems will lose - multiple warrants

Andrew Malcolm, political analyst for LA Times and Washington Monthly, 7/21/10, A mid-summer look at midterms: How bad will bad be for the Democrats of Obama, Pelosi and Reid? http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/07/barack-obama-democratic-party-house-races.html AL

Today, as everyone remembers, is the 145th anniversary of the Wild West's first recorded showdown, when Wild Bill Hickok met Dave Tutt in a Missouri town square and Dave didn't walk away. In 104 days comes the nation's next big political showdown, the first midterm elections of Democratic President Barack Obama. Unless your name is George W. Bush or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a president's first midterms are historically big trouble for the party controlling the White House, with modern losses for his party averaging 17 seats in the House of Representatives. At the moment things look much worse than that for Obama's Democrats on Nov. 2, 2010. Here are a few things they face: Obama's not up for election, so his name won't be on any ballot to draw out the same volume of motivated youths and African Americans as in 2008. Not to mention the absence of Obama's 750-million bucks. Additionally, polls show the crucial independents began peeling away from him last summer over healthcare. Obama's popularity is down overall, now generally under 50% from about 70% on Inauguration Day. Gallup finds the Democrat's approval has declined every quarter in office, now standing at.... ...47.3%, his lowest yet. That puts Obama way below his Republican predecessor's 74.9% and right down there just above Bill Clinton's 46.1% at this point. Clinton, of course, went on to lose both houses of Congress to the Republicans in 1994 for the first time in four decades, an electoral spanking that sent him scurrying back to the political center and a decisive 1996 re-election. Approval of the Democrat-dominated Congress now is near historic lows in most polls. Less than one-in-four Americans say their government has their consent. Obama, a former state and federal legislator, will sign his latest Grand Legislative Reform today, to remodel government financial regulation and hail it as a big step into the future. But in the present, after spending $787 billion on economic stimulus and, defying public opinion polls to spend a year debating healthcare, unemployment is still actually increasing in some states. It's likely to worsen down South under Obama's offshore oil drilling moratorium, which some now fear may cost more long-term jobs than the oil spill itself. The deficit now has more digits than non-federal calculators can digest; frightened, frustrated voters rank it with terrorism as a top concern. Last month was the worst for casualties in the nearly nine-year-old Afghan war; this month could be worse. Those Americans believing the effort is worth it are shrinking. (BTW, do you believe in trickle down politics? About 6,000 of the states' 7,400 legislative seats are on the November ballot, too. (As NPR's Alan Greenblatt notes, a good result for the GOP in state legislative races means it will control more of next year's nationwide decennial redistricting, which will stand until after the 2020 census.) Back in March here's what Baltimore Democratic dinner donors heard Vice President Joe Biden foresee for their $2,500: Barack generated such an overwhelming turnout and enthusiasm (in 2008), that we had the biggest turnout in history. It was gigantic. And a lot of really good Democrats got washed up on shore and all of a sudden were congressmen, in districts that Democrats have no business having congressmen. I'm not here to tell you we're gaining seats. But I'm telling you, we're going to go into the second half of our administration, with a solid Democratic majority in the House and the Senate, and with the wind at our backs. Here's what Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs got his Biden shot off for saying earlier this month: There's no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control" (of the House of Representatives). Here's what House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said last Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union": I don't think we're talking about a big loss, Candy. Sometimes Biden predicts a Democratic upset win. But here's what he said last Sunday on ABC's "This Week:" I don't think the losses are going to be bad at all. So, just wondering, JB, exactly what kind of political losses are good? Notice the pattern here: Losses. No talk of winning or gaining. Or even holding steady. Our colleague Ashley Powers highlighted one difficult Democrat House race in Nevada here on The Ticket. Republicans will try to make the election a referendum on the priorities, policies, spending and deficits of Obama, Senate Majority Harry Reid and the House. Democrats are already trying to make the election about alleged obstruction by the feckless Republican minorities in Congress. The predictions of GOP success by nonpartisan political prognosticators have been climbing steadily all year. One of the most respected, Stu Rothenberg, has called large GOP gains "inevitable" for months and recently raised the top of his estimate for a Republican House pickup to 33 with 15 weeks still to go.

Dems lose – economy

Republicans will win midterms due to bad economy- Gibbs concedes

Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources, 7/14/10, Midterm madness: Spokesman confirms obvious http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071401777_5.html

The Democrats are in trouble this year. You know it, I know it, your Uncle Al knows it, your local bartender knows it. This is not the kind of state secret you need to hire a Russian spy to uncover. So why was it big news in the political world when Robert Gibbs acknowledged it? One theory: We've become so accustomed to political players insisting everything's fine when it's clearly not, to candidates proclaiming they can win when they're down 40 points, that a glimmer of candor is . . . somehow unsettling. So when the White House spokesman declared on "Meet the Press" that "there is no doubt there are enough seats at play that could cause Republicans to gain control" of the House, you could hear pundits across America smacking their foreheads. What was he thinking? Why did he do this? What does it all mean? If that seems strange to you, remember that some in this gang are feverishly trying to handicap the 2012 presidential election before we've even gotten through the midterms. The latest WP/ABC poll contains more bad news for the president's party, with Obama down to 43 percent approval and seven in 10 registered voters saying they have no confidence in either Democratic or Republican lawmakers. Although that might seem a bipartisan rejection, the reality is that more Dems will wind up being punished -- both because their party can be blamed for the mess in Washington and because plenty of marginal members were swept in during the 2006 and 2008 campaigns. If unemployment were 7 percent instead of 9.5, those numbers would look very different. (In this CBS poll, 52 percent say Obama "has spent too little time dealing with the economy.") But that's life when you're president. The oil spill isn't helping, either.

Republicans will win the house- empirics and the economy

Geoff Johnson, staff writer, 7/17/10, Midterm and Long Term Electoral Prospects, http://www.gcadvocate.com/2010/07/midterm-and-long-term-electoral-prospects/

There is no question that the 2010 midterm elections are going to be fairly bru­tal for the Democratic Party. While there are a num­ber of rea­sons for this, two are cen­tral: the president’s party usually loses congressional seats at midterm elections, and the economy is still largely in sham­bles, particularly with respect to employ­ment levels (which is what vot­ers are noticing). Republicans need to pick up 39 seats to capture the House of Representatives, and with over 60 Democratic seats in play and very high voter enthusiasm among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there is a good chance that John Boehner will be the next Speaker of the House. It’s also pos­si­ble for the Repub­li­cans to take power in the Sen­ate, though that seems to be significantly less likely. It’s fairly certain, however, that the Democrats will lose at least several seats in the upper chamber where they are obviously having enormous trouble passing legislation as it is.

Dems lose – enthusiasm gap

Republicans will win- more enthusiastic

Chris Cillizza, writes "The Fix", a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House for the newspaper and website. Chris has appeared as a guest on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN to talk politics, 7/20/10, Democrats retake lead in generic ballot, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/1-2-former-georgia-secretary.html

Although the generic has clearly improved for Democrats, some of the other numbers in the poll should provide them pause about the election to come -- most notably a widening enthusiasm gap between the two parties' bases. More than half (51 percent) of self-identifying Republicans describe themselves as "very enthusiastic" about the coming election while roughly half that number (28 percent) of Democrats say the same. If midterm elections are about base turnout and history suggests they are that sort of base energy disparity could signal major Democratic losses in the fall -- no matter what the generic ballot says.

Republicans will win- Dems just don’t care

Greg Sargent, political reporter for the Washington Post, The New York Observer, and New York magazine, 7/12/10, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/how_do_you_make_rank_and_file.html

As you know, over the weekend Robert Gibbs dropped a political bomb, saying that Republicans just may take back the House. His comments are being widely interpreted as an urgent warning designed to get rank and file Dems to grasp the stakes of the midterms once and for all. But here's the question: Will rank and file Democrats care? The thinking among Dem strategists appears to be that once Dems realize the midterms are a "choice" election, rather than merely a referendum on Dems, they'll go out and vote. But what if Dems do see this as a referendum on their party's rule, and base their enthusiasm solely on whether they are energized by the Dem performance? The thing about Gibbs's "shocking" declaration is that the White House and Democrats have been engaged in a full-blown effort for weeks now to persuade voters that the midterm elections could represent a return to GOP rule. The White House and Dems have made this case every which way: They've charged that Republicans will again rule as stooges of Big Oil and Wall Street. They've claimed that Republicans will rain a blizzard of subpoenas on the White House if they take control of Congress. They've framed the elections as a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and those that are getting us out of it. And so forth. Yet rank and file Dems don't appear to care that much. The latest polling shows that the "enthusiasm gap" remains the same, with Republicans far more excited about voting than Dems are. In other words, Dem scaremongering about the GOP takeover doesn't yet appear to be revving up Dems to turn out this fall. What if the only way to boost Dem enthusiasm isn't to reveal how successful those awful Republicans were in rendering the Dems quasi-powerless, but to succeed in spite of this problem and do more to mitigate the crisis and the pain it's caused? That's a tall order, obviously, and I don't know if success defined this way is still possible in the short term. If you believe Paul Krugman, it may be too late because the initial stimulus was too small. Others think Dems can still help fix their political problem by quickly pushing forward with expansive job-creation measures. But even this appears unlikely, because Dems have decided it probably can't be done. How do you make rank and file Dems care about the midterms? It's unclear that yelling about how mean and nasty Republicans are is going to cut it.

Dems lose – anti-incumbency

Voters hate everyone but will vote against the Democrats

Eric Black, staff writer, 7/23/10, Voters who detest both parties hate Repubs less, http://www.minnpost.com/ericblack/2010/07/23/19969/voters_who_detest_both_parties_hate_repubs_less, AL

Pollsters are trying -- and will continue to try -- to slice and dice the electorate until November and beyond. But this one, via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, struck me as possibly insightful. Public Policy Polling latest national sample gave congressional Democrats a miserable 33/57 favorable/unfavorable rating. But that hideous net negative 24 points was nonetheless was nonetheless a glowing review compared with Congressional Republicans' 20/60 favorable/unfavorable for a truly abysmal net raiting of negative 40 points. So why is everyone, quite justifiably, assuming that Republicans make a significant gain in the midterms and maybe even take over the House of Representatives? Well, even in his poll, the famed generic ballot question found that equal numbers of respondent would prefer to vote for a generic Republican as a generic Democrat. As PPP's Tom Jensen noted, that looks like a disconnect until you look inside the numbers. A very significant 26 percent portion of the total sample have a negative view of both Dems and Repubs. When PPP separately scored that subgroup that dislikes both parties, they found the pox-on-both-parties crowd nonetheless went 57-19 in favor of the repub on the generic ballot question. Jensen said this group "may end up being the most important group of people at the polls this fall: voters who hate both Congressional Democrats and Congressional Republicans" but who, if forced to choose, overwhelmingly prefer Republicans. This group, which "could perhaps be described as the angriest segment of the electorate... is fueling the GOP's success right now," Jensen wrote.

Dems lose – Obama unpopular

GOP will win- American unhappy with country

RCP, 7/23/10, A Primer on the 2010 House Midterm,

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2010/07/a_primer_on_the_2010_house_mid.html, AL

Here's the basic system. While the Framers of the Constitution figured that Congress would be the center of American political life, practically speaking the President has been the focal point of attention. So, we have to frame a voter's decision as whether or not to support the candidate of the President's party or the candidate of the opposition party. I like to think of the vote choice as the product of four ordered questions. Every time a voter answers "Yes," the more likely he or she is to vote for the opposition. Also, I'm not directly factoring partisanship into this equation, but it does matter. Partisanship influences every answer given, and its influence has grown in recent cycles Question 1. Am I upset with the current state of the country? The first question is pretty straightforward, and the current results are not good for the 44th President. Less than one out of three Americans sees the country as heading in the right direction. And even on this first question, partisanship has a great deal of influence. Rasmussen recently found that 54% of Democrats and just 11% of Republicans thought the country was heading in the right direction. On the other hand, back in October 2007, when he found roughly similar aggregate opinion (24% said the country was heading in the right track, versus 31% now) - he found 43% of Republicans saying the country was on the right track versus just 6% of Democrats. Question 2. Do I blame the President for the bad times? Most Americans think times are bad, and right now there is about an equal split on this second question. Gallup can give some historical perspective on what a marginally negative answer to this question means. In the last sixty years, five Presidents have gone into a midterm congressional election with their net approval at or below sea level: George W. Bush in 2006, Bill Clinton in 1994, Ronald Reagan in 1982, Lyndon Johnson in 1966, and Harry Truman in 1946. All five midterms were "wave" elections in which the opposition party picked up a large enough number of House seats to affect substantially the policymaking process in Washington, D.C. House elections really turn on how the President is viewed in 435 diverse districts. So, it is not simply President Obama's national job approval that matters, but also how it is distributed.

Dems lose – spending

High budget numbers will cost Dems the House

JONATHAN WEISMAN, staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, 7/24/10, Forecast for 2011 Deficit Is Raised to $1.4 Trillion http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385481462433508.html, AL

The White House raised its forecast Friday for the fiscal-2011 budget deficit to $1.4 trillion, or 9.2% of the economy, adding new fuel to the political battle over how to tame the flood of red ink. The broad review of the Obama administration's February budget numbers will provide fodder for November's midterm elections, in which the deficit looms as a major issue, and for a bipartisan presidential commission on the debt expected to deliver recommendations on Dec. 1. The 2011 deficit projection was up from the $1.267 trillion forecast in February. The forecast for the current year of $1.47 trillion actually fell $85 billion from the February forecast. The following three years were adjusted upward. Over 10 years, the White House is projecting $8.5 trillion of additional debt, slightly down from the previous forecast. The deficit is likely to be the centerpiece of White House policy-making after the elections, which are expected to cost President Barack Obama his large Democratic majorities in Congress and possibly control of at least the House. Congress must also decide what to do with former President George W. Bush's tax cuts, all of which are set to expire Dec. 31. Under the new projections, federal debt held by the public would reach 77.4% of gross domestic product by 2020, and deficits, after falling in the middle of the decade, would again be on the rise, to $900 billion that year, or 3.8% of GDP. The White House expects the unemployment rate to stay high, falling only to 8.1% in 2012, when Mr. Obama is expected to stand for re-election. Economic growth is expected to be 3.2% this year, a faster clip than the 2.7% projected in the budget. But growth is now expected to be slightly slower next year. "The most pressing danger we face is unacceptably weak growth and persistently high unemployment," said White House budget director Peter Orszag, who is leaving the post at the end of this month. But, he said, that is better than outright economic "collapse."

Dems lose – too far left

Obama and the dems forced agenda drives Americans away

David Harsanyi, staff writer for The Denver Post, 7/24/10, Obama, Democrats are lacking in faith, http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2010/07/24/obama-democrats-are-lacking-in-faith.html?sid=101, AL

With midterm elections approaching, President Barack Obama has gone on the charm offensive, claiming Republicans are demonstrating a "lack of faith in the American people." Faith often is defined as "having confidence or trust in a person or thing." In this case, though, faith means adding another $35 billion in unemployment benefits to the infinite intergenerational tab - sometimes referred to as the budget - and mailing out as many checks as possible before Election Day. Yet the jab is revealing in other ways. To begin with, what mysterious brand of public policy has Obama employed that exemplifies this sacred trust between public officials and the common citizen? Was it the administration's faith in the wisdom of the American parent that persuaded it to shut down the voucher program in Washington, D.C., and continue the left's decades-long campaign denying school choice for kids and parents? Or was that just faith in public-sector unions? Was faith in American industry behind the Democrats' support of a stimulus bill that was predicated almost entirely on preserving swollen government spending at the expense of private-sector growth? Is this hallowed faith in the citizenry also what compels the administration to dictate what kind of car we will be driving in the future, what kind of energy we will be filling these "cars" with and what amounts of that energy will be acceptable? Is faith in American know-how why Washington funnels billions of tax dollars each year to its hand-picked industry favorites rather than allow the best and brightest to - please pardon the pun - organically figure out what the most sensible energy policy is, as we have in every other sector? It must be that deep confidence in conscientious Americans that persuades the left to fight against the rights of gun owners who want nothing more than to defend life and property. The same faith in Americans surely precipitates the administration's defense of censorship (even book banning) to ensure that the citizenry is protected from the despicable reach of political ads funded by corporations. People, you see, are too gullible and too uninformed to withstand the force of Fox News - much less Wal-Mart. Similarly, that faith has led to the 20-year explosion of paternalistic regulations (often with the help of Republicans) that propose to regulate everything from the size of candy to tanning salons to fast-food restaurants to the pressure in your shower head. A faith that the American citizen has the self-control of a deprived toddler. It was faith in the American people that led to health-care legislation that denies you the right to buy insurance outside of state lines or have any useful portability or even enjoy the same tax break that corporations are afforded. The left has so much faith in Americans that it has to force you to purchase a government-approved plan. One only needs to propose the idea that citizens be allowed to allocate portions of their Social Security retirement funds - extracted from their paychecks and deposited in faith-based government accounts - to witness the level of faith many on the left have in your decision-making abilities. Republicans may not have faith in the American people, but in this instance, Obama probably is confusing faith in people with faith in power. Because as hard as one tries, it is difficult to find any instances of choices expanding under this administration. That's the true test of confidence in the citizenry. Then again, progressives regard government as a moral enterprise. And in church, you gotta have faith.

Dems lose – legislative wins don’t help

Despite wins on legislation Dems are not getting support

Paul Steinhauser, CNN Deputy Political Director, 7/23/10, CNN Poll: Major legislative victories not helping Dems, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/23/cnn-poll-major-legislative-victories-not-helping-dems/?fbid=Q1JijC1GY4A, AL

A new national poll suggests that major legislative victories for the Democrats this week have not helped the party in its goal to keep control of Congress in the midterm elections. In May, the Democrats had a one-point edge in the so-called "generic ballot" question. But a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday indicates the Republicans have a 49 to 44 percent advantage when voters are asked which party's candidate they will vote for in their congressional district. "Some of the biggest losses for the Democrats have come among senior citizens," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Among seniors, Democrats had a two-point edge in May but the GOP is currently winning 56 percent of that group." The only bright spot for the Democrats is a significant drop in the number of Republican voters who say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting this year - from 54 percent in May to 42 percent now. "But the number of Democrats who are enthusiastic about voting in the midterms has also dropped, and still lags 15 points behind the GOP," adds Holland. This is despite a productive week for the Democrats, with congressional victories on financial reform legislation and unemployment insurance.

Despite legislative victory the dems will lose midterms

SIMON MANN, staff writer, 7/21/10, Dangers lie in wait for Obama midterm, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/dangers-lie-in-wait-for-obama-midterm-20100720-10jh0.html, Simon Mann is the Herald's United States correspondent.

The midterm congressional elections on the first Tuesday of November are bearing down on the American political psyche, in essence a referendum on the Democratic Party and the two-year leadership of Barack Obama. From afar, Obama's Democrats look to have plenty of runs on the board, having averted Depression 2.0 with billions in stimulus cash. Obama became the first president in decades to achieve significant healthcare reform. He knocked congressional heads to secure a landmark redrafting of the financial regulatory system, one giving America the best shot at preventing corporate monoliths from holding the financial system to ransom, while bringing a semblance of oversight to the much-maligned derivatives markets. Both wins might be enough to cement Obama's place in history, irrespective of what lies ahead. But his administration's preoccupation with those two reforms is likely to have cost Democrats their majority in the House of Representatives, much to the chagrin of party leaders responsible for much of the heavy-lifting for Obama's ambitious agenda. Most commentators expect the Democrats to come unstuck, a change of fortune rivalling the party's losses in 1994. The campaign slogan Bill Clinton cemented as an American truism is also the yardstick of political survival: ''It's the economy, stupid.'' Despite their best efforts, Democrats have failed to stave off misery for millions of Americans. Though the administration argues its stimulus saved or created more than 3 million jobs, many millions remain out of work. Unemployment remains stuck at 9.5 per cent. Almost half of all the unemployed have been jobless for more than six months, nearly twice the high during the 1983 recession. And 1.5 million Americans have been without jobs for 100 weeks or more - when unemployment benefits cease. The consensus is the US stimulus was too little and came too late to blast the economy out of its torpor. Economists like Paul Krugman - who fears the world faces a long and sustained economic depression - are pushing hard for a new stimulus to avert disaster. Yet the original package was enough to push public sector debt to levels beginning to frighten even the most taciturn American. The budget deficit is expected to top $US1.5 trillion ($1.72 trillion) this year, with total debt rising beyond $US13 trillion, or about 90 per cent of gross domestic product. Seven out of 10 Americans believe the country is mired in recession. Last week, Obama met key Democrats to plot a legislative program. He is said to have lamented that, just as he felt he was gaining traction with healthcare and other legislation, he was hit by ''the two Gs'' - the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Greek debt crisis. For 80 days, the spill rendered the administration impotent, while the Greek crisis prompted fiscal restraint from the G20 nations that ran counter to Obama's pump-priming needs. Dangers lurk for Democrats on several levels. In the 2008 presidential election, Obama outpolled his Republican rival by 8 percentage points among crucial independents, the biggest swathe of the electorate at nearly 40 per cent of all voters. Two years on, polls suggest progressives are disappointed by the compromises necessary to clinch Obama's reforms like healthcare and by failures on climate and immigration. Moderates fear Obama is really a big-spending liberal in a centrist's clothes. Meanwhile, the US's ability to sustain its $US1 billion-a-month commitment in Afghanistan is being sorely tested. Still, the midterms may have little bearing on Obama's own chances in 2012. While Republicans are gleefully floating the prospect of a one-term president, that would run counter to American history, assuming Obama is unchallenged for his party's nomination. Clinton was pummelled in 1994, only to be re-elected two years later. As yet, no obvious Republican challenger has emerged and, by the time one does, a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan may have begun. The midterms may have even less application for that other election Americans aren't watching - Australia's. Except maybe that given the robustness of the Australian economy and the prospect of a return to a budget surplus within three years (unimaginable for Americans), why are neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott more ambitious?

Dems lose – polls

Republicans will win – polls

Jordan Fabian, Washington D.C. Metro Area - Staff Writer, 07/21/10, The Hill, “Poll shows GOP lead in generic ballot”, http://mobile.thehill.com/blog-briefing-room/110023-new-poll-shows-gop-lead-in-generic-ballot

The survey, released Wednesday, showed that registered voters prefer Republicans 43 percent to 38 percent who prefer Democrats. Republicans have a strong lead among independent voters, as 44 percent of independents said they would vote for a Republican for their district in the midterm elections if the election was held today, compared to 29 percent who said they would vote for a Democrat. The result is a reversal from late May, when registered voters favored the Democratic candidate 42 percent to 36 percent. The Quinnipiac poll comes on the heels of a Gallup poll released earlier this week that showed Democrats leading Republicans 49 percent to 43 percent. In that poll, independents still prefered Republicans 43-39 percent, down from a 14-point lead last week. “The Republican tilt of the electorate little more than 100 days before the 2010 election is evident, but not overwhelming. Republicans hold a 43-38 percent lead on the ‘generic ballot,’ compared to a 42-34 percent Democratic lead in July 2009,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “What a difference a year makes.” The nonpartisan firm’s survey also showed President Obama as having the lowest approval rating of his presidency. Forty-four percent said they approve of Obama’s handling of the office, while 48 percent disapprove. More than half of independents, 52 percent, said they disapprove of his job performance, while just 38 percent said they approve. In May, more voters approved of Obama’s performance than disapproved, 48 percent to 43 percent. “It was a year ago, during the summer of 2009 that America’s love affair with President Barack Obama began to wane,” Brown said. “In July of 2009, the President had a 57-33 percent approval rating. Today, his support among Democrats remains strong, but the disillusionment among independent voters, who dropped from 52-37 percent approval to 52-38 percent disapproval in the last 12 months, is what leads to his weakness overall when voters start thinking about 2012.” The national poll of 2,181 registered voters was taken from July 13 to 19 and has a margin of error of 2.1 percent.

Dems win – empirics

Dems will hold majority- Empirics prove

Cokie Roberts, Political reporter for NPR, 7/19/10, Gulf Oil Spill's Effect On Midterm Election, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128614294

What is heartening to them is the fact President Obama's approval numbers -though they are low - track almost exactly with President Reagan's through his first two years in office, and the Republicans didn’t do so badly in that 1982 election when there was 10 percent unemployment. Vice-President Biden, said yesterday, he's confident the Democrats will win both the House and the Senate. He's counteracting some complaints of congressional Democrats that the White House is not doing enough for their re-election, which is pretty classic when you're in a tense time.

Dems lose – Rangel

Rangel Controversy will cost dems seats

Paul Kane and Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer, 7/24/10, Democrats worry Rangel's ethics trial will hurt party in midterm elections, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303655.html?hpid=topnews, AL

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) hunkered down Friday as he prepared to stage a public battle over allegations that his financial dealings broke House ethics rules. His determination to fight the charges has left Democrats fearful that an ethics trial, planned for mid-September, could wind up tarnishing the whole party just weeks before the midterm elections. Rangel, 80, dismissed talk of resignation, and Democratic leaders left Capitol Hill for the weekend without a clear path for resolving the case. As of late Friday, Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio), an endangered second-term incumbent, was the only Democrat to call for the 40-year veteran to resign, telling the Hill newspaper, "This is about preserving the public trust." No Democrats had come out in his defense. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) had not spoken to Rangel about the issue, aides said. They made only tepid statements, noting the "process is moving forward." In private, Democratic aides and political strategists shook their heads at the prospect of a public reading of Rangel's alleged misdeeds -- first at a televised preliminary hearing set to begin Thursday and continuing with the ethics trial in September after Congress returns from a nearly seven-week recess. "The time has come for Charlie Rangel to think more about his party than about himself. Each and every day that a trial goes on would cost Democrats more seats," said a Democratic chief of staff to one of the dozens of incumbents who are facing difficult reelection campaigns.

Dems lose – brink

GOP can take over house enough seats in play but not guaranteed

Tom Diemer, staff writer for Politics Daily, 7/22/10, House Could Go Republican in Midterms, Analyst Stuart Rothenberg Says, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/22/house-could-go-republican-in-midterms-analyst-stuart-rothenberg/, AL

A respected political handicapper says Republicans could pick up as many as 33 seats in Congress in November -- just short of what they need to regain control of the House of Representatives. But analyst Stuart Rothenberg says it is "important to note that considerably larger gains in excess of 39 seats are quite possible" for the GOP. The Washington-based Rothenberg Political Report says 88 House seats are "in play" this November, and 76 of them are currently held by Democrats. All 435 members of the House must stand for reelection, unless they choose not to run, leaving those districts open to newcomers. The critical number is 39: that's what Republicans need to pick up to reclaim a majority, Rothenberg said. In nine of 16 "pure toss-up" races, according to Rothenberg's analysis, recent developments have benefited Republican candidates. Twelve other toss-up contests are tilting toward the GOP side, Two Democrats in close races in Ohio, both cited by Rothenberg, got some help Wednesday from a Catholic group that said it would spend $500,000 on television advertising meant to defend lawmakers who voted for the health care law from attacks by anti-abortion forces, according to The Plain Dealer. Some pro-life groups continue to insist the law will facilitate insurance coverage for abortions. Catholics United said first-term Reps. John Boccieri and Steve Driehaus are among those facing "coordinated misinformation campaign[s] from a host of self-proclaimed pro-life groups intended to perpetuate the misconception that the health care reform bill passed earlier this year allowed for federal funding of elective abortion." Boccieri, from Northeastern Ohio, and Driehaus of Cincinnati, both consider themselves anti-abortion.

Dems lose – Gibbs

Gibbs concession guarantees Democratic loss in midterms

Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources, 7/14/10, Midterm madness: Spokesman confirms obvious http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071401777_5.html

Politico accuses the press secretary of friendly fire: "Robert Gibbs says he merely 'stated the obvious' in predicting Republicans could win control of the House in November. "But Democratic strategists are privately grumbling that the White House press secretary gift-wrapped a bludgeon and handed it to the GOP. 'It was the dumbest thing in the world to do,' one major Democratic money-bundler told POLITICO. 'Barack Obama doesn't understand this [election] is a referendum on his agenda.' "Gibbs' perhaps too-candid remarks about losing the House has exacerbated Democratic anxieties about the prospect of fighting a political war on two fronts, against Republicans and their own White House." But was Gibbs telling the Republicans anything they don't know?

Dems lose – A2: cash advantage

Despite having money advantage Dems still face massive losses

Shane D'Aprile, staff writer for the Hill, 07/18/10, Endangered freshman Democrats hold cash on hand advantage over GOP, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/109447-endangered-freshman-democrats-hold-cash-on-hand-advantage-over-gop

Even as the midterm campaign forecast sours for Democrats, several vulnerable freshman members put up solid fundraising numbers in the second quarter of the year. Of the 12 congressional seats held by freshman Democrats rated as pure "toss ups" this year by Charlie Cook, a majority of them ended the quarter leading their Republican opponents when it comes to the all-important cash on hand number. For Democrats, it's a bit of good news from a quarter that has seen Republicans gain the fundraising edge in many open seat House and Senate races. Of the group, Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), who has been in the sights of national Republicans since he won narrowly in 2008, had the most impressive quarter. He raised $660,000 from April through June, and his campaign reported more than $1.7 million cash on hand. His Republican opponent, state Sen. Robert Hurt, raised $261,343 from May 20 through the end of June. For the second quarter, Hurt totaled just over $376,000. He did have to endure a multi-candidate primary, which he won May 19. Hurt's campaign reported $215,954 cash on hand and debts totaling more than $85,000. In Michigan, Rep. Mark Schauer (D) raised a healthy $405,415 during the second quarter and his campaign reported $1.6 million cash on hand. Those numbers place Schauer well ahead of any potential Republican rival at this point in the cycle. Republicans face a three-candidate primary Aug. 3 between Tim Walberg, Brian Rooney and Marvin Carlson. In another toss-up district held by a freshman Democrat, Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Va.) was able to best his GOP challenger. Nye raised some $326,000 for the quarter and reported more than $1.2 million cash on hand. His Republican opponent, Scott Rigell, raised more than $579,000 during the second quarter, but burned through most of it. He reported just $226,970 cash on hand as of June 30. In Maryland's 1st Congressional District, the fundraising tally was much closer, but freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil (D) still bested Republican Andy Harris. Kratovil raised more than $390,000 and reported $1.3 million cash on hand. Harris raised $371,000 and reported just over $896,000 on hand. In Nevada, Rep. Dina Titus's July report showed just over $291,000 raised and her campaign reported $1.2 million cash on hand. For the entire second quarter, Titus raised just under $426,000. Republican challenger Joe Heck raised more than $250,000 for the quarter and reported $362,138 on hand. Democratic Reps. Betsy Markey (Colo.), Alan Grayson (Fla.) and Suzanne Kosmas (Fla.) all finished the quarter with more than $1 million cash on hand. A couple of Democratic freshman in the pure toss-up group were unable to come out on top for the quarter — Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio) and Steve Driehaus (Ohio). Both incumbents had underwhelming fundraising quarters against strong GOP opponents. Kilroy raised just $229,956 for the quarter to $532,687 for Republican Steve Stivers. The contest is a re-match of the closest race in the country in 2008, when Kilroy bested Stivers by just over 2,300 votes. Despite the lackluster quarter, Kilroy did report $933,626 cash on hand. Stivers has more than $1.2 million in the bank. In Ohio's 1st Congressional District, Driehaus raised $230,321 to challenger Steve Chabot's $306,312. Driehaus reported $973,266 cash on hand; Chabot reported just over $1 million. Where the cash advantage exists it's one most of these freshman Democrats are going to need to hold off their Republican challengers come November. Despite the early financial leg-up some freshman Dems hold, they still face a poor electoral environment for Democrats and a turnout dynamic that heavily favors the party out of power. The Democratic National Committee has pledged to spend more than $50 million this fall on get-out-the-vote efforts. Democrats are desperately seeking some good news as to their party's prospects in 2010 as evidenced by the spat between the White House and congressional Democrats that erupted this past week. Last Sunday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "there's no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control." The comments created a firestorm in Democratic circles, leading to a number of lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and several of the party's top strategists, calling Gibbs out publicly for the remarks.

A2: Polls

Don’t trust polls – they swing too much to be relevant

Jonathan Chait, staff writer for the New Republic, 7/20/10, Are Dems About To Crush Republicans In November? http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/76391/are-dems-about-crush-republicans-in-november, AL

Anyway, I bring this up because today's Gallup poll shows Democrats jumping into a six-point lead: Let me be clear: this is all just statistical noise. There has not been a 12-point swing in the House race since June. And even if Democrats do manage to hold onto the House, they will not win the total House vote by six points. But it's worth keeping some of this in mind when some hack cherry-picks a poll outlier and presents it as an accurate gauge of the public mood.

Generic ballot poll inaccurate- 3 reasons

Chris Cillizza, writes "The Fix", a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House for the newspaper and website. Chris has appeared as a guest on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN to talk politics, 7/20/10, Democrats retake lead in generic ballot, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/1-2-former-georgia-secretary.html

A few caveats: 1) The generic ballot should not be taken as predictive of what is going to happen in any particular House race but rather as an broad -- though usually accurate -- indicator of which way the national wind is blowing. 2) This is one poll. Gallup has shown Republicans consistently tied or ahead in the generic ballot question and it's not clear whether these latest findings are an outlier or the start of a broader trend. 3) This is a poll of registered voters not likely voters, making it slightly less predictive about expected election outcomes.

***DEMS GOOD INTERNAL LINKS

Withdrawal hurts Dems

The GOP will exploit withdrawal – they’ll accuse Democrats of weakness

Peter Wallsten, Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, October 02, 2009, LA Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/02/nation/na-iran-politics2

WASHINGTON — As he embraces direct talks with Iran and weighs his strategy in Afghanistan, President Obama is facing a new political threat from Republicans: Be hawkish on foreign policy or risk letting your party be painted as weak in next year's midterm elections. Top Republicans have adopted that line of attack in recent days, led by congressional leaders and at least two of the party's possible 2012 presidential contenders. Their warnings to the president mark a shift in tone and tactics for a Republican Party that had been largely supportive of Obama administration policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The GOP lost its long-held advantage as the party of national security when the public rejected the policies of former President George W. Bush in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But now, Republican strategists say that foreign policy could prove to be a potent weapon in 2010. The Republican strategists are poring over Obama speeches, such as his June address to the Muslim world, that they can portray as apologies for American actions abroad. Additionally, GOP strategists are homing in on Obama's recent policy shift on missile defense, in which the administration decided to cancel a radar installation in the Czech Republic and ground-based interceptors in Poland that had been proposed by Bush to protect Europe from Iranian long-range missiles. Obama wants to focus instead on combating short-range missiles that some intelligence officials say are a more likely threat. Republicans are panning that shift as a unilateral concession to Russia, which viewed the Bush missile plan as a threat. "The agenda is coming down the pike on national security, and Republicans are going to see an opportunity to regain the mantle," said Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota who is advising the governor of that state, Tim Pawlenty, on a possible White House bid in 2012. Dan Senor, a former Bush administration aide in Iraq who now is advising former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, another possible 2012 challenger to Obama, described foreign policy as a "debate we want to have." Romney has delivered two foreign policy speeches in the last two weeks targeting Obama, including one to evangelical voters in which he called the president's missile defense policy "dangerous" and accused him of forging ties with America's enemies at the expense of its friends.

Afghanistan withdrawal hurts Dems

Afghanistan withdrawal will hurt democrats in the midterms

Jonathan Martin, senior political writer, December 30, 2009, POLITICO, “Anxious Dems divide over path forward”, http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=DDF2E9A6-18FE-70B2-A8068131ECE3BA79

Mounting anxiety about their prospects in next year’s elections is suddenly reviving a debate that has split the Democratic Party for a generation: Should it tack to the political middle to claim centrist swing voters or remain true to liberal principles to motivate the base and other change-hungry voters. It’s an argument that, thanks to former President Bush’s unpopularity and the widespread appeal of President Obama’s candidacy, remained dormant for much of the general election last year. But with their poll numbers dipping, a handful of their senior House members retiring and one freshman abruptly changing parties, majority-party Democrats are once again grappling with all-too-familiar questions about the way forward. Chief among them: how to reconcile an ambitious policy agenda that party loyalists expect to see fulfilled at a time when concerns about government spending are on the rise. William Daley, commerce secretary in the Clinton administration, brother of the Chicago mayor and long an influential voice for moderation in the party, went public last week with what is on the minds of other centrist Democrats in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Sounding the alarm after the party-switch of Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, Daley laid out a stark choice. “Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.” Democrats ought to “acknowledge that the agenda of the party's most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans — and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan,” Daley argued.

Liberal foreign policy hurts Dems

*Going left on foreign policy dooms the Dems – they’ll win as long as they can neutralize the GOP on security

Jacob Heilbrunn, senior editor, The National Interest, 12-30-09, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22712

In contrast to the hubbub about health care that has preoccupied Washington, it won’t be a big deal in the coming year. Obama will sign a bill in January and trumpet it as a big success, while the GOP carps about its cost. But like most social programs, it will quickly come to be accepted as a constitutional right by most Americans, who may complain about big government but love its largesse, as long as they aren’t asked to pay for any of it themselves. It’s the wealthy who get stuck with the tab (and a wacky estate tax that the Democratic leadership in the Senate claims it will now impose retroactively this year, as unconstitutional a measure as there ever was), while pundits fret about the plight of the middle-class, which hardly pays any income tax. So if Republicans continue to complain about health care, it won’t get them far in the 2010 midterm election. Unemployment will remain high—around nine to ten percent—but Obama will be able to point to a slowly recovering economy as evidence that he got it right in pushing for stimulus spending. Nor will rhetoric about taxes help the GOP. Instead, it will be foreign policy that proves the crucial battleground. Obama has taken a number of steps to shore up his bona fides on the Right. His most conspicuous move has been to act like George W. Bush’s mini-me and embrace a surge in Afghanistan, which has won him hosannas among the neocons. Obama has tried to hedge the surge by announcing a deadline, but who honestly believes that America will be drawing down troops in Afghanistan any time soon? Not even the most ardent Obama admirer can possibly believe that. The more likely scenario is that Afghanistan proves something of a draw over the next year. Obama sends more troops, the Taliban retrench and Pakistan muddles through. What about Iraq? Obama will continue to withdraw our forces, but sectarian violence will flare up. It will be an inglorious retreat from Iraq. But Iran won’t be able to exploit it. The truth is that the Bush strategy of banking on a bunch of internal revolutions in the Middle East may not come to pass. But Iran, the biggest bugaboo of the Right and Israel, is in deep trouble. The regime is tottering. The religious regime, that is. It’s possible that the clerics will lose even more power and the Basij militia will emerge triumphant, creating a truly totalitarian regime. Or revolution looms. The second scenario seems more likely. But who will emerge from this Iranian revolution to lead the country? Somehow Iran seems to get itself into a dreadful muddle when it comes to its governments. This glorious Persian nation should, by rights, be the most liberal and prosperous country in the Middle East. Instead, it seems to end up with repressive authoritarian leaders. But Iran will prove a big test for Obama when it explodes. How he handles it could make or break his presidency, just as it did Jimmy Carter’s. The best he will be able to do initially is nothing. But if a new regime is in Tehran over the next year, he’ll have to move quickly to restore relations with it. If the revolution is forcibly crushed, however, Obama will be vulnerable to the accusation from the Right that he’s sold out the freedom-fighters in Tehran. Meanwhile, oil prices will be sky-rocketing and nothing will have been done to stop Tehran’s push for a nuclear weapon. Not exactly the right stuff for an election campaign back in the USA. Then there is the danger of a terrorist attack in America. Should al-Qaeda successfully pull off a plot—say, on July 4—then the criticism of Obama over the Detroit incident will look like a tea party. The GOP’s slogan will be as simple as it is effective: are you safer than you were two years ago? If the answer is clearly no, then the Democrats will suffer a devastating defeat in 2010. If it is a resounding “yes,” however, then Republican gains in 2010 will be much slimmer than the GOP currently hopes. The coming year will be decisive for Obama’s fortunes, showing whether Obama is, in fact, the true disciple of Bush in exploiting national-security issues for a political edge or whether he cedes them, willy-nilly, to his adversaries. If Obama doesn’t want to leave the Democrats up in the air over the next year, he’ll have to remind everyone why he’s a serious man.

Liberal foreign policy hurts Dems

Withdrawal hurts Democrats. They’re relying on a tough stance abroad to sustain against domestic backlash

Chris Cillizza, American political reporter for the Washington Post, December 15, 2009, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/morning-fix-30-democrat-retirements.html

Resurgent Republic, the conservative polling consortium formed in the wake of the 2008 election, is out with a new poll today surveying 1,000 voters aged 55 or older. The numbers should be interesting for political junkies since older voters usually comprise a disproportionately large segment of the electorate in midterms so what they think about the country and the president matters. On issues, older voters are generally in tune with the electorate as a whole, naming the economy (27 percent), health care (18 percent) ad government debt/national deficit (10 percent) as the three biggest challenges facing the country. Diving deeper into the numbers, older voters are concerned and skeptical about some of President Obama's domestic policy initiatives but are broadly supportive of his recent decision to send more troops into Afghanistan. Sixty-eight percent of the sample said they were "very concerned" about the growing national debt and seven in ten voters said they preferred "smaller government." On foreign policy, the numbers were reversed with nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of voters over 55 supportive of putting 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan and just 32 percent opposed to that strategy. Given that data, you can expect Republicans running in 2010 to focus their criticism of the Obama administration heavily on the fiscal side while expressing support for his pursuit of the war in Afghanistan. Resurgent Republic's number one suggestion for GOP messaging targeted at older voters heading into 2010? "More federal spending may be the agenda of the Democratic-controlled Congress, but it does not address your priority of cutting spending and lowering the deficit."

Focus link – foreign policy focus hurts Dems

New issues distract from economics – even if voters don’t care about the plan, crowding the agenda hurts Dems’ message

Kyodo News International, 12-24-09, http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3738852

But political analysts say the focus in midterm election years is not on the foreign policy front, instead it is always closer to home. Lichtman notes that even when presidents have cited foreign policy successes -- as former President George H.W. Bush did after a swift and successful Gulf War in the early 1990s -- economic stagnation prevented his reelection. ''If you look at the recent history of elections, foreign policy either hasn't helped or has hurt,'' Lichtman said. ''Obama would be very happy if it was neutral.'' With all eyes on the economy, the White House will be eager to report resumed GDP growth in the U.S. economy. So far, that growth is at a sluggish pace and unemployment continues to hover in double digits. In an effort to better connect with individual Americans, the White House has begun to shift the focus on jobs as a top priority. Obama is expected to emphasize fresh efforts for job creation in his State of the Union address, which is not yet scheduled but expected to be delivered before Congress in late January or early February. Bruce Buchanan, professor of presidential politics at the University of Texas, said he approves of Obama's apparent shift toward jobs, but anticipates that the president will struggle to keep that message at the forefront amid other issues. ''All you can do is use the bully pulpit consistently, and that's difficult in a situation where you've got so many other things going on to cloud public attention,'' Buchanan said.

Foreign Policy issues distracts Obama from domestic focus

KOSU NEWS December 22, 2009 , National Public Radio For Obama, A Foreign Policy To-Do List For 2010, http://kosu.org/2009/12/for-obama-a-foreign-policy-to-do-list-for-2010/

In January, the Senate will take up a financial regulatory bill that passed the House this month. But Republicans are much more interested in having Obama help them push long-stalled free-trade deals with Colombia, South Korea and Panama through Congress. They argue the agreements could help boost the U.S. economy, while many of the president’s Democratic allies in Congress fear they spawn additional job losses. Put Domestic Priorities First Perhaps Obama’s top goal will be trying to prevent or avoid any time-consuming international crises that would distract him from his domestic agenda. The 2010 midterm elections will be all about the U.S. jobless rate, which stands at 10 percent and is expected to remain high for most of the year. Obama will want to be seen spending most of his time trying to create jobs at home and getting the massive health care overhaul bill through Congress. “It’s going to be tougher for him on the domestic front in many ways,” says Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group. “He needs to try to keep foreign policy as much off his agenda as possible, and he knows it’s going to be hard.”

Weak foreign policy hurts Dems in midterms

Weak foreign policy hurts the Democrats and Obama in the midterms.

FLY 1 – 28 – 10 Executive Director - Foreign Policy Initiative & Research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations

Jamie M. Fly, Does Obama Have a Foreign Policy?, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/does-obama-have-foreign-policy

While it is understandable that given the state of the economy and lingering recession, most Americans are perhaps more focused on their job security than about what is happening in Kabul, Tehran, or Pyongyang, it is troubling that this president does not seem to have a clear agenda on these issues other than a retro-80s approach to twenty-first century challenges. If the Christmas Day bomber, growing concern about Yemen, instability in Iran, continued uncertainty about nuclear Pakistan, and the difficult months (and years) ahead in Afghanistan are any indication, 2010 will be just as consequential for U.S. foreign policy as any year in recent memory with the exception of 2001. President Obama came into office with a foreign policy agenda that was essentially limited to expressing concern about nuclear weapons and showing the world that he was not George W. Bush. He has now done the latter through speech after speech in Istanbul, Accra, Cairo, to cite just a few of the exotic venues. Despite focusing on the former with his “reset” of the U.S.-Russian relationship, the foreign policy challenges he faced during 2009 were largely thrust upon him by events. Despite several courageous decisions as commander in chief, he was clearly uncomfortable (witness the Afghanistan Strategy Review) with the issue set he was forced to focus on during year one. In this very political White House, foreign policy is viewed through the lens of mid-term elections in 2010 and the president’s reelection in 2012, just like any other issue. Thus, it is important for Team Obama to act tough on security and kill terrorists (preferably using classified means), but most other foreign policy issues become time consuming obstacles to the pursuit of a robust domestic agenda. This is foreign policy as a political tactic, not as a grand strategy or a coherent formulation of America’s global interests (with the exception of a headlong rush for disarmament). Despite the challenges the country faces on the domestic front, it would behoove the president in 2010 to do what he failed to do last night -- speak more frequently to the American people about what is at stake overseas and what his vision is for keeping Americans safe and advancing U.S. interests around the world. Otherwise, he risks being nothing more than a reactionary president doing little more than what is required to avoid the wrath of the electorate. He runs the risk of becoming an inconsequential commander in chief in very consequential times.

Weak foreign policy positions hurt Obama’s standing

STAROBIN 2 – 1 – 10 National Journal Contributor [Paul Starobin, Obama's Weakened Position: What Does It Mean For U.S. Foreign Policy?, http://security.nationaljournal.com/2010/02/obamas-weakened-position-what.php]

President Obama is in a rough political patch with the apparent demise of his top domestic priority, universal health care; with the loss of a 60-vote Democratic supermajority in the Senate; with improved Republican prospects for the midterm elections in November; and with his once sky-high approval rating now below 50 percent. So, what does his weakened position mean for his handling of foreign affairs and for the tack that allies, rivals and outright enemies take toward the U.S.? With his focus on "jobs, jobs, jobs," Obama devoted a grand total of nine minutes to national security issues in his State of the Union address. Does this suggest less activism on the foreign policy front? If so, Obama would be going against the historical pattern, which suggests that a president weakened on the domestic front is likely to become more energetic in foreign affairs as the realm that is less subject to congressional and political control at home (Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon are examples). In any case, what is the best course for Obama at this juncture? Should he try to improve his standing at home with a prestige-enhancing triumph abroad? Are there such opportunities out there -- for example, a bold deal with the Russians on nuclear disarmament, a tough package of sanctions against Iran, a breakthrough on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Are the Russians, the Chinese, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, the Indians, the Japanese, the Europeans, likelier to be tougher or more accommodating with Obama facing troubles at home? (Or to put it another way: Do any of them want to see Obama fail?) Is a weakened Obama in danger of being seen as another Jimmy Carter -- that is, as an ineffectual president not likely to serve another term? (The analyst Les Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations is already likening Obama to Carter.) Is his damaged domestic position likely to matter in any way to Al Qaeda and other anti-U.S. Islamic militant groups? Any and all speculations on this theme are welcome.

Weak foreign policy hurts Dems in midterms

Strong stance on foreign policy is a key issue in 2010 midterm.

Wallsten, 2009 (Peter is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, “GOP targets Obama's foreign policy”, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/02/nation/na-iran-politics2 )

WASHINGTON — As he embraces direct talks with Iran and weighs his strategy in Afghanistan, President Obama is facing a new political threat from Republicans: Be hawkish on foreign policy or risk letting your party be painted as weak in next year's midterm elections. Top Republicans have adopted that line of attack in recent days, led by congressional leaders and at least two of the party's possible 2012 presidential contenders. Their warnings to the president mark a shift in tone and tactics for a Republican Party that had been largely supportive of Obama administration policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The GOP lost its long-held advantage as the party of national security when the public rejected the policies of former President George W. Bush in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But now, Republican strategists say that foreign policy could prove to be a potent weapon in 2010. The Republican strategists are poring over Obama speeches, such as his June address to the Muslim world, that they can portray as apologies for American actions abroad. Additionally, GOP strategists are homing in on Obama's recent policy shift on missile defense, in which the administration decided to cancel a radar installation in the Czech Republic and ground-based interceptors in Poland that had been proposed by Bush to protect Europe from Iranian long-range missiles. Obama wants to focus instead on combating short-range missiles that some intelligence officials say are a more likely threat. Republicans are panning that shift as a unilateral concession to Russia, which viewed the Bush missile plan as a threat. "The agenda is coming down the pike on national security, and Republicans are going to see an opportunity to regain the mantle," said Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota who is advising the governor of that state, Tim Pawlenty, on a possible White House bid in 2012.

Foreign policy key to midterms – current policies are allowing the Dems to demonstrate strength

Jason Ditz, 10-2-09, http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/02/gop-hopes-to-out-hawk-obama-in-midterm-elections/

Faced with the hope of cutting into President Obama’s massive majorities in both houses of Congress in 2010 and the prospect of selling a rival candidate in the 2012 elections, the Republican Party is already looking to differentiate itself from Obama on foreign policy. This would seem to be easier said than done as the broad strokes of the president’s foreign policy have been the same as President Bush’s, he has abandoned his promise to withdraw from Iraq, escalated dramatically in Afghanistan, and made little concrete progress on his pledge to close Gitmo. But GOP strategists are hoping that they can portray President Obama as not sufficiently hawkish, failing to continue damaging relations with Russia and not instantly approving Gen. McChrystal’s call to add another 45,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Obama needs to stay tough on national security to help Dems in November

Reuters, 1-6-10, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60548820100106

The president's fellow Democrats, who control both houses of the U.S. Congress, face tough mid-term elections in November, when Republicans will focus on the high unemployment rate and exploit voters' uncertainty about the high cost of Obama's plans to revamp the $2.5 trillion healthcare system. So, expect to see Obama hitting the road in the next few weeks to sell his ambitious healthcare reforms and his plans for spurring job growth. But analysts say the president, who receives a daily intelligence briefing on threats to the United States, is also going to have to be more visible on national security issues. A poll conducted by Rasmussen after the Christmas Day attack found 79 percent of U.S. voters think there will be another terrorist attack in the United States this year. "He is going to have to talk more about national security to reassure people he is on top of the problem. There very well could be future attacks and he has to inoculate himself from potential risks in that area," said Brookings' West. "Had the (Christmas Day) attack been successful or if there is a new attack in the future, then the whole political terrain shifts enormously and that is the risk he faces," West said. Peter Feaver, a former director at the National Security Council, said the administration is acutely aware of this. "The White House is as concerned about making sure they are prepared for the next attack as they are dealing with what went wrong in the last attack," said Feaver, now a political scientist at Duke University in North Carolina. WAKE UP CALL "If you don't wake up after a wake up call then you're in much, much more political peril. I'm not saying they haven't woken up, I'm saying they will pay attention to this." National security loomed large on Obama's agenda in his first year in office as he weighed sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan. But in seeking to make a sharp break from the Bush administration, the "war on terror" disappeared from the government lexicon. "They've been low-balling it. They're consciously rejecting the more hyperbolic approach the Bush administration had," said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They're doing a good job (on national security), but they need to be more vocal about it. "The Democrats have upcoming elections and a spate of unpopular issues that could put them at a disadvantage. If they aren't seen as responding effectively to terrorism, it will hurt them at the polls," he said. Americans traditionally view Republicans as stronger on national security and are still uncertain about Obama as their commander in chief.

Popular policies don’t improve Obama popularity

Obama can’t bolster his popularity with policies – structural factors outweigh

Steve Kornacki, Salon's news editor, 7-21-10, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/07/21/worst_reagan_obama

Somehow I missed this yesterday, but the Washington Post's Richard Cohen authored a truly absurd column that purported to explore a mystery that isn't actually a mystery: Why Barack Obama is not getting credit ("credit," being defined as strong job approval numbers) for the significant achievements that have marked his first 18 months in office. The reality, of course, is that his approval rating is exactly where it should be for a president facing unemployment near 10 percent. Legislative triumphs like those Obama has enjoyed, no matter how important from a policy standpoint, will never lift a president's poll numbers if the economy is in the gutter. If Obama were now sitting on a 60 percent approval rating despite the economy, it would be a mystery. But he's not.

Policies can’t excite Democrats

Changing policy can’t excite Democrats – they’re committed to apathy

Greg Sargent, 7-12-10, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/how_do_you_make_rank_and_file.html

The White House and Dems have made this case every which way: They've charged that Republicans will again rule as stooges of Big Oil and Wall Street. They've claimed that Republicans will rain a blizzard of subpoenas on the White House if they take control of Congress. They've framed the elections as a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and those that are getting us out of it. And so forth. Yet rank and file Dems don't appear to care that much. The latest polling shows that the "enthusiasm gap" remains the same, with Republicans far more excited about voting than Dems are. In other words, Dem scaremongering about the GOP takeover doesn't yet appear to be revving up Dems to turn out this fall.

Link only goes one way – withdrawal can’t gain votes

Even if the war is unpopular, the push for withdrawal has no impact on the midterms

Alex Leary, Times Staff Writer, Monday, July 5, 2010, Times,” Midterm elections: Economy pushes war into background”, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/midterm-elections-economy-pushes-war-into-background/1106951

WASHINGTON — Four years ago, Kathy Castor put the war first. The Tampa Democrat won a seat in Congress in part by pledging to push for a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq. She called for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and investigations into wartime spending. "A change in course is needed in Washington," Castor said on election night. "It's time." The war continues today, and about 5,500 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Castor, like other candidates across the United States, is focused on something else: jobs. With the 2010 midterm elections becoming a referendum on the economy, politicians are reacting to voters consumed with troubles at home. After nine years, America has become war weary. But the winners in November will have to confront decisions on future troop deployment and funding. The question on Iraq that Democrats thought they had answered in the 2006 and 2008 elections may be looming for Afghanistan: Stay in or get out? With talk of war hardly simmering, the opinions of the electorate may never be realized at the ballot box. The sudden removal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan following inflammatory comments to Rolling Stone magazine brought the war to the forefront last month. . "We are in this to win," Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday after assuming control. He noted that June had been the deadliest month for international forces since the Afghanistan war began in 2001, with 102 deaths, more than half of them Americans. Yet despite mounting troubles, few expect the debate on Capitol Hill to carry over to the midterms in a significant way. Already the issue has been absent in some of the high-profile primary contests across the country. "It's a huge dilemma that our nation is not paying attention to," said Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and chairman of the advocacy group VoteVets. "Is it worth the loss of life? Is it worth trillions of dollars? Is it worth the stress on the forces? Is this the right strategy?" Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post, fretted that a "wishful averting of eyes" could have detrimental effects if something goes wrong and awakens the public."In that case," he wrote in a recent column, "even political leaders who believe in the mission, having been AWOL from the debate, will have difficulty tipping it back." Debate has been muted in part by President Barack Obama's decision to compromise. He has committed more troops in Afghanistan but also set the July 2011 withdrawal date — a time line even he says is only a beginning, not an end, to the U.S. presence. Indeed, hopeful signs in Iraq are being overshadowed by increasing difficulty in Afghanistan. "Many Republicans more or less agree with Obama's prosecution of the wars, while Democratic candidates couldn't make Iraq/Afghanistan an issue without criticizing their own president," said Quinn McCord, managing editor of the Hotline, a nonpartisan tip sheet in Washington. That has frustrated critics on the left, who say voters gave them a mandate in the past two elections to either end the wars more swiftly or fundamentally shift the focus. "We control the White House, we control the Senate, and we control the House," said Rep. John Lewis, a senior Democrat from Georgia. "We need to stop this madness. I say it over and over again." Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, said the silence underscores problems the military strategy has faced in Afghanistan. Leaders of both parties, he said, "don't want to admit it's a failed war." He also blames the lack of attention on diminished news coverage. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, one of the few lawmakers to consistently call attention to the war and its costs, said, "There is no fundamental distinction right now between the policy leaders of both parties." Obama, Grayson said, has simply perpetuated the war. And Grayson sees a direct link between the United States' financial instability and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no greater domestic priority now than the economy. Despite mild economic improvement, millions remain out of work. Florida's 11.7 percent unemployment rate remains one of the highest in the country. "It dwarfs everything," said Republican pollster David Winston. "It's sort of like looking at a house and there's all these things that need repair, but if the roof's on fire, all these things are secondary. Jobs and the economy are the equivalent of the fire on the roof."

Obama strong on security now

The American public has strong confidence in Obama’s on security

Spencer Ackerman, writer for the Washington Independent, 1/11/10, http://washingtonindependent.com/73655/poll-american-public-actually-not-afraid-of-terrorism-backs-obama-post-northwest-253

Good news for Obama: on August 28-31, 63 percent of respondents had either a “great deal” or a “moderate amount” of confidence in his approach to terrorism. Now… 65 percent of Americans do. The numbers for those who lack confidence in him haven’t changed, either. Fifty-seven percent of respondents approve of Obama’s handling of the Abdulmutallab incident, even as an equal number think he should be tried in military court. Taken together, it would appear from the poll that Obama has more room to maneuver on counterterrorism than his Department of Homeland Security’s recent profiling moves indicate.

Obama is vulnerable on security

Security is an issue for Obama

Peter Wallsten, Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Jan 2, 2010, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126239113219413017.html

WASHINGTON -- Political furor over the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 has thrust national security back to the center of American politics, with Republicans and the White House scrambling to blame each other for intelligence lapses and present themselves to voters as tougher on terrorism. Strategists in both parties believe that terrorism and, more broadly, foreign policy could emerge in the November midterm elections and in President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign as key issues for voters who have been focused primarily on the economy. A new book by potential 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney touches on GOP allegations that Mr. Obama has been too willing to apologize for his country's past actions. GOP opinion leaders such as former Vice President Dick Cheney have seized on the attack to question President Barack Obama's grasp of foreign affairs. Republican Party officials have sent fund-raising appeals that take aim at Mr. Obama's response to the episode. Republican strategists said in interviews that they saw an opportunity to regain the traditional advantages on security issues that failed them in the past two national campaigns, as the economic downturn and public opposition to President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq took primacy in voters' minds. The White House and its allies, meanwhile, have responded by mounting a campaign to assert Mr. Obama's bona fides as a strong commander in chief while blaming Bush policies in Iraq for emboldening al Qaeda to plan attacks such as the one Christmas Day in the skies over Detroit. Their efforts include using a White House Web site posting personally rebuking Mr. Cheney for "seven years of bellicose rhetoric" and arguing that al Qaeda during Mr. Bush's tenure "regenerated" to establish "new safe havens" in Yemen and Somalia. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused in the botched effort to down Northwest Flight 253, allegedly trained in Yemen. Ms. Cheney has helped create a committee, Keep America Safe, to raise money and challenge Mr. Obama's foreign policy and antiterror strategies. Dan Senor, a former Bush administration official who has advised potential 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney on national security, said the GOP can attack Mr. Obama's campaign promises that building more international cooperation through diplomacy would ease hatred of the U.S., curtail terrorist recruitment by al Qaeda, and help forge a more effective antiterror strategy. "Republicans can respond by saying, We have now had a year to test that theory, and we think it has been proven wrong," said Mr. Senor. A Republican official said the party "sees an opportunity here" to paint Mr. Obama "as a weak commander in chief." The tactic reprises a theme of the Bush White House: For the 2004 elections, strategist Karl Rove espoused making national security a winning issue by portraying Democrats as having a "pre-9/11 worldview." The early contours of the Republicans' national-security narrative against Mr. Obama and his party can be seen in the theme of a book to be published this spring by Mr. Romney. The book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," touches on GOP allegations that Mr. Obama, with appeals such as his conciliatory speech over the summer to the Muslim world, has been too willing to apologize for his country's past actions. Mr. Cheney, in a statement to Politico that attempted to link the Christmas bombing to the president's broader philosophies, accused Mr. Obama of failing to view counterterrorism as a "war" because doing so "doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office." The White House Web post, by communications director Dan Pfeiffer, sought to address that charge, listing Obama speeches in which the president has spoken of being "at war," including a West Point speech in which he announced a 30,000-troop surge for Afghanistan. A fund-raising email by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and a candidate for governor, charged that Mr. Obama and his administration were "weak-kneed liberals." And an appeal from the GOP's Senate campaign committee cited Mr. Obama's move to drop the phrase "war on terror" as evidence of his "remarkable lack of understanding of the threat America faced."

***DEMS BAD INTERNAL LINKS

Liberal foreign policies help Dems – base support

Hardline foreign policy is killing Democratic turnout. They need to revitalize support

LA Times, 1-1-10

More worrisome for Democrats is the likelihood that many of their voters will stay home. Turnout always falls in nonpresidential election years, and that is why strategists closely gauge voter interest. Repeated surveys have found Republicans much more animated than Democrats; a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll in mid-December found that 56% of Republicans were "very interested," compared with 46% of Democrats. That intensity gap was clear in New Mexico's 2nd District. For many Republicans, eager to send a message, November can't come too soon. Several cast half-hearted ballots for John McCain in 2008 and welcomed a chance to vote with conviction for the more reliably conservative Pearce. "I think Americans made the biggest mistake they ever made when they elected Barack Obama," said Shirley Friend, 58, a Carlsbad schoolteacher who is angry over the skyrocketing debt, proposed Medicare Advantage cuts and what she considers Obama's too-frequent apologies for America overseas. "He's very charismatic and intelligent, but he's not a good president." Several Democrats, by contrast, said they swallowed hard, their enthusiasm giving way to disillusionment, after Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan and declined to fight for a government-run healthcare plan. They expressed similar disappointment with Teague, whose voting record -- backing the first stimulus bill and climate-control legislation, opposing healthcare overhaul and a new round of stimulus spending -- reflect his challenge representing a district split between the left-leaning west and far more conservative east. (The latter, its air spiked with the sulfur smell of oil and gas, is known as "Little Texas" for its affinity with the Lone Star state.)

Obama needs a prominent left-wing policy to revitalize base support in the midterms

Alexander Bolton, The Hill, 12-3-09, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/70355-liberals-warn-obama

Prominent liberal activists are warning Democratic leaders that they face a problem with the party’s base heading into an election year. The latest issue to roil relations between President Barack Obama and the liberal wing of the party is his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which liberals fear could become a debacle like Vietnam. The left is also concerned the administration and party leaders have drifted too far to the center or are caving in to non-liberal interest groups in key policy battles, including healthcare reform, climate change and energy reform and financial regulatory reform. In some cases, liberals fear the White House is backing away entirely from core issues, such as the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and ending the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prevents gays and lesbians form serving openly in the military. “I think there’s a growing concern that Washington is losing battles to entrenched lobbying interests and the administration is not effectively in charge and a sense that things aren’t going well,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group

Troop Withdrawal Mobilizes Base

Afghan troop withdrawal before the midterm is key to mobilize the democratic base.

Feaver, 4.28.10 (Peter, “What’s Dictating the Iraq withdrawal timeline?”, http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/28/whats_dictating_the_iraq_withdrawal_timeline)

The original timeline was supposedly dictated by the Iraqi election clock: whatever newly elected Iraqi government took power would need the reassurance of a sizable U.S. combat troop presence for some period of time (months, not weeks) to ensure a smooth transition. On the original political calendar, an August deadline for completing the withdrawal seemed ambitious but doable. The Iraqis are now well off the original political calendar, however, and it now seems likely that by the time of the August deadline there will be no new government seated, or at best one only seated for a few weeks. The article dangles tantalizingly the possibility that it is the American political calendar that is dictating the timeline now: "... With his liberal base angry at the Afghan troop buildup, any delay of the Iraq drawdown could provoke more consternation on the left." It is hard to predict where August will fall in the Iraqi political trajectory, but it is a rock-solid certainty that August comes comfortably before the U.S. midterm election. The reporters are right that letting the August deadline slide could pose an enormous political headache for an administration already struggling to mobilize its base when the national mood favors the Republicans. But a failure to heed the situation on the ground in Iraq would, I suspect, pose much greater headaches down the road for the administration so I fervently hope that the U.S. midterm elections are not dictating the timeline. Even without domestic politics confounding the calculation, the strategic challenge would be vexing. One of the hardest things to do in war is to ascertain when developments on the ground require a change in plans and when the plan is still viable despite some setbacks. The Bush administration did not always get this right. It came under withering and justifiable criticism for being slow to adjust to Iraqi realities in the months after the invasion. Even though the unfolding events revealed that several of the assumptions of the original Phase IV plan had been overly optimistic, critics charged that Secretary Rumsfeld stuck with the original military plan.

Decrease in military presence mobilizes democratic base

Vanden Heuval and Borosage, 2.1.10 (Katrina and Robert L., “Change Won’t Come Easy” , http://www.thenation.com/article/change-wont-come-easy?page=0,)

Because of the botched terrorist attempt to bomb a plane on Christmas Day, the administration enters the year on the defensive on terrorism. The furor will add to bipartisan support for an enlarged military budget and for military escalation in Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. The president will sound more bellicose notes on terrorism. The opposition to escalation in Afghanistan, which probably still enjoys majority support among Democrats in the House, will have to redouble its work, educating Americans about the costs and the stakes and offering common-sense alternative strategies to meet the threat of terrorism. Challenge Those Who Stand in the Way Democratic prospects look grim for the fall elections. In low-turnout midterm elections, the passion of base supporters plays a large role. Clearly, the right will be mobilized. Progressives will have to confound the widespread expectation that they will not match the right's fervor. The elections will turn into a national referendum on the country's direction. Will Americans punish those pushing for reform, or those standing in the way? The clear focus must be to make certain that Republicans pay for their irresponsible strategy of obstruction. Here the GOP's opposition to creating jobs and curbing banks should provide a clear picture of what side they are on. But this cannot be a purely partisan effort. Democrats who have consistently opposed or weakened vital reforms should not get a free pass. Progressives should be organizing primary challenges against the most egregious Blue Dogs--exemplified by Representative Melissa Bean, who gilded her campaign war chest by leading the banks' lobby efforts to weaken financial reform. It would be best to do this in districts or states where Democrats are strong, so the seats are not lost; but that may not be possible. Organizing formidable challenges in a couple of districts will send an important message.

Base Key

Mobilization is the most important factor for Democrats this year.

Ed Kilgore, political strategies, 4-2-2010. [The Democratic Strategist, That Ancient Choice: Mobilization Versus Persuasion, p. http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2010/04/that_ancient_choice_mobilizati.php]

In other words, winning elections is rarely "about" any one thing, though if you had to pick one factor this year, maximizing Democratic turnout would be far and away the most important thing. For those interested in this topic, The Democratic Strategist published a roundtable discussion of the whole base-versus-swing, and mobilization-versus-persuasion debate back in early 2008 (Robert Creamer, in fact, was one of the participants) and most of it remains entirely relevant.

Base mobilization is the only way for Democrats to win in the midterms.

Chris Cilizza, staff writer, 4-19-2010. [Washington Post, "Why people dislike government (and why it matters for 2010),

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/why-people-dislike-government.html]

All elections are about intensity and passion -- and midterm elections are even more so.

Democrats saw across-the-board gains in 2006 because the party base as well as lots of Democratic-leaning independents were dead-set on sending President George W. Bush a message.

Republicans -- and Republican-leaning independents, on the other hand, were significantly less energized to vote, feeling as though Bush had abandoned them on spending and size of government issues, not to mention the cloud cast by his Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

The White House and congressional Democrats insisted that the best political outcome from the passage of the health care bill last month was that it re-energized what had been a very listless party base since Obama's election in 2008.

Perhaps. But, the Pew numbers suggest that Republicans today still hold the high ground in the intensity battle heading into the fall campaign. Eliminating that edge may well be impossible -- the party out of power is always more motivated to "throw the bums out" -- but Democrats must find ways to mitigate it if they hope to keep their losses at historic norms (or below) in November.

Obama appealing to his base is key to winning the midterms

Washington Post 7/2/2010

(“Obama supporters deeply disappointed?” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/dem_base_deeply_disappointed_i.html ty)

Cook digs into a recent poll done by pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff, which probed voter enthusiasm in some detail, and found this: Hart and McInturff then looked at the change among the most-interested voters from the same survey in 2008. Although 2010 is a "down-shifting" election, from a high-turnout presidential year to a lower-turnout midterm year, one group was more interested in November than it was in 2008: those who had voted for Republican John McCain for president. And the groups that showed the largest decline in interest? Those who voted for Barack Obama -- liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates, those living in either the Northeast or West, and younger voters 18 to 34 years of age. These are the "Holy Mackerel" numbers. Digby theorizes that a lot of this is driven by Obama's tendency to constantly seek a middle ground between what he tends to characterize as equivalent extremes on either side. She thinks he'd do better speaking directly to the base. I tend to fall into the camp that holds that the Dem base's lack of enthusiasm is out of sync with the size and scope of the accomplishments racked up thus far by Obama and Dems. The excitement around Obama's victory was so intense, and the sense of a "big change moment" was so palpable, that people were bound to feel let down despite Obama's clearly historic achievements. But reasonable or not, something is apparently turning off these voters in a big way.

Withdrawal helps Dems – anti-Bush

Troop withdrawal is seen as anti-Bush policy – its what the voters want and will mobilize the democrats

Kilkenny, 11.29.09 (Allison, “New poll paints ugly 2010 picture, http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2009/11/29/new-poll-paints-ugly-2010-picture/)

The reasons for the lack of base enthusiasm are pretty clear: Democrats haven’t delivered on many of their promises. There’s no climate bill or finalized healthcare bill, and yet Democrats managed to pull off the none too easy feat of pissing off both gays and women with their respective sluggishness on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and allowing the Stupak Amendment to slip into the House’s version of the healthcare bill. People are losing their jobs and their homes, and all the while they see Washington working tirelessly to protect the bonuses of Wall Street executives who helped tank the economy. Credit card and insurance companies continue to exploit the suffering majority. US troops are still occupying Iraq, President Obama has decided to surge in Afghanistan, and the only thing worse than two wars is three wars, which appears to be the direction we’re heading. Voters wanted change and hope, and all they’ve gotten is more of the same Bush era policies. Who wants to vote to uphold that kind of sick system? Despite what some village relics argue, President Obama’s election was a liberal mandate. Voters wanted an anti-Bush administration. There was enormous momentum for change in this country, which is why Democrats won overwhelming victories in both houses. Whenever there’s a dip in the polls like this, your Fred Barnes, or whatever Neo-Con hack can get to a keyboard the quickest, copies and pastes the same “This is a center-right country!!” platitude into another wholly terrible column. However, this poll actually shows Obama is damaging his party — not by being too liberal — but by abandoning his base, those liberals that totally don’t matter because this is (I got your back, Fred-o) a center-right country. And sure, the Republicans have been behaving like a pack of petulant assholes, but that doesn’t account for the total lack of productivity in Washington as Firedoglake points out. You can account for some of this by citing the historic obstructionism of the GOP and the major hole in which the Administration found themselves on January 20, 2009. But you can’t account for all of it, and even if you could, it wouldn’t change the basic dynamic – the right has been worked into a frenzy hell-bent on defeating the man they are told is the second coming of Hitler, while the left is waiting for that long-promised “change” they can believe in. This really isn’t complicated: Democrats just need to do what they were elected to do, and they’ll be fine. If they water down the healthcare bill, and betray the voters, they’ll lose seats in 2010.

Afghan withdrawal key to Dems

Afghan troops and national security issues are important for the midterms

Zogby, 12.31.09 ( John is an American political pollster and first senior fellow at The Catholic University of America's Life Cycle Institute. “Obama's Unappreciated First Year”, http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/30/obama-president-polls-first-year-opinions-columnists-john-zogby.html )

Meanwhile, Obama's decision to add 30,000 troops in Afghanistan brings the total to more than 100,000. Short of the capture of Osama bin Laden or dramatic military gains in Afghanistan, it is unlikely national security will be a positive issue for Democrats. In our December poll, 30% gave Obama's handling of Afghanistan positive ratings (7% excellent and 23% good) and 67% of likely voters gave him negative ratings (30% said fair and 37% poor). Midterm elections are historically bad for the president's party. Unless voter attitudes toward Obama and the Democrats change, 2010 will be no exception.

Afghanistan key issue in midterms

U.S. News & World Report 6/11 (Anna Mulrine, 6/11/10, " Will Cost of Afghanistan War Become a 2010 Campaign Issue? ", http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2010/06/11/will-cost-of-afghanistan-war-become-a-2010-campaign-issue.html)

With his December decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, President Obama made the war his own. And what a war it has become: The U.S. military marked a grim milestone in Afghanistan this year with more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed there since October 2001. Roadside bombings are on the rise, causing double the number of fatalities in 2009 that they did in 2008. And 2010 is on track to be even worse by that measure. While Afghanistan has faded from the public consciousness in the wake of economic collapse and healthcare reform, this summer promises to put it back on the front pages. As the last of Obama's surge troops arrive on the ground in Afghanistan, most in the volatile south, the Pentagon has made no secret of the fact that it is planning a major offensive. The target will be Kandahar, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, and senior U.S. military officials have already told members of Congress to brace their constituents for a tough period of fighting, with more casualties. As troops surge, of course, so too does the cost of the war. The price tag for Afghanistan alone is more than $300 billion to date, with another $100 billion expected to be spent in 2010, according to the Obama administration's supplemental budget request. The president has promised to begin withdrawing U.S. troops by July 2011, conditions permitting. But U.S. military officials currently engaged in a brutal war against a committed network of Taliban insurgents warn that, indeed, conditions may not permit. As the midterm elections approach, the fiscal cost of war in Afghanistan may draw the ire of a public increasingly mobilized against government spending—and of those, too, weary of the human toll of war

Democats want withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Agence France Presse 7-1-2010. [US lawmakers pass Afghan war funding, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hrIVooBldlIZuML9BBGBLKt1MiKw]

Lawmakers approved the monies -- including funds necessary to Obama's plan to deploy another 30,000 troops to turn the faltering campaign around -- only after giving voice to a growing chorus of Democratic calls for a withdrawal. Democrats backing the war, allied with the president's Republican foes, turned aside three amendments that posed stiff challenges to Obama's strategy. The House struck down one measure to cut all military spending from the bill by a 376-25 margin, and killing another to restrict the money to pay for a withdrawal of US forces by a 321-100 margin. n a 260-162 vote, they also defeated a Democratic amendment aimed at requiring Obama, who has set a July 2011 deadline for starting a US withdrawal, to set a complete timetable for that process. Democrats accounted for the lion's share of the yes votes in each case. But the fate of the bill was still clouded after Democrats attached more than 15 billion dollars in jobs and education programs in a 239-182 that defied a presidential veto threat over cuts designed to pay for the measure. The House changes meant the Senate, which approved the administration's request for the vastly unpopular Afghan war in May, would have to take up the measure the week of July 12 after the week-long July 4 recess. The amendments reflected growing US public pessimism about the war, by some measures now the longest in US history, ahead of key November mid-term elections.

New popular policies ( Dem win

Popular legislation ensures democratic victory

Reid Wilson, staff writer, 7/20/10, Dems Gain Generic Edge After Reform Bill, http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/07/dems_gain_gener.php, AL

Dems jumped to their first significant advantage in the generic Congressional ballot all year after passing a major overhaul of regulations governing financial institutions, giving the party hope that their agenda is attracting voters. Dems lead the generic ballot by a 49%-43% margin after leading by a 47%-46% margin in last week's poll. That improvement has been fueled by independent voters, who now favor a generic GOP candidate by a 43%-39% margin. Last week, independents favored GOPers by a 14-point margin; 2 weeks ago, GOPers enjoyed an 18-point edge. Generic ballot measurements are a key indicator of midterm success, and Dems need at least a 5-point edge to overcome GOPers' habit of turning out at higher levels. The 6-point advantage they have at the moment is enough to give the party a major mental boost. The shift comes a week after Dems passed a regulatory reform, a sweeping package that has proven widely popular. A USA Today/Gallup survey last week showed 55% of voters support the bill, including 56% of independent voters.

Liberal policies help Dems

Change is key to Dem victory in November – they need to establish a break from the past

Paul Hogarth, Houston Chronicle, 7-19-10, http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8333

Less than two years after the voters gave Democrats a mandate for change, we are at risk of losing badly in November. All because progressives are demoralized, and Democrats are portrayed in the media and viewed by voters as defenders of the status quo. A new Pew Research poll is especially alarming to me – only 34% of voters correctly think the bank bailout happened under President Bush, whereas 47% wrongly believe it happened under President Obama. The public still wants “change” like they did in 2006 and 2008, but in 2010 Democrats are in “power” and they’re being held accountable for everything wrong that has happened. If Democrats want to rescue the political capital that helped them win elections before, it’s time to focus on candidates who are not the status quo – and who can channel the voters’ anger in a positive direction.

New liberal policies are key to mobilizing the base and holding onto Democratic majorities

Jonathan Martin, senior political writer, December 30, 2009, POLITICO, “Anxious Dems divide over path forward”, http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=DDF2E9A6-18FE-70B2-A8068131ECE3BA79

Connolly, formerly the top elected official in populous Fairfax County, noted that he supported the stimulus package, the energy bill and healthcare reform — but opposed a jobs bill the House passed before the winter recess because it meant yet more red ink. “We have to marry a progressive agenda with fiscal moderation and responsibility,” Connolly said. If that’s not what voters see from Democrats, Daley argued, the party will pay a steep price. He cited the Democrats’ losses in Virginia and New Jersey and the worsening poll standing of Obama and congressional Democrats. In both cases, Daley noted that independents were taking flight from the party. “There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers,” wrote Daley. “They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.” But Rosenthal makes the case that it’s the voters who elected Obama last year who will slip away, or at least stay home, if the party does not continue pursuing an aggressive agenda. What lifted Democrats last year among their base, independents and those previously disengaged from politics, Rosenthal argued, were Obama’s promises: expanding health care, a new approach to energy, spending more on education and especially a promise to revive the economy that would help those of modest means. “He gave a worried and anxious America hope and a plan that called for restoring America's middle class,” wrote Rosenthal. Obama coalition voters still want “change,” according to Rosenthal, who writes that the way to boost Democratic fortunes is to deliver — not to follow the path of moderation that the party so often trod in the '90s. “They don't want their elected officials to go back to the days of legislating ‘small things’ (school uniforms come to mind),” Rosenthal argued. “To win them back — to engage them at all in 2010 — Democrats need to pass real health care reform, then move aggressively on a jobs, jobs, jobs (it cannot be said enough) program with strong workers' rights.” So, he continued, run on this agenda and “put Obama on the ballot in 2010” for the sort of minority and youth voters that turned out in droves for him last year.

Obama weak on security NU

Obama losing the spin war on security now

Rasmussen Reports, Electronic Publishing Firm, May 24th 2010, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/mood_of_america_archive/war_on_terror/52_say_u_s_not_safer_today_than_before_9_11_attacks_highest_level_yet

Confidence in America’s efforts in the War on Terror has fallen again this month, and, following the unsuccessful terrorist bombing attempt in New York's Times Square, more voters than ever now believe the nation is not safer today than it was before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that only 31% now believe the United States is safer today than it was before 9/11, down seven points from last month and the lowest level of confidence measured in over three years of regular tracking. Fifty-two percent (52%) say the country is not safer today, up from 42% a month ago and the highest level measured over the past three years. Democrats are almost evenly divided on whether or not the country is safer today. Most Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party believe the country is not safer.

***GENERAL INTERNAL LINKS

Policies don’t affect midterms

***Policy doesn’t matter to the midterms. Structural factors outweigh any risk of the link

[prefer our evidence. It’s from a political scientist identifying problems in the way reporters are conditioned to over-emphasize the possibility of the link]

Jonathan Bernstein, Professor of Political Science at University of Texas, San Antonio, 7/20/10, http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/07/economy-elections-and-political-science.html

In other words, yes, there are systematic things that matter in elections in addition to the economy. The point is that when we talk about elections (or, perhaps, presidential popularity) to look to those things first. Beyond them? Yes, there's also some margin of error, so we can try to explain that by factors specific to particular elections. The complaint of the political scientists is that this should be done, and usually isn't done, in the context of the systematic factors. So, yes, perhaps if Barack Obama gave a few more better speeches about better subjects he might have nudged his approval ratings up a point or two. But the overall context of those approval ratings is going to be the big, systematic factors. And, in fact, Obama is basically more or less where one would expect given those factors. Similarly, the Democrats should expect to lose seats this November because of the big, systematic factors -- the biggest and most obvious of which is just that they've done so well in the House recently that they're defending lots of marginal seats, and have very few marginal seat targets. There's a very strong, and really understandable, urge for us to believe that the day-to-day stuff matters to election outcomes: the gaffes, the debates, the ads, the strong speeches, the policy proposals. And sometimes they do! Mostly, though, they don't, or they matter just on the margins. As I've said many times, that doesn't mean that the ephemera of campaigns shouldn't be reported (and it may in fact be important to what pols do once they're elected, even if it doesn't sway voters). It just should be reported in context. Yes, I'm repeating myself, but it's for emphasis: marginal things should be reported as if they were marginal things, which requires keeping the context in the forefront. Or, reporters can simply avoid claiming or implying important effects for things that are unlikely to have such effects. In other words, I understand that it's impractical for reporters to constantly include reminders that really the economy and other systematic factors matter much more than X; that's not necessary if reporters would stop making claims about how X is likely to affect election results.

AT: Policies don’t affect midterms

Politically controversial items kills Democrats efforts to win midterms

Newsweek 7/13/10 "Can Obama Persuade Voters to Stay the Course?," http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/13/clift-can-obama-convince-voters-to-stay-the-course.html, AL

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs over the weekend conceded the obvious, that enough seats are in play in the House that Republicans could take back control. But both parties are to a large extent hostage to events. “It could turn either way,” says Matt Bennett, cofounder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way. “We’re not by any means locked into a political reality at this point.” Looking for the bright side, Bennett says the party in power never wants the president polling below 50, and Obama against all odds has maintained that base line. If BP seems under control and nothing else blows up in the world, literally or figuratively, and the economy shows a bit more juice, the political landscape could look brighter for Democrats come November—or not.

Big issues like the plan can still affect the outcome of the election

Amy Walter, National Journal, 7/7/10 "For Congressional Dems, Time Is Almost Up," http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/po_20100707_5003.php, AL

With just over four months left until Election Day, there's plenty of time for something big to happen that will change the current trajectory. But the emphasis should be on the word "big." A simple change in tone or an uptick in trend lines ain't gonna do it.

Outcome is stable UNLESS something politically controversial is brought up

Neil Newhouse, Republican pollster, 7/1/10 Political strategists handicap fall election -- can Democrats wash away their problems in time?, 2010 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/07/democrats-republican-strategists-handicap-fall-election.html, AL

“It’s not entirely hardened. But the direction and the fundamentals of this election seem pretty set in concrete right now. Can there be little changes in terms of intensity or in terms of magnitude? Absolutely. ... It could be an international crisis, it could be any number of different things happening. But barring some outside influence having an extraordinary impact on this election, the direction of this one looks pretty certain.”

Economy overwhelms the link

The economy controls the election. It overwhelms other factors

Sean Trende, 10-1-09, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/01/2010_could_easily_be_disastrous_for_democrats_98501.html

Missing from Kilgore’s analysis entirely is, strangely, what is likely to be the most important factor in the 2010 elections: the economy. In 1994, the economy was sluggish, but had been recovering for four years, and it still proved to be a drag on Democrats. I don’t think anyone really has a clue what the public’s perception of the economy will be in 2010. Reading Realclearmarkets day-to-day, you’re just as likely to find someone predicting Morning In America II as you are someone predicting gloom-and-doom. So let’s say this: If it is apparent to the average American by the summer of 2010 that we are in the midst of a robust recovery, then I think that the Democrats’ losses will be very limited. We could even see minor gains. But if we’re seeing double digit unemployment numbers that are only beginning to crest or come down (or worse still, are still going up), the Democrats are going to have an absolute debacle on their hands. Every Democrat in a red district that voted for the stimulus package, which is almost all of them, will have to face charges that they voted for a trillion dollars in spending with nothing to show for it. Many will also have to defend votes on cap-and-trade, a health care proposal that isn’t particularly popular in red states, and other votes yet to be determined (immigration reform?).

The economy will control the midterms

Ryan Witt, 1-1-10, http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m1d1-Which-of-President-Obamas-2010-New-Years-Resolutions-will-he-keep

Unemployment went up throughout most of 2009 and if it does not begin to go down significantly over 2010 it will be a bad year indeed for Obama and the Democrats. The American public will turn on the President just as they turned on President George H.W. Bush and "W" when the economy tanked. The public has given President Obama some time to fix things seeing how he inherited a bad economy but Americans are not exactly known for their patience. If President Obama can not point to real job growth by the middle of 2010 it will lead to disaster in the 2010 midterms. On the other hand if unemployment starts to go down the President can take credit for saving the nation from economic disaster which will ultimately help him and the Democrats in the polls.

Economy outweighs the link – foreign policy insignificant

Jobs is the issue through which everything else is seen

Mark Silva, LA Times staff writer, 4/14/10, "Poll: GOP, Democrats in tie as midterm elections near and voters focus on jobs," http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/14/nation/la-na-election-jobs15-2010apr15, AL

Reporting from Washington — The state of the economy likely will outweigh any other issue on the minds of voters in midterm congressional elections, which offer Republicans a significant opportunity to add to their numbers in Congress, a new bipartisan poll shows. The Battleground Poll, released Wednesday, shows a virtual tie between the Republican and Democratic parties when voters were asked which party's candidates they would favor in November. Yet 76% of the Republicans questioned in the poll, sponsored by George Washington University, said they were extremely likely to vote in November. That surpassed the number of likely Democratic voters by 14 percentage points. That level of intensity among Republicans surpasses what was measured in 1994, when the GOP took control of the House. The economy and jobs stand out as the main issues that voters want Congress to work on, with 39% of those surveyed calling it their primary issue and 16% their secondary issue. "It is still jobs, jobs, jobs," said Celinda Lake, of Lake Research, the Democratic pollster on the Battleground Poll's team. "It is really the prism though which everything else is seen."

The economy is the biggest issue in midterms not foreign policy

Alex Leary, staff writer, 7/5/10 “Midterm elections: Economy pushes war into background”

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/midterm-elections-economy-pushes-war-into-background/1106951, AL

With the 2010 midterm elections becoming a referendum on the economy, politicians are reacting to voters consumed with troubles at home. After nine years, America has become war weary. There is no greater domestic priority now than the economy. Despite mild economic improvement, millions remain out of work. Florida's 11.7 percent unemployment rate remains one of the highest in the country. "It dwarfs everything," said Republican pollster David Winston. "It's sort of like looking at a house and there's all these things that need repair, but if the roof's on fire, all these things are secondary. Jobs and the economy are the equivalent of the fire on the roof." War has slid enough out of view that some polls have stopped asking about it. A review of campaign websites in Florida shows it gets passing mention. "Rep. (Ron) Klein is ensuring there is tough oversight of our conflicts abroad," reads a brief statement on the Boca Raton Democrat's site. Four years ago, Klein won his first election on a strong message of ending the war in Iraq. In an interview, Klein said his constituents have mixed opinions, some thinking the United States should prosecute the war as long as necessary and others wanting an end. "They are saying we have enough problems in the U.S. We can't be the policemen to the world." Klein's chief opponent, Republican Allen West, is a former lieutenant colonel in the Army and served in Iraq and as a civilian adviser in Afghanistan. West, too, is focused on jobs but plans to draw a contrast with Klein over war issues, including Klein's support for a 2007 resolution opposing President George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq — a position taken by Florida's other Democratic House members. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, said voters are asking about health care, jobs and the oil disaster in the gulf. "The war," he said, "is not necessarily front page."

Foreign policy irrelevant to midterms

Foreign policy irrelevant to midterms

Kyodo News International, 12-24-09, http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3738852

New America Foundation director and foreign policy analyst Steve Clemons said the lack of a new course with Iran is a failure in ''what Obama most needed to achieve early in his tenure,'' and noted that Russian and Chinese resistance to tougher sanctions has weakened U.S. global standing. Dominating December headlines was the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Although many nations signed on calling for action on the issue, Obama has a tougher fight ahead in pushing for energy legislation in the House and Senate this spring. But political analysts say the focus in midterm election years is not on the foreign policy front, instead it is always closer to home. Lichtman notes that even when presidents have cited foreign policy successes -- as former President George H.W. Bush did after a swift and successful Gulf War in the early 1990s -- economic stagnation prevented his reelection. ''If you look at the recent history of elections, foreign policy either hasn't helped or has hurt,'' Lichtman said. ''Obama would be very happy if it was neutral.''

Foreign policy key to midterms

Foreign Policy trumps all other issues

Andrew McCarthy, senior fellow at the National Review Institute First Page Magazine, 1/25/10 “Brown’s National Security Victory”, http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/25/brown’s-national-security-victory/, AL

Jamie, great to be here as always. And you’re right. The Brown campaign’s internal polling told them something very interesting. While it’s true that healthcare is what nationalized the election and riveted everyone’s attention to it, it was the national security issues that put real distance between the two candidates in the mind of the electorate—in blue Massachusetts of all places. Sen.-elect Brown was able to speak forcefully and convincingly on issues like treating our jihadist enemies as combatants rather than mere defendants, about killing terrorists and preventing terrorism rather than contenting ourselves with prosecutions after Americans have been killed, about tough interrogation when necessary to save innocent lives. Martha Coakley, by contrast, had to try to defend the indefensible, which is Obama-style counterterrorism. It evidently made a huge difference to voters. FP: What do you think of how Bush was treated on this whole issue? McCarthy: As many of us predicted during the Bush years when the president was being hammered by the Left and the press, history is treating him much more kindly on the national security front. His movement of the country to a war-footing rather than treating international terrorism as a criminal justice matter was common sense, but common sense cuts against the Washington grain so it took a strong president to do it. Now, on issue after issue, he is being vindicated—he and Vice President Cheney, who has become the country’s leading voice on national security, after spending years being vilified. FP: What role did McCain play? McCarthy: Sen. McCain is, as ever, a mixed bag. He’s recently been very good on the need to treat the enemy as an enemy, not as a defendant. So that was helpful to Brown. But it can’t be forgotten that McCain was the force behind the libel of Bush as a torture monger and the consequent ruination of our interrogation policy. And it was the “McCain Amendment” that gave us, as a matter of law, the extension of Fifth Amendment rights to our enemies overseas, which has had awful ramifications even outside the issue of interrogation practices. McCain is responsible for a lot of the fodder that made Obama possible. FP: What lessons should Republicans take from Brown’s success? McCarthy: These national security positions resonate with voters. Healthcare, TARP, and the economic issues in general are very important, but they’re complex and make people’s eyes glaze over sometimes. The national defense issues, besides being the most important ones confronted by a political community, are comparatively easy to wrap your brain around. And strong, unapologetic national defense in a time of terrorist threat is appealing to voters. So we should be arguing these issues forcefully, and not worry about the fact that the left-wing legacy media will say nasty things about us. Their instinctive America-bashing is why they are speaking to—or, better, speaking at—a steadily decreasing audience.

Foreign policy crises will shape the midterms – overwhelms other factors

Business Week, 1-4-10, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-03/democrats-brace-for-year-of-living-dangerously-albert-r-hunt.html

Crisis: Obama will face one, most likely international; perhaps soon with the al-Qaeda presence in Yemen. How he handles it will affect his party’s performance in November. Shaping Perceptions Crises aren’t always major events. President Ronald Reagan’s triumphs over the air-traffic controllers or Obama’s handling of Somalian piracy last April weren’t sweeping historical moments, but helped shape presidential perceptions, or in Obama’s case mitigate concerns about weakness. Conversely, the botched U.S. policy in Somalia haunted Clinton through the first midterm elections. For all the tragedy of 9-11, it was a political bonanza for President George W. Bush. The country was united and the rally- around-the-flag mindset carried through to the midterm elections in 2002. Republicans were even able to successfully question the patriotism of Georgia Democratic Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in the Vietnam War. If a major crisis occurs and the president rises to the occasion, it will lift other Democrats. President John F. Kennedy’s deft handling of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 resonated with the country and helped his fellow Democrats in the congressional elections a few weeks later.

Foreign policy won’t affect Dem base

Dems won’t lose their base on foreign policy. Domestic wins will bring them back

CSM, 11-30-09

Other observers suggest that in escalating US involvement in Afghanistan, Obama is engaging in typical presidential behavior that will end up inoculating him politically. “This is the classic problem that both Clinton and Bush faced: You govern as a moderate, often irritating the more extreme elements of your party,” says John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “Those people will be angry, but they will end up coming back to [Obama] because the alternative is less palatable.” Christopher Gelpi, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., argues that Obama can survive disappointing his antiwar base on Afghanistan. The key is to keep an eye on the big picture. “What he’ll do is deliver his speech, then get back to healthcare,” Mr. Gelpi says. “If he can pass it by the end of the year, he’ll get a pass from Democrats on Afghanistan.”

Midterms = Referendum on Obama

The election is a referendum on Obama not Bush

Susan Davis, staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, 7/20/10, 2010: A Referendum on Bush or Obama?, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/07/20/2010-a-referendum-on-bush-or-obama/, AL

Democrats want to make former President George W. Bush an issue in this election, but don’t look for him on the campaign trail. “He’s not doing that, he’s not interested,” Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions told reporters today when asked if he would welcome the former president on the stump for GOP candidates. Sessions noted that Bush has stayed completely out of the partisan fray since leaving office. “Why are we now invoking whether we’re going to involve him or not?” Sessions said. “He has not been involved, he does not do fund-raisers, he has said to us, ‘I’m not interested in doing it’ and that goes back to the day he left” office. A spokesman for Bush declined to comment. Democrats are invoking Bush, who remains largely unpopular with the American people, as part of their broader argument in the midterm elections that Republicans want to “turn back the clock” to economic and national security policies executed under the Bush administration. “This is a referendum on the Obama-Pelosi years, that’s what this election is all about,” Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden told the gathering of reporters on Capitol Hill. “They can spin, they can sing, they can dance naked in the streets to say it’s about Bush, but he’s neither in the White House nor on the ballot.”

Midterms are about Obama

Quinn Bowman, staff writer for PBS, 7/20/10, House Republicans See Obama's Record as Their Key to Victory, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/07/house-republicans-think-obamas-record-thier-key-to-victory.html, AL

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, chairman of the committee charged with putting Republicans back in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, told reporters Tuesday that the 2010 midterm elections were going to be all about President Obama's agenda before the Democratic Congress. Sessions said that agenda, which included the biggest health reform law since the creation of Medicare and the most comprehensive financial sector reform since the Great Depression, was not creating jobs for the American people and was instead growing wasteful government. "This is a referendum on who is holding up and supporting that agenda," Sessions said. In a briefing with reporters, Sessions and National Republican Campaign Committee Deputy Chairman Oregon Rep. Greg Walden argued that momentum was on their side. They reported their committee raised $9 million in June 2010 and has $17 million to spend on the approximately 60 House seats controlled by Democrats that could go either way in November. Republicans need to win 39 seats to unseat the Democrats from the majority.

Midterms empirically about the president- approval rating key

Chris Cillizza, head writer of The Fix, political section of the Washington Post, 6/25/10, The most important number in the midterms, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/the-line/the-most-important-number-in-t.html?wprss=thefix, AL

Midterm elections -- particularly the first midterm of a president's first term in office -- tend to be nationalized, serving as an early referendum on how the chief executive is doing in the eyes of voters. Given that, the most important number when trying to analyze how many seats Republicans will win this fall may well be President Barack Obama's job approval number. The better the president is doing in the eyes of voters, the less likely they will be to punish his party at the ballot box. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll pegged Obama's job approval rating at 45 percent while 48 percent disapproved. It marked the first time in Obama's presidency that those disapproving of how he is handling the office outnumbered those approving of the job he is doing in the NBC/WSJ numbers. The NBC/WSJ poll reflects a broad trend in Obama's approval numbers that has to be at least somewhat concerning for Democratic party strategists.

Obama concedes midterms is a referendum on him

AP 7/15/10 Obama: Voters to decide who caused 'this mess', http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hz13IY28A6Jx1XbBR7Cp1WIiCQGgD9H040H80, AL

President Barack Obama acknowledges that the fall elections could amount to a referendum on his stewardship of the nation's affairs. Obama tells NBC in an interview that "nobody in the White House is satisfied" with continuing high unemployment. But he also says the midterm congressional elections could come down to "a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that got us out of this mess." The president said in the interview he believes voters "are going to say the policies that got us into this mess, we can't go back to." He also said Washington "has spent an inordinate amount of time on politics — who's up and who's down — and not enough on what we're doing for the American people."

Midterms = Referendum on Obama

Obama’s ratings directly correlate to democrat seats

Matt Bai, national political columnist for The Times, 6/7/10, Democrat in Chief?,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/magazine/13midterms-t.html?pagewanted=9, AL

There is a corollary to this theorem, which Rahm Emanuel explained to me when we talked in April. For every point that Obama’s approval rating dips below 50 percent, Emanuel said, there are probably four or five more House districts that will swing into the Republican column, and vice versa. Emanuel reeled off a series of polls from that week — some that had the president just under 50 percent but one, from The Washington Post and ABC News, that put the number at 54 — in a way that made it clear that he was, if not obsessed with these numbers, then clearly transfixed by them. “It does matter where he is,” Emanuel told me. “For the midterms, if you’re at 50, that’s a different scenario for the president then if you’re at 47.”

Obama’s popularity is key to democratic success in the midterms

Charlie Cook, writes for National Journal and CongressDaily AM, April 10 published by the National Journal Group. He is a political analyst for NBC News as well as editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, April, Washington Quarterly, http://www.twq.com/10april/docs/10apr_Cook.pdf, AL

Second, there is a very strong relation- ship between a president’s job approval rating and how that president’s party will fare in the midterm elections. Obama’s approval ratings, which averaged 50 percent for December 2009 and January 2010, put him considerably lower than where Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush were at this point, four points lower than where Bill Clinton was at the end of his first year, and one point above where Reagan was. Positioned on this ranking between Clinton and Reagan, Obama is in the company of the two presidents whose parties suffered the greatest first-term, midterm election losses in the post—World War II era, having lost 52 and 26 House seats respectively, compared to the average of 16 seats.

Congressional approval is tied to Obama – if he’s more popular people will vote for Democrats

Dan Balz, Political Correspondent, 2/14/10 “Obama's ratings are crucial to the midterm fortunes of congressional Democrats” Washington Post 2010,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/13/AR2010021302044_2.html?hpid=topnews

Second, according to Pew, "opinions about Barack Obama are not nearly as negative as were views of George Bush in 2006 and are somewhat better than opinions of Bill Clinton were for much of 1994. Throughout 2006, significantly more people said their votes that fall would be against Bush than said their votes would be for Bush. Today, more people say their votes this fall will be "for" Obama than "against" Obama. Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, takes a different approach to his analysis of the dissatisfaction with Washington, but he points to a similar conclusion: Pay attention to the president. Writing in Larry J. Sabato's "Crystal Ball" on Thursday, Abramowitz analyzed the relationship between presidential approval and congressional approval. He noted that Congress is often disliked. Congressional disapproval often far exceeds that of the incumbent president. Citing Gallup Poll data, he said that since 1974, Congress has received an approval rating above 50 percent only 29 of the 199 times people have been asked to rate the legislative branch and that "a majority of those positive ratings occurred during the two years following the 9/11 attacks." There is, however, a correlation between presidential approval and congressional approval. "When the president is more popular, Congress tends to be more popular, and when the president is less popular, Congress tends to be less popular," he wrote. There are many indicators to which political strategists will pay attention in the coming months. One is general sentiment about the direction of the country, which was in the dumps just before the 2008 election, improved during the early months of Obama's presidency and now has soured again. Another is whether Americans say they plan to vote for the Republican or the Democrat for the House. This has never been an infallible indicator in predicting how many seats will change hands. But currently the public is split evenly, and among registered voters, Republicans have a statistically insignificant but politically notable advantage. Not many months ago, Democrats had a big edge here. The most important indicator, however, is the president's approval. Evaluations of Congress have "very little influence" on what happens in congressional elections, Abramowitz wrote. "When it comes to choosing candidates for Congress, it is opinions of the president's performance that matter." Independent analyst Rhodes Cook produced a helpful analysis recently that looked at the impact of presidential approval on midterm elections. Almost without exception, presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent at the time of the midterm election saw their party suffer the most significant losses. That puts Obama on the cusp of the danger zone. For much of the last six months, Obama's slide in the polls has drawn the biggest headlines. His approval ratings plummeted from about 70 percent around the 100-day mark of his presidency to about 50 percent by the end of last year. It remains there today. The best thing that can be said about him is that his approval ratings have stopped falling. The challenge for Obama will be to improve his standing with the American people enough to provide some protection for Democrats trying to hold down their expected losses.

Midterms = Referendum on Obama

Presidential approval is key to midterms results

Ron Nehring, Chairman of the California Republican Party, 12-14-09, http://foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/ron-nehring/6059-impact-presidential-approval-mid-term-elections

Barack Obama's public approval rating has dropped to as low as 47% in the last week, according to Gallup. Although the President will not appear on the ballot again until 2012, how the public views his presidency will have a direct impact on each party's performance in next year's mid-term elections. The party holding the White House has lost seats in 10 of the last 12 mid-terms, going back to President Kennedy's 1962 losses. Even in that year, with a 74% approval rating following the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy’s Democrats lost seats in the House. Historically, the public uses mid-term elections to correct for the perceived excesses of the party in power, while the absence of coattail effects may result in some seats reverting back to the party with the natural advantage in the district. IMPACT ON CONGRESSIONAL RACES. The magnitude of the net losses suffered by the President's party in Congress has been in direct, inverse proportion to the President's public approval rating on Election Day. The party in control of the White House suffered the most in 1966, 1974 and 1994 when the incumbent's approval ratings were all under 50%. High approval ratings of President Clinton in 1998 (66%) and President Bush in 2002 (63%) helped the governing party gain seats in those two years -- a historical aberration.

Obama approval determines GOP pickup opportunities

Andrew Halcro, Director of Business Development, Avis Alaska, 8-28-09, http://www.andrewhalcro.com/permafrost_friday_seniority

In 2010, Republicans are poised to pick up significant gains due to the anger and concern over several of President Obama's legislative proposals. A historical look back shows that if President Obama’s Approval Rating is around 60%, the GOP would likely only gain around 16-18 seats in the House and 1 seat in the Senate. If President Obama’s Approval Rating is around 55%, the GOP would likely gain between 20-22 seats in the House and 1-2 seats in the Senate. If President Obama’s Approval Rating were to fall below the 49% Midterm average, the GOP could see a repeat along the lines of 1994.

2010 will be a referendum on Obama

Jim Malone, 12-16-09, http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/american-life/Republicans-Looking-Ahead-to-2010-79463197.html

Enacting health care reform has been a top priority for President Obama, and the issue is likely to figure prominently in next year's midterm congressional elections. Mr. Obama won't have to seek re-election until 2012, but Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown says the president will be a major player in next year's congressional elections. "The notion that the 2010 elections won't be nationalized or won't be about Barack Obama I think is unlikely," said Peter Brown. "This election will be about President Obama. He is not on the ballot, but his party is on the ballot and many of his supporters are on the ballot."

Obama’s approval will determine midterms

LA Times, 1-1-10

The problem for Democrats is evident in polling, which shows a precipitous slide in Obama's job approval rating, from a high of about 80% before he took office to 48% in the latest aggregation by pollster.com, a political website. The fortunes of the two major parties often rise or fall with their leader in the White House: Bill Clinton, bruised by his failed effort to pass healthcare reform, had a 46% approval rating in 1994 when Republicans took over Congress. Bush, plagued by the unpopular war in Iraq, was at 38% when Democrats won control in 2006.

***DEMS GOOD IMPACTS

GOP win bad – govt shutdown

Republican control causes shut down of government

John Quiggin, staff writer, 7/16/10, The crisis of 2011?, http://crookedtimber.org/2010/07/16/the-crisis-of-2011/, AL

I’ve been too absorbed by my book projects and by Australian politics (of which more soon) to pay a lot of attention to the forthcoming US elections, but it seems to be widely projected that the Republicans could regain control of the House of Representatives. What surprises me is that no-one has drawn the obvious inference as to what will follow, namely a shutdown of the US government. It seems obvious to me that a shutdown will happen – the Republicans of today are both more extreme and more disciplined than last time they were in a position to shut down the government, and they did it then. And they hate Obama at least as much now as they hated Clinton in 1995 (maybe not quite as much as they hated him by 2000, but they are getting there faster this time). The big question is how a shutdown will be resolved. It seems to me that it will be a lot harder for Obama to induce the Republicans to back down than it was for Clinton. IIRC, no piece of legislation proposed by Obama has received more than a handful of votes in the House, and (unlike the case with Bob Dole in 1995) no aspiring Republican presidential candidate will have an interest in resolving the problem – the base would be furious. On the other hand, the price Obama would have to pay if he capitulated the Republicans would demand from Obama in a capitulation would be huge, certainly enough to end his presidency at one term. So, I anticipate a lengthy shutdown, and some desperate expedients to keep things running. As far as I can tell, there is no mechanism for resolving this kind of deadlock – the House can’t be dissolved early as would happen in a parliamentary system. I think the Founders probably envisaged the House as having a “power of the purse” comparable to that of the British Commons. Whether they did or not, I’m sure this argument will be made, probably by people who have argued, until very recently, that the power of the Executive is essentially unlimited. But, my understanding is limited and I’d be keen to hear what others think about this. [1] I’ve tried to clarify my point about capitulation, which was poorly expressed the first time.

Republicans will shut down the Congress if they win

Steven Benen, staff writer, 7/18/2010, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_07/024779.php, AL

A LIKELY SCENARIO IN 2011.... It's hard to say with confidence which party will hold the congressional majority next year, but Paul Krugman noted yesterday that "fake scandals" will be all the rage in the 112th Congress if there's a Republican majority. [W]e'll be having hearings over accusations of corruption on the part of Michelle Obama's hairdresser, janitors at the Treasury, and Larry Summers's doctor's dog. If you don't believe me, you weren't paying attention during the Clinton years; remember, we had months of hearings over claims that something was fishy in the White House travel office (nothing was). This may sound hyperbolic. It's not. In the Clinton era, House Republicans held two weeks of hearings investigating the Clintons' Christmas card list, and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform fired a bullet into a "head-like object" -- reportedly a melon -- in his backyard to test his conspiracy theories about Vince Foster. All told, over the last six years of Bill Clinton's presidency, that same committee unilaterally issued 1,052 subpoenas -- that's not a typo -- to investigate baseless allegations of misconduct. That translates to an average of a politically-inspired subpoena every other day for six consecutive years, including weekends, holidays, and congressional recesses. It would almost certainly be worse in 2011 and 2012. Indeed, the man positioned to lead the committee -- reformed alleged car thief Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) -- has already said he's inclined to leave "corporate America" alone, so he can attack the White House relentlessly. For that matter, let's also not forget that some Republicans, including two members of Congress, have raised the specter of presidential impeachment once there's a GOP majority. But Krugman also flagged this item from John Quiggin, reflecting on another likely scenario in the event of a GOP House majority. What surprises me is that no-one has drawn the obvious inference as to what will follow, namely a shutdown of the US government. It seems obvious to me that a shutdown will happen -- the Republicans of today are both more extreme and more disciplined than last time they were in a position to shut down the government, and they did it then. And they hate Obama at least as much now as they hated Clinton in 1995. Agreed. John Boehner (R-Ohio) has already made some noises about refusing to fund health care programs, and given the party's desperation to please its right-wing base, it stands to reason Republicans would gladly shut down the government as a means towards obstructing the agenda approved in 2009 and 2010. If I were laying odds, I'd say the chances of a prolonged government shutdown next year are well over 50% -- if there's a Republican majority, that is.

GOP win bad – govt shutdown

Shutdown under republicans- 2 reasons

Matthew Yglesias, staff writer, 7/17/10, Government Shutdown 2011?, http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/government-shutdown-of-2011/, AL

John Quiggin moots the idea that if Republicans secure a majority in the House of Representatives we’ll see a replay of the 1995 budget shutdown. The case against this happening is that conventional wisdom holds that the shutdown was a fiasco for Newt Gingrich that members of congress will be loathe to repeat. I think the case for it happening is twofold. One is that conservative politics is now much more dominated by a set of overlapping, competing media figures who are more interested in ratings than in majorities. The other is that if John Boehner has the courage of my convictions, he’ll believe that a government shutdown will risk sending the economy into a double-dip recession and that ultimately Barack Obama will be blamed for the bad results regardless of what polling says in the moment. Now does Boehner have those convictions? I have no idea. And would he really be so bold and immoral as to roll the dice on that basis? I also have no idea. But it could happen. To an extent, I think the functioning of our political system depends on the key actors not fully understanding how it works.

Shutdown kills the economy

Government shutdown kills the economy

Jonathan Bernstein, political scientist writer, 7/17/10, http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/07/train-wreck-2011.html, AL

Via Yglesias, John Quiggan at Crooked Timber predicts a government shutdown if Republicans win the House this fall. Nick Beaudrot thinks not; he thinks the memory of 1995-1996 is strong enough to prevent Republicans from seeking a repetition. Yglesias takes a different angle: [I]f John Boehner has the courage of my convictions, he’ll believe that a government shutdown will risk sending the economy into a double-dip recession and that ultimately Barack Obama will be blamed for the bad results regardless of what polling says in the moment...To an extent, I think the functioning of our political system depends on the key actors not fully understanding how it works. I'm not sure that's correct, however. A two-to-four week shutdown of the government sometime between the beginning of the fiscal year in October 2011 and, say, January 2012 isn't, I don't think, especially likely to push the economy over the brink.

Gridlock Bad- Kills Response efforts

GOP control creates gridlock- killing ability to respond to issues

Carl Leubsdorf, Dallas Morning News staff writer, 6/22/10, "Preview of Obama's term with GOP in charge," http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-leubsdorf_0624edi.State.Edition1.5076c56.html, AL

In the past week, two House Republicans provided a preview of what life might be like for President Barack Obama if their party wins control in November's mid-term congressional elections. One is Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis, who attracted enormous publicity by apologizing to BP for an alleged White House "shakedown" in agreeing to a $20 billion compensation fund for oil spill victims. Though GOP leaders forced a retraction, it's clear other House Republicans share Barton's view. GOP term limits and reportedly troubled relations with Republican leader John Boehner may keep Barton from chairing the Energy and Commerce Committee in a GOP House. But Democrats quickly noted that most congressional Republicans have a similar pro-business, anti-government philosophy, foreshadowing a return to the partisan gridlock of the Bush years. Rep. Darrell Issa of California is the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. According to Politico, he plans to hire an army of investigators to investigate the Obama administration, just as predecessors from both parties used that panel to make life difficult for political opponents. In a gridlocked world, such probes often become a major activity of an opposition Congress when the president's veto authority blocks its ability to pass legislation. That would be especially likely if the Republicans win either or both houses in November, since they would hope to damage Obama politically and cripple his anticipated 2012 re-election bid.

Gridlock bad – deficits

Partisan gridlock got high deficits- bipartisanship key to solve

Gary Andes, Weekly Standard staff writer, 11-5-09, “Reducing the Good Will Deficit,” Daily Standard, http://www.blackcatrum.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/165jfiqq.asp, AL

The U.S. fiscal outlook indeed has significantly deteriorated in the past year--a principal reason behind the rising tide of voter distress. As Senator Judd Gregg noted recently, "The budget that they [the Obama Administration] sent here, has a trillion dollar deficit every year for the next ten years and raises the public debt of this country from 40% of GDP to 80% of the GDP." These numbers are unsustainable. One party can no longer address them unilaterally. Attempting it alone will result in political disaster. So no one even tries. This is where the "other" deficit matters. Call it "the good will gap." Like the budget deficit, it's expanding exponentially. A permanent campaign mentality contributes to the chasm. Each side waits for the other to make an unpopular policy choice; then they pounce. Threats of 30-second attack ads become a deterrent to necessary action. So is it possible our fiscal problems now outstrip the political system's ability to solve them? Many think that's the case. "It's both depressing and scary," the head of a business trade association told me. "I think we have a long and dark road ahead until someone realizes that our current system is just plain broken." A Senate leadership aide agreed. "The process we're going through on health care is creating more, not less divisiveness." He told me certain types of legislation--like reining in big budget deficits or reforming the health care system--just can't be done in a partisan manner. "This president had a chance to build good will, but he wasted it. It's not there anymore." Health care may pass, he told me, but it will further divide, not heal, polarized wounds. They are both right. So here's an inconvenient truth the Obama administration has yet to get its arms around. And maybe Tuesday night's results will help drive home the message: Addressing the budget deficit requires first closing the good will gap. Unfortunately we've traveled nearly a decade in American politics without that kind of détente. George H.W. Bush did it by forging bipartisanship on foreign policy. Bill Clinton did it on the budget. George W. Bush worked with Democrats on education reform. Sometimes a crisis like the September 11 terrorist attacks can refuel an empty tank. Yet while Barack Obama spoke about forging bipartisanship more than any candidate in recent history, his presidency has only expanded the good will gap. Like it our not, America faces twin deficits--one concerns cash and the other is about consensus. Given the magnitude of our fiscal situation, we can't fix the first without addressing the second. Obama needs to understand this connection. Based on his political behavior on issues like the stimulus and health care, it's unclear he does. Tuesday night's results send a strong signal. Obama needs to hit the reset button in his approach to big, controversial issues like taming the budget deficit. He should tell the White House staff to hang up on Speaker Pelosi and start phoning some Republicans.

GOP win ( impeachment

Republican takeover causes impeachment

Jonathan Bernstein, Professor of Political Science at University of Texas, San Antonio, 12-30-09, http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2009/12/goal-impossible-things.html

Why do Republicans do that? One reason is something I've talked about before, the mixed incentives of Republicans when it comes to holding office. In normal political parties, everyone (activists, campaign professionals, formal party officials and staff, and candidates) have a strong incentive to win elections. That's not true in the current GOP, because many campaign professionals (and possibly some others within the party) are better off if the party loses. Glenn Beck sells more books with Dems in office. People poised to make money from exploiting outraged conservatives will find it easier to do with Barack Obama as president than with George W. Bush. Demanding impossible things is one way to square the circle. If Republicans can win elections but still fail to enact their agenda because they don't have the votes to reach supermajorities (or to override a veto), then the money machine can keep churning. That's what impeaching Bill Clinton was all about (and why I expect plenty of impeachment talk if Republicans do gain the House in 2010). A full repeal of health care reform is a perfect new Republican issue. I don't know that it will be a central issue of the 2010 or 2012 elections, but I do expect conservatives to keep pushing it for quite a while.

GOP takeover causes impeachment

Bob Cesca, Political Author, Blogger, and New Media Producer, 9-23-09, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-impeachment-of-presid_b_297330.html

If the Republicans ever manage to retake Congress, they will absolutely try to impeach President Obama. And it'll be based upon a supremely ridiculous charge such as, say, the president refusing to nourish our crops with a sports drink instead of water. Okay, so maybe the Idiocracy example is over-the-top, but if we follow the current trajectory of far-right attacks to their logical yet insane conclusion, it makes sense in a very eerie way. Have you seen the television commercials solemnly defending our right to poison our kids with "juice drinks and soda?" There you go. I've been following the Republican descent into the realms of the bizarre for some time now, and it wasn't until the "czars" thing broke that I became convinced that if they retook Congress the Republicans might try to impeach the president. The grounds for both the impeachment and the language used to sell it will likely be fabricated by either Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. I mean, 100 Republican members of Congress have signed onto Rep. Jack Kingston's cartoonish czar bill. 100 House Republicans out of 177 have attached their names to a bill that was essentially invented as a television bit by Glenn Beck without any regard for the fact that "czar" is a nickname invented by the press, and that every president -- all of them! -- has employed policy and political advisers within their administrations. But it functions as an effective Beck attack because he knows his audience isn't bright enough to distinguish "czars" from "communists." By the way, not to be out-crazied by his House colleagues, Senator Ensign introduced an amendment to the Finance Committee health care reform bill called "Transparency in Czars." This might as well be "Transparency in Hobbits" because it's just that ludicrous.

GOP takeover causes impeachment and total governmental shutdown

Texas Truth, 4-18-09, http://moretexastruth.blogspot.com/2009/04/calls-for-obamas-impearchment.html

You can sure bet the impeachment charges will come after the 2010 mid term elections. The liberal democrats are crapping in their pants right now, Not 3 months into his term of office, Barack HUSSEIN Obama as already spent more money, made more mistakes, and pissed off more people that any of his predecessors’ entire terms of office. The conservatives will take back control of the House and/or the Senate in 2010 and the charges will fly. Watch for a large number of his appointees to bail as we get closer. They know they will be also targets and dragged into the mess that The Boy Wonder has created and will not want to be directly involved with the mess. He will spend the last two years of his term mired in law suits, criminal and civil charges, and questions on his ability AND the legality of his first two years in office, that he will be lost. Because of this, he will be a lame duck President and will not get a second four years.

GOP takeover doesn’t solve spending

GOP won’t restrain spending

Robert Ringer, WorldNet Daily nutcase, 3-12-10, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=127646

I had a long visit a few days ago with a Republican congressman who assured me that even if the Republicans win back both the House and Senate in 2010, government spending will continue unabated. He agreed with me that, with few exceptions, Republicans lack the courage to vote against most spending bills.

***DEMS BAD IMPACTS

Gridlock good – economy

Gridlock good – markets like it

Financial Post 7/20/10 Gridlock best for investors, http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Gridlock+best+investors/3297935/story.html, AL

If history is a guide, investors should hope U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 2 result in more gridlock than the barrage of legislation they have faced from Barack Obama's Democratic government. At least 35 seats in the Senate and all seats the House of Representatives will be contested. The best possible outcome for markets is a Democratic president and a Republican Congress -- maybe a stretch at this point. Here we explore the ins and outs of the election for markets. -- SECOND YEAR OF PRESIDENCY BEST The Standard & Poor's 500 index has surged 48% on average starting in the second year of each U.S. presidential term, measured from its lowest level through the high the next year, according to data going back to 1928. That compares with trough-to-peak gains of 38% in other years. An advance this year would come after Mr. Obama already presided over the biggest rally during the start of a presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. -- WHY IT MIGHT WORK BETTER NOW The current thinking is that the administration is punitive towards business and any erosion of power in Congress would create an environment that's less punitive," said Walter "Bucky" Hellwig, a Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management, which oversees US$17 billion. "From the standpoint of a lot of investors, that would certainly help equities." Losing seats may make it harder for Obama to scale back Bush's tax cuts to boost revenue and pay down the budget deficit. Democrats are seeking to raise taxes on dividends and capital gains and end breaks for Americans earning US$250,000 or more. "The market has been uncomfortable with the pace of the legislative agenda this year," said John Canally, a Boston-based investment strategist and economist at LPL Financial, which oversees US$285 billion. "Republican control of the House could usher in some gridlock and slow the pace. The view of the market is that Washington is pushing a little too far." -- WHAT HISTORY SAYS ABOUT GRIDLOCK The S&P 500 gained 6.7% in the 12 months after the 2006 midterm election, when Republicans and President George W. Bush lost control of both houses of Congress. In the 1994 congressional elections under President Bill Clinton, Democrats gave up their majority in the House and Senate. That preceded the S&P 500's 34% surge in 1995, the biggest in 37 years, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Bets on Intrade show a 54% chance Republicans will take control of the House, enabling them to block Obama's policies. That may help prevent a bear market after equities tumbled as much as 16% in the past two months, says billionaire Kenneth Fisher. "I envision a rally from before the midterm elections," said Fisher, who oversees US$35 billion in Woodside, Calif., as chief executive officer of Fisher Investments. "Markets love gridlock. What the market wants to see is no change: less legislation that engages in changes in taxes, spending, regulation or property rights."

Republican control creates gridlock- helping the economy

Chris Panteli, staff writer, 3/15/10, Wirtz eyes US capital market rally after mid-term elections, Investment Week, http://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/1596324/wirtz-eyes-us-capital-market-rally-mid-term-elections, AL

Fifth Third Asset Management president and CIO Keith Wirtz believes the US capital markets will enjoy a late rally following the mid-term elections in November. Wirtz, whose firm took on management of Skandia Investment Group’s $80m US Large Cap Growth fund, says the prospect of a hung parliament, which is currently hitting sterling badly, would have the opposite effect across the Atlantic. He predicts the Democrats will lose seats in both the house and the senate in the mid-terms, resulting in congressional gridlock, which in turn will lead to a rally in the markets. “The US markets would cheer for a divided government,” Wirtz says. “The markets will perceive less risk coming from congress and less damage to the American taxpayer and that may lead to a pretty nice rally late in the year. “The markets respond quite favourably to congressional gridlock and I have every hope and expectation our congress is going to lock up in November.” Wirtz believes the US equity markets will lead equity markets across the world in 2010. He says quality, which can now be bought cheaply in the US, will be the key theme in the SIG portfolio. As opposed to last year, returns will be sourced from quality larger-cap stocks, he adds, with pharmaceutical and technology stocks being favoured in the portfolio. “Financial quality is now the important theme. Earnings, margins, balance-sheet condition – those kinds of measures of quality to us look particularly attractive and cheap to us now,” Wirtz says. “You can buy quality fairly inexpensively in the US relative to other factors. “We have raised the capitalisation structure and have been moving towards areas which have been somewhat out of favour such as healthcare, where stocks look cheap to us right now. “We think technology still looks attractive to us because of the fundamentals we see over the next two years and we also want to re-expose to the energy areas of the US economy.”

GOP Good - Divided Government

GOP control key to reasonable policy solutions- creates divided government

Jonathan Rauch, Guest Scholar in Governance Studies @ Brookings, 3/25/10 "Around the Halls: Would Republican Control of the House be Better for the Obama Administration?" http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0325_halls_congress.aspx#rauch, AL

The health care bill’s enactment was a triumph for President Obama and one of America’s great stories of political true grit. But Obama cannot rest on his laurels, and the country cannot afford a power nap. The remaining challenges are daunting: the economy (especially employment); financial reform; energy and the environment; above all, an impending fiscal train wreck. In the face of those challenges, here is a two-word prescription for a successful Obama presidency: Speaker Boehner. The most important political change of the past half century is the Democrats’ and Republicans’ transformation from loose ideological coalitions to sharply distinct parties of the left and right. In Washington, the parties are now too far apart ideologically for either to count on winning support from the other side. However, the country’s biggest problems are too large for one party to handle, at least in any consistent way. The Democrats did pass health reform on a party-line basis, a remarkable accomplishment, but they did it by the skin of their teeth and with a Senate supermajority which has evaporated. That is not a trick they can keep performing. Under those conditions, the only way to achieve sustainable bipartisanship is to divide control of the government, forcing the parties to negotiate in order to get anything done. That pulls policy toward the center, which encourages reasonableness. And the very fact that both parties sign off on any given policy makes the public perceive that policy as more reasonable, which makes it less controversial and more sustainable. I think a bipartisan health-care reform would have been only, say, 30 percent different from the one the Democrats passed, but it would have been 50 percent better (many of the Republicans’ ideas were good) and 200 percent more popular, which would have made it 80 percent more likely to succeed. (All figures are approximate.) It is true, as my Brookings colleague Tom Mann argues, that the two parties are not symmetrically positioned: today’s Republicans are ideologically more extreme and less diverse than today’s Democrats (or yesterday’s Republicans). But when he concludes that Republicans simply will not participate in governing, and that the best hope of solving the country’s problems is for Democrats to go it alone, he and I part company. The best way of inducing Republicans to behave responsibly is to give them responsibility. In any case, the alternative is a chimera. Democrats do not have enough votes on Capitol Hill, enough support in the public (of which only a third identifies as Democratic), or enough internal cohesion to govern sustainably on their own. To regard the prospect of a House turnover this fall as a calamity for Democrats is understandable but short-sighted. Speaker Gingrich made it possible for Bill Clinton to leave office with glowing approval ratings by allowing him to govern from the center of the country, instead of the center of his party. Speaker Boehner would do the same for Barack Obama.

GOP Good – Proliferation

GOP will take an aggressive foreign policy to stop proliferation

Jake Tapper, ABC News' senior White House correspondent. 4/7/10 “Nuclear Policy Enrages Republicans, Administration Argues It Will Make U.S. Safer”, http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/nuclear-policy-enrages-republicans-administration-argues-make-us/story?id=10306720&page=1, AL

President Obama says his new nuclear policy restricts the use of weapons while continuing to protect the United States and its allies, but some Republican critics argue that the world is now less safe and that the president's vision of a nuclear-free world is unrealistic. Republicans voice concern over the president's change in U.S. nuclear policy. It's unclear if the pushback will impact the pending Senate vote on ratification of the U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament treaty that Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are scheduled to sign Thursday in Prague. White House officials are increasingly expressing concern that the polarized political atmosphere might impact what is traditionally a bipartisan vote. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs again brought up past votes on arms treaties: the 1972 SALT I [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement], which was ratified by a vote of 88-2, START I in 1992 (93-6), START II in 1996 (87-4) and SORT [Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty] in 2003 (95-0). In a major policy shift, the president is pledging to not use nuclear weapons against any country that has signed and is abiding by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if they attack the United States with chemical or biological weapons. The United States also will not conduct any new nuclear testing or develop new nuclear weapons, but it will continue to modernize its infrastructure and bolster the development of other conventional weapons. The new nuclear policy, announced Tuesday, has Republican critics up in arms. They argue that the U.S. government is making the concessions without getting anything in return. "If you look at the issue of threat based, the world is not getting safer, the risks to the United States are certainly increasing," Rep. Michael R. Turner, R-Ohio, ranking member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, told ABC News. "It does overall diminish our options, and I think certainly that the American people should be concerned that the president would take this kind of action and get nothing in return." The House does not vote on treaties, but Turner said he would need to further study the new agreement with Russia before being able to express support for it. GOP senators from Arizona John McCain and Jon Kyl expressed concern about the message the new policy will send to countries seeking nuclear weapons. "The Obama Administration must clarify that we will take no option off the table to deter attacks against the American people and our allies," they said in a combined statement. "We believe that preventing nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation should begin by directly confronting the two leading proliferators and supporters of terrorism, Iran and North Korea. "The Obama administration's policies, thus far, have failed to do that and this failure has sent exactly the wrong message to other would-be proliferators and supporters of terrorism." Across the airwaves, the president's pledge fueled the outrage of conservatives. "I think the only thing that would work with Iran is they're thinking that there's a military consequence that could be faced if they become nuclear, and the farther he moves away from that, the more difficult his role with Iran is going to be," former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on CNN. Obama and administration officials, however, argue that the new policy sends exactly the right signal to Iran and North Korea, that by not complying with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursuing nuclear weapons, they are less safe. "I actually think that the NPR [Nuclear Posture Review] has a very strong message for both Iran and North Korea," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Tuesday. "We essentially carve out states like Iran and North Korea that are not in compliance with NPT." The message to these countries, Gates said, "is that if you're going to play by the rules, if you're going to join the international community, then we will undertake certain obligations to you, and that's covered in the NPR. But if you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you." Nicholas Burns, who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Bush administration, agreed, saying that the new policy should be welcomed and that it maintains "a very tough line" on Iran. "The president is clearly signaling that we are really decades away now from the end of the Cold War," he said. "That the real threats are no longer just those nuclear weapons states that bedeviled us in the past but they're the terrorist groups, and they're the renegade states like Iran and North Korea that are truly disruptive and a threat to the world.

No shutdown – only gridlock

GOP won’t shut down the government, but will produce gridlock – no significant economic effect

Nicholas Beaudrot, staff writer, 7/17/10, The Shutdown without a shutdown, http://www.donkeylicious.com/2010/07/shutdown-without-shutdown.html, AL

John Quiggin (via Krugman and Yglesias) try to figure out whether or not a Republican House would shutdown the government. I think the answer to that is actually "no". I think the Republicans have conceded that actually shutting down the government was bad for Newt Gingrich and bad for Republicans. It ultimately painted the GOP as the uncompromising party, and of course the economic rebound let Bill Clinton and the Democrats regain their approval rating. What I think we'll instead see is a more extreme version of what we're seeing today, which is that Republicans will effectively shut down the government, but keep the lights on at enough agencies that most people notice the government is still around, just less responsive than it use to. We've seen this movie before, in both 1998 and 2006, when the House majority, anticipating a favorable political climate coming soon, decided not to engage in political confrontation. And somehow, we're seeing it today, thanks largely to baroque (and broke) Senate procedure. The appointments process for sub-cabinet officials, District and Circuit Court judges, etc., has already slowed to a crawl. Should Republicans gain even the House majority, it will slow further. Regulatory actions will be subject to scrutiny from subpoena-empowered cranks, which will slow the federal bureaucracy from doing much of anything new, including implementing needed portions of the Affordable Care Act and the financial reform bill. People will still get their Social Security checks. But if you were expecting any agency to do something new that might help you out, you're probably going to be SOL if Republicans take back the House.

GOP will cause gridlock but wont cripple government

Jamelle Bouie, writer for the American Prospect, 7/19/10, Cranking the Obstructionism up to 11., http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2010&base_name=cranking_the_obstructionism_up, AL

I missed this on Friday, but it's worth mentioning: Crooked Timber's John Quiggin predicts a government shutdown if Republicans win the House of Representatives in November. That is, if today's Republicans are more extreme, more disciplined, and more disdainful of the president than their Gingrich-era forebears, then by Quiggin's lights, there's no reason for them not to shutdown the government. In the conversation that followed, Paul Krugman and Steve Benen agreed with Quiggin's take, while Nicholas Beaudrot and Jonathan Bernstein offered their dissents, arguing that Republicans suffered by shutting down the government in 1995 and aren't itching to repeat the mistake. To Beaudrot particularly, it's more likely that the GOP would stage an "effective shutdown" of the government and "keep the lights on at enough agencies that most people notice the government is still around, just less responsive than it use to." Republicans are smart enough to know that the last shutdown was a major political loser; by digging in their heels and forcing the federal government to close down parks, offices and everything in between, Gingrich-era Republicans handed President Clinton the brush he needed to paint them as right-wing extremists and ardent obstructionists. As Bernstein notes in his post, Gingrich failed in his reading of the president. He saw Clinton as weak, when in fact, the opposite was true. Minority Leader John Boehner seems unlikely to make the same mistake. President Obama is entering his third year with a string of significant legislative achievements, successes which Clinton did not have. With that, Boehner has far more reason to think that Obama will push back against him than Gingrich had for Clinton. It seems very unlikely that he would lead a government shutdown and give Obama that kind of opening, especially when he is extremely well-positioned to play the conciliatory mediator. To go back to a post I wrote last week, it's far more likely that Republicans will adopt the strategy of 1997-2000 -- endless investigations of the White House, regardless of whether there is anything significant to investigate. I'd be surprised if impeachment were seriously on the table, but at the very least, we can expect loud GOP investigations into ACORN and the New Black Panther Party (I wish I were joking). As for the Senate (where Democrats will have a smaller majority), my guess is that Republicans will continue their unanimous opposition and use their greater numbers to all but halt Senate business, leaving Obama with few avenues for advancing legislation or confirming nominees. Either way, if Republicans do well this fall, we can certainly expect them to turn the obstruction up to 11 for 2011 and beyond.

***FLEXIBILE IMPACTS

GOP win kills Obama’s agenda

Democrat loss derails Obama’s agenda

Globe and Mail 7/24/2010

(Konrad Yakabuski - Globe and Mail's chief U.S. political writer, based in Washington, “The Stab in the front” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-stab-in-the-front/article1650338/)

It is an understatement to say that, if the Democrats lose one or both houses, the second half of Mr. Obama’s first term will not look the same as the first half. Many pundits think that might be good for him. But that is no consolation to the Democratic members of Congress who will lose this fall. They went to bat to advance the President’s agenda expecting, if not gratitude, at least an effort from the White House to save their seats. Instead, they have the White House press secretary telling Meet the Press that “there’s no doubt there’s enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.” That utterance understandably left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fuming. “I don’t know who this guy is. I’ve never met him before. And he’s saying we’re going to lose the House,” she reportedly told her caucus. Being dead to Nancy Pelosi is not a fate to be wished upon anyone. Luckily, the newspaper Politico reported this week, the White House has reassured House Democrats that it is “not actively sabotaging” their campaigns. Well, that’s something, at least. The White House insists the midterms are not a referendum on the President. Except that they almost always are. The particularities of local races are important (more on that later) but countless studies of U.S. elections suggest that the swing voters who most determine outcomes only care about one thing, stupid.

GOP takeover absolutely collapses Obama’s agenda – they have no desire to cooperate

Bob Cesca, Political Author, Blogger, and New Media Producer, 9-23-09, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-impeachment-of-presid_b_297330.html

Ultimately, this is how the Republicans will likely proceed with an attempted impeachment of the president should they manage to take back Congress next year. If precedent is any indicator, they'll likely concoct some sort of ridiculous charge torn from a Beck or Limbaugh transcript, while generating public support for it using a Brundlefly hybrid of the Southern Strategy and neo-McCarthyism. And why not? It's exactly what they're doing now. Vice President Biden said this week that the administration's agenda would be crushed if the Republicans manage to take back Congress. He's right, but I think it'd be worse than that. Much worse. The 1990s will seem quaint by comparison, and it's clear that no matter how ridiculous the charges, the media will devour the spectacular drama while simultaneously excusing their behavior using false equivalencies and overcompensating with right-leaning conventional wisdom.

GOP takeover causes complete agenda shutdown

Ryan Witt, 1-1-10, http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m1d1-Which-of-President-Obamas-2010-New-Years-Resolutions-will-he-keep

The President's success in the 2008 presidential campaign has been well-documented. He was an unbelievably effective communicator who stayed on message and used a tremendous political machine to turn out the vote. The question in 2010 will be whether that same success can be transferred to Congressional elections. The Republicans will undoubtedly gain some seats as most every minority party does in a midterm after a new President is elected (President George W. Bush following 9/11 is the only recent exception). However the President may be able to make a difference in key races throughout the country to prevent Republicans from gaining enough seats to block his agenda. Even with a dominant majority in the House and a 60 vote caucus in the Senate the Democrats have struggled to move legislation. Losing significantly more seats could make the President something of a lame duck over the next two years. If Republicans were able to gain a majority in the House this would really be disastrous as they could start whatever investigations they please in order to sidetrack the President.

GOP takeover kills Obama’s agenda

Xinhua, 12-30-09, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/30/content_12729976.htm

The United States will hold midterm elections in November 2010,to choose all House members, a third of its Senators, some governors and state legislatures. The elections will be an acid test for the Obama government and the ruling Democratic Party, and can serve as a "weather vane" of U.S. political trends. If the Democratic Party performs well, it will help Obama push forward his reform policies. Otherwise, the Obama administration will lose some momentum.

GOP win kills Obama’s agenda

GOP takeover ends Obama’s agenda

Anthony Dedousis, 4-1-09, http://www.hpronline.org/spring-2009/united-states/451-looking-ahead-to-2010

Each election cycle seems to begin the day its predecessor ends. Since the midterm elections will affect President Obama’s ability to enact major pieces of his long-term agenda, it is already worthwhile to start examining the outlook for November 2010. The president’s party ordinarily loses congressional seats in the midterm elections. In the past 19 off-year elections, the ruling party has gained seats only twice. According to David King, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, “Expectations are high following a presidential election, but usually go unmet by the midterms.” Two exceptions to this trend came in the wake of national crises, most recently in 2002, when security concerns galvanized Republican support. The current recession will likely be a similarly dominant issue in the 2010 elections. If the economy begins improving next year, and the recovery is attributed to President Obama’s policies, the Democrats will probably enjoy their third straight victory. But if the stimulus and bank-rescue plans are unable to forestall a depression, the GOP stands a strong chance of routing the Democrats.

Republican takeover kills Obama’s agenda

James Joyner, 9-22-09, http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/biden_republican_house_takeback_end_of_the_road/

While Biden’s statement is being portrayed as controversial, it’s axiomatic. Unlikely as it is to happen, a Republican landslide wouldn’t so much be “the end of the road” as the Dead End sign one sees upon arrival. While I expect the GOP to win back a substantial number of those seats — they’re low hanging fruit, ideologically disposed to vote Republican, not going to have Obama’s coattails helping the Democratic GOTV effort, and it’s traditional for the president’s party to lose seats in the midterms, anyway — it’s almost inconceivable that they’ll take them all back, much less win 40 seats and reverse their losses in the last two cycles. But, if they did, it would be an indication of massive existing dissatisfaction with the direction Obama is leading the country.

Major GOP gains kill the Obama agenda

Kathryn Jean Lopez, 9-22-09, http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2JmZDY3MWVmMjI3MDA4ZWZlMDhiOTU4ODUwYzYwNWY=

Remarkably, of course, Dems do have a hold on D.C. at the moment and it's still as hard as it has been for them to even get their health-care agenda into legislative form. Significant losses next November will, I think, permanently remove some of the glimmer from the Obama rose. And really create an opening for an active and constructive opposition. The resulting Congress might be the GOP’s last shot before the next presidential election to prove they don’t blow all opportunities given to them.

GOP victory causes repeal of Obama’s agenda

Minnesota Independent, 12-16-09, http://minnesotaindependent.com/51924/nervous-about-healthcare-tea-partiers-look-to-2010

While organizers and some activists were more optimistic about their chances of stopping a health care bill, some of their rhetoric put victory in the past tense — they’d won already by scaring the Democrats and delaying the bill. “Nancy Pelosi wanted to pass this bill on August 1!” said Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). The more pessimistic activists looked ahead to other Democratic priorities that they could stop in the Senate, and looked to the 2010 elections as a chance to take power away from the Democrats. “I think we’ll take back the House,” said Curt Compton, a West Virginia activist who’d been unemployed since the start of summer. “Some people say we can take the Senate, although I’m not quite as optimistic about that yet.” The prospect of stopping the Democrats excited him more than the prospect of Republican victories. “They’re what we’ve got to work with,” he said. Andy, a North Carolina activist who hoisted a sign that read “American Capitalism: 1492-2009 RIP,” suggested that a Republican Congress could start repealing Obama’s agenda in 2011 if they took power in the midterms. “That’s what happened with Clinton,” he said.

Dem win ( Obama agenda

*Obama will get his whole agenda if the Dems can hold onto the House

Karen Travers, 9-21-09, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/biden-on-2010-if-gop-succeeds-its-the-end-of-the-road-for-what-barack-and-i-are-trying-to-do-1.html

Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats. “If they take them back, this the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do,” the vice president said at a fundraiser for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) today in Greenville, Delaware. Republicans need to pick up 40 seats next November to take back control of the House. There are 49 seats currently held by Democrats in districts that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) won in last year’s presidential election. Biden said these House seats are Republicans “one shot” at breaking the Obama administration’s agenda. But if Democrats can hold on to those seats, “the dam is going to break,” he said, and a new era of bipartisanship will begin. “All the hidden Republicans that don’t have the courage to vote the way they want to vote because of pressure from the party … it will break the dam and you will see bipartisanship,” Biden said.

Dem control after midterms key- climate change, card check, and immigration reform will die

Andrew Leonard, Salon staff writer, 10/16/09 "Obama's secret plan for a successful presidency," http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2009/10/16/obamas_secret_plan_for_a_successful_presidency/index.html, AL

Mickey Kaus says everything is falling into place for a successful Obama presidency. Except that, in the best Mickey Kaus tradition, his thesis is so drenched with contrarian posing that the definition of a "successful" Obama presidency means the abandonment of most of the policy goals Democrats have for his term. The Kaus thesis is predicated on Obama getting healthcare reform passed, after which the Democrats get clobbered by a still-crippled economy in the 2010 midterm elections. That, in turn, will mean that the rest of the "controversial big Dem bills that got backed up in 2010" -- climate change, card-check, immigration reform -- will die stillborn.

GOP win kills Obama’s foreign policy

GOP takeover kills Obama’s foreign policy

Chosun Ilbo, 1-2-10, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/01/01/2010010100224.html

U.S. President Barack Obama's Democratic Party is widely expected to be defeated by the Republicans in mid-term elections on Nov. 2, 2010. If the Democrats lose, then Obama's reforms will face serious setbacks, and his foreign policy objectives will lose momentum. General elections in the United Kingdom, scheduled sometime in the first half of 2010, could see the conservatives regain power after 12 years in the doldrums as the country suffers what so far has been an 18-month recession -- the longest since World War II -- and as public sentiment worsens over the drawn-out war in Afghanistan. A Tory victory would make the U.K. the third major European power to be controlled by conservatives following France in 2007 and Germany in 2009.

Dem win ( immigration reform

Immigration reform can happen in 2011

Ruben Navarrette Jr., member of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board, 6-29-09, http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/29/navarrette.immigration.reform/index.html

No one knows whether the bill could be approved this year. If the debate carries over until 2010, midterm elections could put the issue off until 2011 -- which could still work out well for the White House because achieving immigration reform would play well with Hispanics in Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.

Immigration reform depends on Democratic majorities after the midterms

Reuters, 11-19-09, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AI5CX20091119

Representative Luis Gutierrez says he will introduce a comprehensive reform bill in the Democrat-controlled Congress in December, offering a path to citizenship for law abiding undocumented workers. "It's my feeling that we just can't wait any longer for a bill that keeps our families together, protects our workers and allows a clear pathway to legalization for those who have earned it," the Illinois Democrat said. Gutierrez was speaking in a conference call on Wednesday, which organizers said reached 60,000 participants gathered at house parties in 45 states. Democratic officials in Washington, however, are skeptical there will be enough time or political will to tackle the issue next year although it could be on the agenda in 2011 or 2012 depending on the outcome of congressional elections next year.

Immigration reform can pass in 2011

LA Times, 6-29-09

But prior efforts have failed in the Senate. And with the measure's long-standing champions, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), no longer taking the lead, strategists say that success is possible only if Obama steps in. Some strategists believe the most likely time to press the issue will be in 2011, when Obama, once again needing Latino votes to win states such as Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada and perhaps to compete in Texas and Arizona, will be most motivated to lobby nervous Democrats on behalf of a legalization plan.

GOP win kills immigration

Losing midterms means no immigration or climate

Felicity Duncan - Master's degree in journalism and media studies, which she earned as a Fulbright scholar – 7/13/2010

(“Goodbye Democrats?”

http://www.moneyweb.com/mw/view/mw/en/page292671?oid=311462&sn=2009+Detail+no+image&pid=292671)

It would make it much harder for the Democrats to pursue their legislative agenda. Controversial issues like immigration and climate change would be almost impossible to address with a Republican House, and there would be many tough battles involved in passing just about any new laws. In addition, appointments, such as new judges for the Supreme Court, or a new Federal Reserve governor, would be much more difficult.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, democracy works on checks and balances, and it may be very healthy for the Democrats to have to reign in some of their more ambitious agendas. However, given the massive challenges facing the country, anything that makes decision-making slower, harder, and less certain is a mixed blessing at best.

Dem win ( cap and trade

Democratic survival ensures strong action on global warming

Chris Horner, National Review, 11-15-09, http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA4NjhiMDY4NDk0ZDE3ZTNkNGM1ODgxMWM1OTlkYWM=

This also makes the Kyoto II, the proposed 20-year extension of a five-year plan that was the Kyoto treaty, an inescapable issue for the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections. The outcome of these elections will surely dictate the outcome of this scheme — which, as European diplomats have long admitted, is targeted at the U.S. Kyoto II would exempt the overwhelming majority of the world's nations, including those bit players like China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia — where greenhouse gas emissions actually are growing, rapidly (which would be odd, if emissions really were the point; clearly, they are not). If the Nov. 2, 2010, elections go better than Team Soros/Obama fear, that will embolden them in the talks less than one week later (November 8-19). A wipeout ensures the right result. Too busy saving my presidency to spend whatever capital remains to push the whole global-governance routine just now.

GOP win kills cap and trade

The Democrats must keep their majority to pass cap and trade in 2011

High Plains Journal 1/29 (Sara Wyant, 1/29/10, " How a topsy-turvy political world got turned upside down again ", google news)

Cap-and-trade legislation also seems destined for retooling, perhaps in favor of a much broader energy bill focused on job creation. "We will likely not do climate change this year but will do an energy bill instead," said Sen. Byron Dorgan during a recent speech. The North Dakota Democrat says he supports "fuel economy standard increases, moving toward electric drive transportation systems, renewable energy production, modern transmission grid, conservation, and efficiency" as part of U.S. energy policy. Dorgan's assessment is that "In the aftermath of a very, very heavy lift on health care, I think it is unlikely that the Senate will turn next to the very complicated and very controversial subject of cap-and-trade climate change kind of legislation." Fight, fight, fight Several Democratic Party members expect the president to learn from the recent elections and hit the "reset" button on his far-reaching agenda. Independent voters are fleeing their party in droves. To get them back in the fold and re-energized, they expect him to move more toward the middle, focusing on bread and butter issues like jobs and the economy, just as Bill Clinton did after the Republican takeover of the House and Senate in 1994. Yet, many other Democrats are pushing President Obama to charge ahead with a very liberal agenda--despite the recent Senate loss in Massachusetts and losses in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia last fall. It's now or never, they reason, and if Democrats lose their majorities in 2010, it will be impossible to pass health care reform the following year. They want a fight to the finish, even if there is barely anyone left to take credit.

Democrat loss derails action on climate change

Robert M. Shrum – Political consultant, senior advisor to the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 – 7/15/2010

(The Week. “Obama needs a dose of ideology” http://theweek.com/article/index/205055/obama-needs-a-dose-of-ideology)

The president has been vindicated in his decision to push for sweeping progressive change, culminating in Wall Street reform, in his first two years. Imagine trying to push that, or health care, or the largest economic package in history, or a wholesale revamping of the college loan program to benefit students instead of banks through a Congress that next year will have many more Republicans, more bitterness and more modest results. No wonder the advocates of action on climate change and energy, the orphans of this transformative time, have been left to rage against the waning of the congressional session. With everything to play for between now and November, Democrats will move quickly from the final passage of legislation to the final weeks of campaigning. What case will they make to voters frustrated by a recovery slowed by insufficient stimulus?

Losing midterms means no climate

Felicity Duncan - Master's degree in journalism and media studies, which she earned as a Fulbright scholar – 7/13/2010

(“Goodbye Democrats?”

http://www.moneyweb.com/mw/view/mw/en/page292671?oid=311462&sn=2009+Detail+no+image&pid=292671)

It would make it much harder for the Democrats to pursue their legislative agenda. Controversial issues like immigration and climate change would be almost impossible to address with a Republican House, and there would be many tough battles involved in passing just about any new laws. In addition, appointments, such as new judges for the Supreme Court, or a new Federal Reserve governor, would be much more difficult. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, democracy works on checks and balances, and it may be very healthy for the Democrats to have to reign in some of their more ambitious agendas. However, given the massive challenges facing the country, anything that makes decision-making slower, harder, and less certain is a mixed blessing at best.

GOP win kills cap and trade

Congress working on legislation that will achieve change now but Democrat loss derails climate

Bradford Kane – founder and editor of the Bipartisan Bridge – 7/22/2010

(Huffington Post. “Anger vs. Vision at the November Midterm Election, and the Containment Cap for the Tea Party” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bradford-kane/anger-vs-vision-at-the-no_b_655399.html)

Progress would be imperiled if Americans were to flail and change Congressional direction simply out of frustration. The midterm election should be seen as an opportunity to advance the national strategy that Americans sought and which is well en route to being achieved. The election should be cast as a choice between (a) vision and actions for long-term US prosperity and economic growth, and effective use of government to solve entrenched problems, versus (b) anger over unreasonable expectations not having been fulfilled, and disengagement from forward-looking initiatives in favor of wistful notions of a 1950s-like economy and society. This would then invite debate on the vision which drives the parties, and mitigate the Tea Party's ability to proliferate anger. Vision and Actions for US Prosperity and Effective Government The Obama Administration and Congress have taken many major steps to put the country back on track toward long-term economic and social stability and success, most notably through health care reform, financial industry reform, and the economic stimulus bill. The Administration is also leading a number of other major initiatives which would improve our economy and social fabric, including legislation to bolster clean tech renewable energy and energy security, bolstering our economy by doubling exports within five years, education reform, and immigration reform. Taken together, these efforts will revitalize our economy, ensure our stability and sustainability for decades to come, and enhance both our personal and national security. But they do take time to implement and for their effects to be felt, just as it took time for the effects of the previous Administration's policies to be fully felt in the form of a crisis. There is every reason to be confident that President Obama, who is doing what he said he would do when we elected him, is leading the country to improved quality of life, and pre-eminence in the global economy. Anger and Disengagement While prompt resolution is sought for the challenges which face us, the Tea Party has been trying to capitalize on the frustration. Although it was initially focused on fiscal responsibility issues, the Tea Party has morphed into an umbrella group for the resentful, being hijacked by those with other issues and agendas. It reflects other historical efforts to "get government off our backs" by minimizing federal government, favoring states' rights, enabling local control, and ultimately letting individuals act without regard for adverse societal impacts. The Tea Party has been co-opted by some to dismantle laws (e.g., Rand Paul on civil rights), by some to promote xenophobia and antipathy (e.g., J.D. Hayworth on immigration), and by others to oppose government generally (e.g., Sharron Angle on who knows what) in ways that its instigators did not intend. In each case, they seek to tap anger and disaffection with anything that they think is wrong in America. The Tea Party ultimately seeks to turn the clock back to an era that they preferred in terms of demographics, influence in society, and the need for regulation. The Tea Party's strength is also its weakness. By being an expansive umbrella --- albeit for societal malcontents --- it consolidates a vocal minority of people and issues that most Americans do not support. The more that the Tea Party's blemishes are illuminated, the more people will gravitate back to a message of hope, vision, and progress. The Tea Party's "ideocracy" revisits the unglamorous and destructive tendency that we have seen at other times in US history when those who are disenchanted seek scapegoats and turn their frustration into venomous demonization. This has manifested in the Tea Party with increasingly racial, anti-immigrant, and anti-gay rhetoric which even the Tea Party itself acknowledged (laudably) by expelling one of its leaders, Mark Williams. A more mainstream attempt to foster anger has been engaged recently by some Republicans who have embraced the moniker of "the party of NO" (e.g., Sen. Mitch McConnell declaring "we are proud to say no"). The virulent rhetoric of other Republicans has illuminated a propensity to catalyze anger (e.g., Rep. John Boehner's description of health reform as an "apocalypse" and of financial reform as "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon"), and opposing rather than engaging on policy (e.g., Sen. Jim DeMint saying "if we're able to stop Obama on [health reform], it will be his Waterloo", and that "It will break him"). The handful of Republicans who are willing to negotiate across the aisle for progress rather than promote anger are surely a constructive force; but they are the exception, rather than the norm. Opposition without willingness to engage, influence, or compromise is corrosive, irresponsible, and self-defeating. It ignores the reality that Republicans are able to influence and gain compromises on legislation that is moving forward by matching the President's efforts toward bipartisanship, and it reflects the desire of some to make the federal government ineffective. Recent Republican opposition has been driven by a mix of devotion to protecting corporate interests, promoting the interests of the wealthy, and dismissing the needs of the majority of Americans. These core objectives are seen in their uniform opposition to health reform, the opposition to financial reform by all but a few, their opposition to extension of unemployment

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GOP win kills cap and trade

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benefits, their crusade to make the Bush tax breaks permanent, and comments such as Boehner's and Rep. Joe Barton's infamous apology to BP. The Impact of the Midterm Election Elections are inherently partisan, and are the time when bipartisanship must be placed on hold while the core objectives of each party are illuminated. However, bipartisanship remains a vital objective and component for effective government, and members of both parties should strive for it in policy making. Thus, voters should be encouraged, when electing their representatives, to consider whether a candidate will be willing to work with and accommodate other views and positions. If candidates are elected out of anger, to provide opposition and intransigence, then it dooms the prospects for future bipartisanship. Thus, it is in the best interests of the electorate to choose candidates who are committed to governing effectively, in bipartisan collaboration, by instituting policies that will ensure America's success for decades to come to achieve positive results for the broadest base of Americans. The Future: Results or Obstructionism Neither party has an inherent monopoly on sound policies for the long-term prosperity of the American people. However, candidates who are propelled by anger to obstruct government and diminish its effectiveness clearly do not share a vision for progress. As we approach the midterm election, efforts should be made to highlight this distinction, encourage commitment to policies and legislation that will put the US in position for long-term economic and social stability and sustainability, and urge the electorate to vote for candidates who embody vision rather than anger. An election that is cast in these terms will blunt the derisive effect of the Tea Party and like-minded candidates.

Republicans doom cap and trade

Susan Page, USA Today staff writer, 4/28/10, "Six months to November, with dates to watch," http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2010-04-28-six-months_N.htm, AL

Eighteen months after Barack Obama was elected president and Democratic margins in Congress widened, Republicans boast that they're poised to regain control of the House in November and be in a position to stymie the White House agenda. Democrats argue that they have enough time amid signs of a brightening economy to improve their prospects and minimize their losses in the midterm elections. With six months to go, there are road signs to watch for that will indicate which side is right. At stake is the future of the Bush administration tax cuts that expire this year, the ambitious cap-and-trade climate bill now stalled on Capitol Hill, even the efforts to reshape or repeal the health care law that was enacted just last month and is a signature of Obama's administration. A Republican takeover presumably would dispatch the president to a land of diminished expectations, where a GOP rout sent then-president Bill Clinton for a time after his disastrous 1994 midterms.

Midterms not key to cap and trade

No chance of moving on cap and trade in 2011

John Aravosis, 12-28-09, http://www.americablog.com/2009/12/senate-dems-about-to-cave-on-cap-and.html

Senate Dems about to cave on cap and trade too It's just too "controversial" in an election year. So why should we expect them to do it in 2011, the beginning of the presidential primaries? Or 2012, a presidential election year and congressional elections? As Joe and I have written repeatedly, don't expect the Democrats to touch any controversial legislation for the next three years. And that includes DADT, DOMA, ENDA, immigration, climate change or any of their other promises.

Cap and Trade dead – Democrat opinions prove

Washington Post 7/19/2010

(Ezra Klein, B.A. in political science from UCLA “Cap-and-trade is dead”

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/were_not_getting_a_price_on_ca.html)

You can't pass what you can't say: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid played dumb last week when a reporter asked him if the energy and climate bill headed to the floor would come with a “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions. “I don’t use that,” the Nevada Democrat replied. “Those words are not in my vocabulary. We’re going to work on pollution.” One of my rules in politics is that whichever side is resorting to framing devices is losing. In 2004, when Democrats became obsessed with George Lakoff, it's because they felt unpopular and looking for a quick fix. And in 2006, when they took the Congress back, it wasn't because they found a new slogan. It was because the Iraq War and Jack Abramoff had made the Republicans toxic. In 2008, it was exhaustion with George W. Bush and a cratering economy. Post-9/11 frame theory wouldn't have said run the black guy with the name "Hussein." If cap-and-trade is so unpopular that its primary legislative advocates can't mention it, then it's dead. The BP oil spill offered a chance to change the fundamentals on the issue and Democrats decided against trying to use the disaster as a galvanizing moment for climate legislation. Word games don't offer a similar opportunity.

Cap and Trade Dead – no chance of compromise

Mother Jones – 7/23/2010

(Kevin Drum - political blogger and columnist, “Obama and Climate Change” http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/07/obama-and-climate-change)

In a technical sense, I just don't buy this. I thought Obama's Gulf speech was lousy too, but there's no way it was ever going to be some kind of "turning point" in the fight for climate legislation. This has been a pure vote whipping exercise from the start, and the votes were never there. Aside from common sense, there are two big pieces of evidence for this. First, the House climate bill, even after massive compromises, passed by only 219-212. That is, it won by one vote in a chamber where Democrats hold a 35-vote majority. Second, when Lisa Murkowski's bill to prohibit the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases came before the Senate, the vote against it was only 53-47. As Dickinson notes, six Democrats voted for it: Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Ben Nelson, and Jay Rockefeller. Aside from Lindsey Graham, there were never going to be any Republican votes for a climate bill. If we in the liberal community still haven't figured that out, we have rocks in our skulls. And it's almost certain that three or four of those six Democrats were simply unpersuadable too. Even a watered-down climate bill never had more than about 55 votes in the Senate, and even that's probably optimistic. Still, Dickinson is right that Obama should have done more. Even if the bill lost anyway, he should have done more. It's his job, after all, to rally public opinion. But his unwillingness to do this is a mistake that goes back more than two years, not just a few months. Here's me back in 2008:

Dems ( taxes

GOP control of Congress prevents Democratic efforts to raise taxes

Cesar Conda, Founding Principal and Executive Committee Member of Navigators Global, 5/7/10 - Founding Principal and Executive Committee Member of Navigators Global LLC and Vice President Dick Cheney's domestic policy chief, “Would a new House Republican majority operate differently than the old one?”, 5/7, http://www.politico.com/arena/archive/house-keys-for-the-gop.html, AL

Congressional Republicans may have driven the car in the ditch when they had the keys, but President Obama and the Democrats have driven it over the cliff. According to CBO, the Bush administration presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. However, instead of reversing this alarming trend, President Obama's budget would increase the public debt by $4.9 trillion from the beginning of 2010 through 2016. If they retake the House, the first thing Republicans must do is to repeal the automatic tax increases on income, capital gains, and dividends that kick in on January 1, 2011, which threaten to kill the budding recovery in the crib. Next, they need to stop the bleeding by passing a budget that goes back to fiscal 2008 domestic discretionary spending levels. Finally, they should begin the process of repealing and replacing ObamaCare with less-costly, consumer-driven health care reforms. The American people are about to give the keys back to the House Republicans because they desperately want to reign-in the fiscal excesses of President Obama. Divided government isn't such a bad thing: The last time we had a GOP Congress and a Democratic President in the mid-1990s, the budget was balanced, entitlement spending was trimmed, the capital gains tax was cut, and millions of new jobs were created.

GOP ( SKFTA

GOP key to passing South Korea Free Trade

Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal staff writer, 7/2/10 "The Obama Trade Games," http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ebWijZEorWgJ:online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703571704575341273913656694.html+%22More+than+three+years+after+Democrats+took+the+House%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us#printMode, AL

More than three years after Democrats took the House, and more than 18 months after Barack Obama took the Oval Office, leaders of the majority party have rediscovered . . . free trade. Timing is of course everything, and the timing here bears analysis. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked off this newfound trade enthusiasm earlier this month, vowing in Bogota to finally "obtain the votes" to pass the Colombia free trade agreement that has been languishing in Congress since 2006. Then came President Obama's surprise news at the G-20 that he's taking up the South Korea free trade agreement that has been moldering in Congress since 2007. He even laid out a timeline: He wants a revised agreement by November, so Congress can pass it a "few months" after that. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama at the G-20 meeting in Toronto, June 26. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer chimed in that we might as well pass that agreement with Panama, which has also been doing time in Congress since 2007. He'd like to see all three deals come up "either very late this year or next year." Put another way, Mr. Obama and Mr. Hoyer are open for some free trade action, so long as it happens post-midterm elections. Having presided over the most anti-free trade Congress since the days of Smoot-Hawley, having protected Democrats from any vote that might earn them union retribution, and having had little positive to say about trade, the president is now looking to a bolstered GOP caucus to pass a trade agenda. That is, if even a GOP majority can rescue Democrats from their increasingly unfettered protectionism. The timing is convenient in other ways. Now that even the Business Roundtable is lobbing bombs, the administration is eager to tamp down a business revolt in the lead up to midterms. Trade has been at the top of business worries, and these announcements allow the White House to push that debate at least past November. Team Obama has also been getting blowback from that very international community it was supposed to be restoring ties with after the Bush years. Turns out South Korean President Lee Myung-bak wants something more than soaring speeches; he wants access to our markets. The administration is under pressure to put up. And then there's the economy. Democrats blew $800 billion on "stimulus" and all they got was a crummy T-shirt reading: "Jobs? What jobs?" In the meantime, they sat by while other nations beat us to trade deals, denying U.S. workers more open export markets. The delay has in fact cost jobs. The House Ways and Means minority staff reports that in the nearly three years after the U.S. and Colombia signed their pact (the one still sitting in Congress), Colombia ratified a deal with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Since then, the U.S. has lost 31% of its share of the Colombian market in products such as wheat and corn, while Colombia's new trade neighbors have increased their share by 22%. Canada just approved its own Colombia deal, guaranteeing its products instant advantage over ours. The administration seems to be waking up to some of this. So, back to the election. Mr. Obama knows a GOP House takeover would propel free-traders such as Michigan's ranking Ways and Means member Dave Camp to power. Even if Democrats retain control, the ranks of pro-traders will swell with expected GOP gains. He also knows Republicans can usually muster about 90% of their caucus for free trade votes. All this increases the chances of passing these deals, while minimizing the number of Democrats who have to step up.

GOP ( SKFTA

Republican take over assures passage of SKFTA

Claude Barfield, Senior Fellow @ American Enterprise Institute, 6/28/10, "The G-20 Summit: A Breakthrough for the U.S.-Korea FTA?" http://blog.american.com/?p=16077, AL

I will undoubtedly write more about the commitments by President Obama regarding the pending Korea free trade agreement, but here are a few preliminary reactions. 1. This represents the first date-certain trade commitment by the Obama administration since it took office in January 2009. Earlier, the administration had agreed to resume negotiations on a trans-Pacific trade agreement, knowing that there would be no action-forcing commitments for some years. In this case, however, the president stated that he wanted “to make sure that everything was lined up properly by the time I visit Korea in November (at the next G-20 summit).” He added, “and then in the few months that follow that, I intend to present it to Congress.” 2. The timetable, then, pushes the politically difficult—and hazardous for the president— confrontation with House Democrats over to the next Congress. If one were cynical—or maybe just realistic—it could be thought that the administration is counting on big Republican gains in the House, a result that would make passing the FTA much easier. And, of course, if the Republicans take over that body, passage of the FTA would be almost assured. 3. While we cannot know internal administration deliberations, it may well be that, for the first time, crucial foreign policy and security issues pushed the decision over the line. Certainly, recent events on the Korean peninsula gave a cogency to these arguments. Previously, however, in the Bush administration, both the secretaries of State and Defense had argued forcefully for passage of the FTA (as well as the Colombia FTA) on strategic grounds: to no avail in a Democratic Congress determined to thwart Bush and Republican initiatives before the 2008 election, no matter what the cost to key U.S. allies.

SKFTA will come up after midterms- GOP majority key to passage

Shaun Tandon, Agence France Press staff writer, 7/3/10, "Obama risks party showdown on S. Korea deal," http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jXc3NbMVbqypa3su7mNSooP8lf_g, AL

US President Barack Obama is risking a revolt within his own party as he presses ahead on a free trade agreement with South Korea, setting the stage for a showdown after November legislative elections. Organized labor, a critical support base for Obama's Democratic Party, and several Democrats have already vowed to fight the deal which they say would hurt workers. "To try and advance the Korean FTA when so many workers are still struggling to find work would simply move our economy backward," said Representative Louise Slaughter, a Democrat who leads the powerful Rules Committee. The deal would be the largest for the United States since the the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico in 1994. The United States and South Korea completed painstaking negotiations in 2007 but neither nation's legislature has ratified it. Obama himself criticized the deal as a senator. But as president, Obama has found South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to be one of his closest allies and has said he is convinced of the benefits of boosting trade with Asia's fourth largest economy. "It will strengthen our commercial ties and create enormous potential economic benefits and create jobs here in the United States, which is my number one priority," Obama said in Toronto. Obama said he would send the agreement to Congress soon after November -- the month of a Group of 20 summit in South Korea as well as congressional elections in which Democrats are seen as vulnerable to losses. Ironically, the rival Republican Party, while opposed to many of Obama's key priorities such as climate and immigration legislation, may offer greater support than Democrats on the South Korea free trade agreement. "Before the midterm elections, he cannot submit this to Congress. It's impossible," said Anthony Kim, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. "But after the election, there will be a new set of minds. It will be an uphill battle -- there is no doubt about that -- but I think it may come to life next year," he said.

GOP kills peace process

GOP kills peace process efforts

Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent, 1/21/10, “Obama’s Lost Senate Seat is a Victory for Netanyahu” 2010 http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:VEerMmWkvFIJ:www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143891.html+Benn+Netanyahu+understood+he+must+withstand+the+pressure+until+his+right-wing+supporters+recapture+a+position+of+power+on+Capitol+Hill&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us, AL

Over the past nine months, Netanyahu has managed to curb pressure from Obama, who enjoys a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. Now, however, Obama will be more dependent on the support of his Republican rivals, the supporters and friends of Netanyahu. No Israeli politician matches his steps to the political goings-on in the U.S. as much as Netanyahu. He dragged out negotiations over the settlement freeze and then decided it would last for 10 months and end in September - just in time for U.S. Congressional elections in which Democrats are expected to suffer heavy losses. Netanyahu understood he must withstand the pressure until his right-wing supporters recapture a position of power on Capitol Hill and work to rein in the White House's political activities. The election in Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in America, will from this moment on be a burden for Obama. Proponents of the peace process will view this as a missed opportunity for Obama, who spent his first year in office on fruitless diplomatic moves that failed to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. From now on, it will be harder for Obama. Congressional support is essential to the political process and in the current political atmosphere in the U.S. - in which the parties are especially polarized - Netanyahu can rely on Republican support to thwart pressure on Israel. If Obama's popularity continues to dive and the Republicans recapture at least one of the houses of Congress in November, Netanyahu and his partners will be able to breathe deep and continue expanding settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

GOP takeover kills health care

GOP control can kill health care reform – they don’t need to repeal, just to stop funding

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, 3-19-10, http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/could-republicans-repeal-health-care-reform

Mitt Romney lays out his plan to repeal Romneycare... I mean, Obamacare: The key, he said, is having Republicans reclaim the White House and take majorities in the Senate and the House. Then, "we can clamp down on this bill ... by not funding it," Romney said during a speech Thursday I think Romney is just trying to cover his tracks and protect himself from the inevitable, true Republican primary attacks that he enacted a health care plan similar to Obama's, except more left-wing in the sense that it lacked the long-term cost controls. But he's still laying out the closest thing to a plausible Republican legislative plan to repeal health care reform should it be enacted into law. The problem with repealing health care reform is the filibuster -- Republicans would need 60 votes to undo the exchanges, regulations on things like preexisting conditions, and the individual mandate. But they could use budget reconciliation, which just needs a majority, to undo the tax credits and Medicaid expansion that make coverage affordable. (Even though using reconciliation to undo a major reform would be unprecedented!)

Republicans will run on health care repeal

Wall Street Journal, 3-16-10, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703734504575126240111598242.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

But Republicans said the health plan had become a proxy for a broader, highly unpopular expansion of government by the Obama administration. They noted that the nearly $1 trillion, 10-year health bill comes after the government bailed out banks and took a majority stake in General Motors Corp. Rather than settling the matter, passing the overhaul would produce another debate over whether it should be rescinded, Republicans said. "I am absolutely convinced that there will be an instant effort in this country to repeal the health care bill that will go until November and will define every congressional race," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.).

GOP takeover doesn’t kill health care

GOP takeover doesn’t kill health care reform – they won’t take the risk of stopping funding

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, 3-19-10, http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/could-republicans-repeal-health-care-reform

Mitt Romney lays out his plan to repeal Romneycare... I mean, Obamacare: The key, he said, is having Republicans reclaim the White House and take majorities in the Senate and the House. Then, "we can clamp down on this bill ... by not funding it," Romney said during a speech Thursday I think Romney is just trying to cover his tracks and protect himself from the inevitable, true Republican primary attacks that he enacted a health care plan similar to Obama's, except more left-wing in the sense that it lacked the long-term cost controls. But he's still laying out the closest thing to a plausible Republican legislative plan to repeal health care reform should it be enacted into law. The problem with repealing health care reform is the filibuster -- Republicans would need 60 votes to undo the exchanges, regulations on things like preexisting conditions, and the individual mandate. But they could use budget reconciliation, which just needs a majority, to undo the tax credits and Medicaid expansion that make coverage affordable. (Even though using reconciliation to undo a major reform would be unprecedented!) The question is, could they really pull that off? First, you're doing a lot of pretty unpopular things -- yanking coverage away from people, raising taxes on the middle class. You'll have news stories about people whose lives are about to be ruined by the GOP. Second, if you do pass that, then you've started to unravel the system. You'll have a Republican administration and Congress presiding over a policy meltdown that, among other things, will raise enormous ire among insurers, doctors, hospitals, and others who will take a huge hit because they'll be flooded with patients who they have to treat or but can't pay the cost. So you're just setting things up for the Democrats to reinstate the subsidies when they take back power, which would become more likely if the GOP has deliberately caused a health care disaster.

***A2: IMPACTS

No impact to GOP win – they’ll moderate

Even if dems lose republicans will moderate message- nothing really changes

Geoff Johnson, staff writer, 7/17/10, Midterm and Long Term Electoral Prospects, http://www.gcadvocate.com/2010/07/midterm-and-long-term-electoral-prospects/

As such you hear are lot of gloom and doom from and about the Democ­rats. It’s not wholly unwarranted, but it’s also worth­while to take a step back and con­sider the long term elec­toral prospects of the two parties rather than simply focusing on Novem­ber, as our ever-hyperventilating 24/7 cor­po­rate news machine is wont. A new report (PDF file) by Ruy Teixeira (co-author of The Emerg­ing Demo­c­ra­tic Major­ity) argues that huge demographic shifts in the United States will see “the Democratic Party…become even more dominated by the emerg­ing con­stituen­cies that gave Barack Obama his historic 2008 vic­tory, while the Repub­li­can party will be forced to move to the cen­ter to com­pete for these con­stituen­cies. As a result, mod­ern con­ser­vatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP.”

GOP takeover won’t be catastrophic. They’ll negotiate to get things done

Dan Balz, staff writer, Washington Post, 11-9-09, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/11/06/DI2009110602416.html

Your point is right -- up to a point. What could cause the Obama White House problems is a big Republican victory in 2010 in which the Democrats' margins in the House and/or Senate are reduced enough that the president will have to engage with the Republicans to get things done. Bill Clinton learned that lesson after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. After that, he shifted right and ended up getting some substantial achievements with Republican help (Republicans would say they did it with an assist from Clinton). That's how welfare reform got through after two earlier vetoes and it's how Congress reached a deal on a balanced budget (remember those days?!). It could be that after 2010, both sides will find constructive engagement more appealing than they do now. Perhaps.

Midterms results irrelevant– Obama can still push agenda

CNN 7/21/2010

(Ed Hornick, “Democrats agenda running out of gas as midterms approach” http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/21/democrats.agenda/)

Even if Democrats lose their control of Congress in November, Epstein said it's important for the White House take a page from President Clinton's playbook. "They need to take a look back at the Clinton years. President Clinton was very, very effective in making both the liberal base and the moderates believe he was secretly on their side. The way he did that was he had a legislative agenda that sent the right signals to both of them."

Midterms results irrelevant– Obama can still push agenda

Politico 5/21/2010

(Julian, E. Zelizer, “Bad midterms not always bad for W.H.” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37582.html)

Historically, the first midterms for any president usually go badly for his party. But anti-incumbency fever has left some Democrats fearing that November could be particularly damaging to the president. Democrats now worry that they could face in November a far smaller majority in the House or Senate — or even a Republican Congress. But it is dangerous to make predictions about what the midterms will mean for the rest of President Barack Obama’s term. While midterms can reshape the political landscape, there have been numerous cases in which presidents thrived after rough midterm results for their party. One of the most instructive, and most cited, is President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Two years after conservatives welcomed the “Reagan Revolution,” Democrats had a net gain of 26 seats in the House. House Speaker Tip O’Neill had nationalized the midterm elections, focusing on “fairness” and railing against Reagan’s domestic policies. Democrats argued that tax cuts and interest rate hikes had produced the 10 percent unemployment rate. Two years later, Democrats were not celebrating. Reagan won a landslide reelection victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale — winning 525 electoral votes and 58 percent of the popular vote. Mondale won only Minnesota, his home state, and the District of Columbia.

No impact to GOP win – provokes long-term Dem majority

*GOP can’t sustain a win. One term of radical conservativism provokes a permanent Democrat majority – solves their impacts

Geoff Johnson, staff writer, 7/17/10, Midterm and Long Term Electoral Prospects, http://www.gcadvocate.com/2010/07/midterm-and-long-term-electoral-prospects/

So while Democ­rats could be look­ing at a semi-catastrophe in the Novem­ber midterms, in the long term we could be look­ing at a sit­u­a­tion where the Repub­li­can party is essen­tially a per­ma­nent minor­ity party, or is forced to throw its over­whelm­ingly white, ultra-conservative and nativist base over­board, pre­sum­ably into some fringe third party, which would be a tec­tonic shift in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape. Unless “mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans” are able to assert some of the power they’ve been los­ing for decades now, I’d say the for­mer option is con­sid­er­ably more likely.

No impact to Dem win – filibuster kills agenda

Win or lose Republicans will kill legislation

Ned Resnikoff, writer for Salon.com, 7/20/10, American right should take a lesson from the Brits, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/republican_party/?story=/politics/war_room/2010/07/20/conservatives_american_uk

There is no doubt that GOP’s flight into lunacy will, as Jon Chait notes, blunt their momentum in the midterm elections. As a result, some particularly glib progressives might be tempted to cheer their descent. That is a grievous mistake, for two reasons. The obvious one is that no matter what happens in 2010, the Republican Party will still have the power to obstruct progressive legislation. In fact, they will likely have the power to bring the entire legislative process to a grinding halt; what they won’t have is the basic decency and democratic spirit to prevent them from doing so.

Dems will win but wont create change

FDL, 7/23/10 Past Time To Get Serious, http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/61641, AL

So, this is not about getting anything done. It’s about politics. If we have success and the Democrats advocate for the things Borosage calls out, then where are we? Well, the campaign messaging will indicate a clear choice between the two parties, and the Democrats may win the mid-term election, or at least hold down their losses, so that they still retain effective control of both Houses of Congress. But, so what? What does that get progressives? Well, at least the Republicans won’t be in nominal control of Congress, and they won’t be totally neutering Obama with investigations. That’s certainly something. But, maybe not much for all the millions of Americans suffering because this Administration hasn’t actually solved a single problem. The really important question is: what reason do we have to believe that the Administration will pass any of the measures Borosage lists even if there is a nominally Democratic Congress? After all, it has such a Congress now, and what has it passed that is truly worthwhile. I won’t go through the usual litany of progressive disappointments with this Administration. We all know what they are. The point is that I don’t trust this Administration a bit to either tell the truth, keep its promises, or represent anyone but a small minority of the population. And I’m sure many other progressives feel as I do. If the Democrats do win, what’s to prevent them from giving us a lot more kabuki, and then blaming the Republicans, and the filibuster, for their failure once again? What’s to prevent them from coming back right after the election, and passing a good many of the recommendations of the Catfood Commission, even if they’ve promised during the campaign to return to their populist roots? I think the answer is nothing. And the question I have is why Borosage isn’t telling the Administration and the Democratic Party in Congress that what they need to do is to immediately prove to working people that they will represent them by passing the list of things he has called for. I know, I know; there’s no time left for that before the election, especially since the Republicans will filibuster everything the Democrats try to pass. Well, guess what? There is plenty of time to pass these measures if the Democrats get rid of the filibuster first by using “the nuclear option.” And they can follow that with all the legislation Borosage has proposed. So why aren’t he and other progressives calling for that? Why aren’t they calling for Democrats to prove that they can really be trusted to be Democrats rather than corporate shills, before the election. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve already gotten our votes and our support, and they’ve failed to prove they deserved either. In my view, it’s time for them to put up or shut up. Only performance will now suffice to persuade those among the progressive base who think we’ve been screwed, that this group of Democrats is worth trusting again, or that they can be believed when they make campaign promises.

Obama’s agenda is dead inevitably. Even small losses kill the working majority

Chris Lawrence, assistant professor of political science in the Department of Social Sciences at Texas A&M International University, 9-14-09, http://blog.lordsutch.com/archives/4290

While the Republicans need 40 House seats to recapture a majority, recapturing even half of that could produce a working “winning coalition” with Blue Dogs on fiscal issues that will endanger any White House plans that can’t pass in the next year (which, at this point, is probably most of them). The Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate supermajority is exceedingly unlikely to outlast the midterms, even considering that a Republican takeover is unlikely too. *Finally, as a practical concern, the Republicans are also likely to do well in major states’ legislative races that coincide with the presidential midterms, putting them in the driver’s seat for the 2010–12 redistricting battles in their states that will affect the Congresses Obama will have to work with beyond 2012 (assuming he seeks and wins reelection). Coupled with likely GOP pickups in California due to the new “nonpartisan” redistricting process there, Republicans should be well positioned as a result of the 2010 elections to gain more seats in 2012 (due to reapportionment) and 2014 (due to traditional midterm loss). The bottom line: although I agree with Alex and Steven that a Republican takeover is not really in the cards, I suspect the practical impact—chastening a Democratic president into matching his bipartisan rhetoric with some truly bipartisan proposals—of the midterms will be much the same, minus the impeachment silliness that typified the later Clinton-GOP House years.

No impact to Dem win – filibuster kills agenda

Even without takeover, the GOP can shut down the Obama agenda after the midterms

Carl Leubsdorf, former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, 12-22-09, http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/story/1078995.html

Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee last week became the fourth veteran Democrat from a potentially competitive House district to announce he won't seek re-election. In a switch from earlier, Democrats also hold a majority of next year's vulnerable Senate seats. Both factors presage the likelihood of substantial Democratic losses in the 2010 midterm elections. While neither party yet expects the Republicans to win back either house, the numbers also explain a lot about the closing days of the current legislative session. Democratic leaders, realizing they are unlikely to enjoy the same majorities in Barack Obama’s second two years, are pushing hard to enact his most significant initiatives — health care, financial reform and climate control — and his budget priorities. That was certainly behind Obama’s plea to Senate Democrats on Tuesday stressing that, if the current push on health care fails, it will be many years before another attempt.

The GOP can shut down Obama’s agenda if they gain even one seat in the Senate

Bismarck Tribune, 1-5-10, http://www.bismarcktribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_292536e0-fa7e-11de-bd3b-001cc4c002e0.html

Byron Dorgan’s decision to leave the Senate next year could throw a wrench in the plans of President Obama and national Democrats. “This decision transcends your state, no doubt,” said political analyst Terry Madonna. “I’m sure the Democrats are aghast at this.” With unemployment still high and Obama’s job approval numbers low, “the conventional wisdom now is that the Democrats get hammered” in this year’s election, provided the national outlook is the same in November, said Madonna, a Pennsylvania-based politics professor and national media commentator. Losing a Democratic incumbent from a traditionally conservative state means that a unified Republican Party could stymie legislation. “Only three Republicans voted for the stimulus and none voted for health care,” he said. “If they pick up seats, they can stop Obama’s agenda.”

No midterms impact – Dem control inevitable

Midterms insignificant. Demographics ensure Dems will return to power soon

Roll Call, 3-18-10, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_106/ma_congressional_relations/44307-1.html

Consider: The largest and fastest-growing minority group, Hispanics, are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. They made up just 7 percent of the electorate in 2000, but they are now 11 percent of the country and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2020, they will be 17.8 percent. They voted for Obama by about 2 to 1. The GOP reacted to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination with racial obsessions, only furthering alienating Hispanics. If Obama sponsors immigration reform legislation and conservatives react with more nativism, the Democrats could solidify the electoral loyalties of Hispanics for decades. And, of course, it’s not only Hispanics who are pallbearers for the Republicans. Young voters and blacks prefer the Democrats as well. The Democrats can capitalize on their loyalty, as the two groups came out in unprecedented numbers in 2008. A new analysis from Gallup found that Obama’s approval rating had dropped among all groups — except young people, who favor the president at a whopping 66 percent. Both blocs have supported the Democrats for years — and both are growing as shares of the American population. The reality is that white males, the core of the GOP’s base, are shrinking in number and electoral power. Nearly 98 percent of Ronald Reagan’s voters in 1980 were white, when they formed 89 percent of the electorate. But in 2008, they formed less than 75 percent of voters. With nonwhite voters voting for Democratic presidents upward of 90 percent of the time, the numbers just seem to put the GOP’s future in the intensive care unit. Yes, all this may not matter much in November, as disaffected whites rage against the party in power during a time of high unemployment. But the short-term trees should not distract anybody from the long-term forest — the future of the Republican Party is very, very bleak.

Yes filibuster reform

Democrats will reform filibuster rules

Klein 3-10-10 (Ezra, “Reid promises filibuster reform,” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/reid_promises_filibuster_refor.html, JW)

Reid has not traditionally been a friend of Senate reform. Recently, he poured cold water on the idea of changing the rules by saying that rule changes require 67 votes, which Democrats certainly cannot muster. But as Huffington Post's Sam Stein notes, Reid's pointed mention of the "next Congress" might be important here. "Changing the rules at the beginning of the 112th Congress will require the chair to declare the Senate is in a new session and can legally draft new rules," explains Stein. "That ruling would be made by Vice President Joe Biden, who has spoken out against the current abuse of the filibuster. The ruling can be appealed, but that appeal can be defeated with a simple majority vote." This interpretation was given further force when Sen. Chuck Schumer spoke later in the session. "My committee, the Rules Committee, is going to look at this," he said. And one of the angles they plan to explore is that "the Constitutional right of the Senate to make its own rules supersedes the two-thirds rule, but only when we write new rules at the beginning of each Congress." I asked Schumer whether there was a process ongoing to develop a single strategy to change the filibuster. "This is something we're very serious about," he replied. "It's not unanimous in the caucus, but the vast majority of the caucus is interested in seeing if there's a way to undo, modify, or lessen our filibuster rule." For now, the process seems to be proceeding from the premise that Senate Democrats are fed up with the filibuster. "In baseball," Reid said in a clipped tone, "they used to have the spitball. It originally was used with discretion. But then the ball got wetter and wetter and wetter. So soon, they outlawed the spitball." The same, he said, had happened to the four-corner offense in basketball. "And just the way the spitball was abused in baseball and the four-corner offense was abused in basketball," Reid said, "Republicans have abused the filibuster."

Filibuster reform will be integrated into the rules process of the next congressional session

Clift 2-22-10 (Eleanor, Newsweek, “If Bayh Says Congress is Broken, He Should Fix It,” http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/02/22/if-bayh-says-congress-is-broken-he-should-fix-it.aspx, JW)

His voice comes through clear on filibuster reform, and the statistics back him up that the procedural hurdle of forcing 60 votes has been abused by both parties, with the Republicans getting the gold not only in number of filibusters but using the tactic against legislation they support, just to slow things down and gum up the works. Here again, Bayh’s outrage is well timed to respond to voter frustration, but it’s also new for him. It was just last October when Bayh was ready to join Senator Joe Lieberman in backing a Republican- led filibuster against health care reform if it included a public option. Conservatives laud the filibuster as a cherished tool handed down by the Founding Fathers, but the U.S. Constitution does not enshrine the filibuster. What it does is require each legislative body to set its own rules of parliamentary procedure, and those rules can be changed by a simple majority vote, especially at the start of a new legislative session. And with a friendly presiding officer like Vice President Joe Biden in the chair in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, it should be possible to bring down, as Bayh suggests, the number of votes from 60 to 55 to end a filibuster. Should this vote take place next January, Bayh won’t be there, but in the ten months he has left, he has nothing to lose and the country has plenty to gain if he gives the reforms he has written about more than lip service.

Yes filibuster reform – Biden/Reid

There will be a filibuster reform—Biden and Reid are on board

Klein 3-18-10 (Ezra, “How Joe Biden could change the Senate,” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/how_joe_biden_could_change_the.html, JW)

Bruce Ackerman notes that filibuster reform has long been a preoccupation of Senate presidents (which is to say, vice presidents). In fact, it took three of them, working from both parties, to pass the 1975 change that brought the threshold for cloture down from 67 senators to 60 of them. First Richard Nixon took his shot, and then Hubert Humphrey raised the issue. Both failed. Then came Nelson Rockefeller, whose role in this story is not well-known: Nelson Rockefeller broke the log-jam when serving as Gerald Ford's vice president. Both majority leader Mike Mansfield and the parliamentarian opposed the Senate president's rulings. But Rockefeller refused to budge, and this time, the Senate backed him up by a vote of 51 to 42. Mansfield arranged a face-saving compromise, under which the Senate adopted the current three-fifths rule without explicitly accepting the propriety of Rockefeller's action. But there's no avoiding the fact that the current filibuster rule is the product of the bipartisan campaign by Nixon, Humphrey, and Rockefeller to overcome the opposition of parliamentarians and majority leaders to change. This constitutional point should not be obscured by the short-term politics of health care. Vice President Biden has served 36 years in the Senate -- longer than the parliamentarian. While he should listen to Frumin's advice about the complex Senate rules, he can and should make his own decisions. And the current majority leader, Harry Reid, who supports filibuster reform, will not stand in the vice president's way this time. Biden should establish that the Constitution gives him independent authority and thereby preserve his ability to lead a new round of filibuster reform in 2010 and beyond.

No filibuster reform – Dems

Filibuster reform will fail—democratic opposition

Lerer 3-9-10 (Lisa, and Manu Raju, Politico,” Filibuster reform: Talk but no action,” http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=40752B8E-18FE-70B2-A8DEE1FDA347E27A, JW)

One vote shy of 60, frustrated Democrats are talking about changing Senate rules to make it easier for them to overcome Republican filibusters. It’s not going to happen — and not only because Republicans are against it. While Democrats, from five-term Sen. Tom Harkin to freshman Sen. Michael Bennet, have floated ideas for reforming the filibuster, some of their own Democratic colleagues say they won’t support reform efforts right now. “Most people don’t want to do it,” said California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “I wouldn’t waste time on process. I would spend more time on bringing about goodwill.” “I wouldn’t get any rules changes right now,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. “You’ve got to really think through things like that.” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has spent a lot of time thinking about the filibuster — so much so that he joined Harkin in introducing a filibuster-reform measure in 1994. At the time, he called the filibuster a “dinosaur,” a symbol of “a lot of what ails Washington.” But ask him about the filibuster now, and his response is more nuanced. “It wasn’t meant to be used for every bill,” Lieberman said last week. “On the other hand, I’d hate to lose it for the bills where it should be used.” Lieberman threatened to filibuster the Democrats’ health care bill in the fall. And last month, when Harkin reintroduced a version of the filibuster-reform bill he and Lieberman pushed in 1994, Lieberman’s name wasn’t on it. Harkin acknowledges that there’s little chance his reform measure will pass this year. But he says he’s hopeful that he can get something done next year — and that Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning’s one-man stand against an extension of unemployment benefits and other expenditures has brought the issue into sharp focus. “More and more, the public is going to demand that we do something about the filibuster,” he said. “I’m getting phone calls, e-mail that [say], ‘You mean, one person can do this?’” Harkin’s resolution — co-sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — would still require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster at first. But eventually, the cloture threshold would get lower, all the way down to a simple majority. Bennet, writing in The Huffington Post last week, said his resolution would end anonymous holds, require filibustering senators “to actually show up and vote,” eliminate filibusters at the beginning of debate and help bills with bipartisan support come to a vote more quickly. The problem for both measures: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he believes Senate rules can be changed only by a two-thirds vote. That would require eight Republicans to join the 59 members of the Democratic Caucus — making reform a mathematical impossibility for now. Complaints about the filibuster are hardly new; in 2005, Republicans threatened to invoke the “nuclear option” to cut off the right to filibuster judicial nominees — and they argued they could do it by a simple majority of 51 senators. They didn’t do it after the bipartisan “Gang of 14” — including Lieberman — agreed to filibuster judicial nominees only under “extraordinary circumstances.” “All this talk of getting rid of it is always just posturing,” said former Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove, who gives Democrats “zero” chance of substantially reforming the filibuster now. “Around here, when you’re in the majority, you hate the filibuster rule; when you’re in the minority, you come to love it,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “That’s just the nature of the Senate.” “Basically, they are trying to run it like the House of Representatives,” New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg said of the Democrats. “If these guys wanted to be in the House of Representatives, they should have run for the House of Representatives.” But if Democrats can’t abolish the filibuster in its present form, some of them would at least like to make the process a little more painful for the Republicans. Durbin and other Democrats are pushing the caucus to take a much more aggressive approach to the Republican minority as a way to highlight what they see as across-the-board obstruction. “There is a feeling after what we went through with Sen. Bunning’s blockage and unemployment benefits that we need to stand up more and make it clear what this obstruction costs,” said Durbin. Democratic plans include holding all-night sessions and forcing live quorum calls that would require senators to come in to vote at odd hours. “We want to demonstrate to the American people that there’s a filibuster going on and that a Republican or the Republicans are trying to block an up-or-down vote on issues,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin. But some Democrats are resistant to even these more modest measures. “I would hope there would be fewer filibusters so we can do what we’re sent here to do, which is to vote,” said Feinstein.

midterms.doc	DDI 2010

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Last printed 9/4/09 7:00 PM

Control + 1 – Block Headings

Trevor Chenoweth

2010-07-28

Coppell ISD

Hewlett-Packard