As Insiders readers know, in politics, what is supposed to happen tends to happen. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in May 2013, “The GOP sets its sights on the Senate in 2014,” no less than Karl Rove analyzed the likelihood that Republicans would take back the Senate majority in the 2014 midterm elections. Largely based on his own observations and his knowledge of history, Rove gave Republicans no better than an “outside chance” of winning the majority, as long as Republicans ran strong candidates, fund-raised competitively and focused on the issues that matter most to voters.
Well, today, the RealClearPolitics average polling shows Republicans are projected to gain a net of 7 seats in the Senate, and there is only an “outside chance” that the Democrats will retain the Senate Majority.
Rove, and almost everybody else, overestimated how strong the president would be politically in the fall of 2014. Even though Rove was able to precisely outline some of the challenges that Republicans would face, no one could have predicted the calamity that the Obama administration has become. It seemed unlikely a year ago that Republicans would add to their majority in the House and take back the Senate. After all, in November 2013, the generic ballot favored Democrats by 6.6 percent. Now, one year later, the generic ballot favors Republicans by 3.1 percent. What should naturally be a good year for Republicans has turned out to be a great year for Republicans due to the failures of the Obama administration.
While it seems that traditional pocketbook issues have been pushed aside by the sinister, lethal contagion that is ravaging West Africa and has found its way to the United States, famous GOP pollster Ed Goeas reminds me that economic issues still drive the right track/wrong track equation in this campaign cycle. And currently, 65.8 percent of Americans think this country is on the wrong track. So at the end of the day, what is worse for the Democrats? For voters to render a verdict on the low-growth, low-income Obama economy, or for them to vote based on President Obama’s and the Democrats’ inept, confusing handling of crises ranging from Obamacare to Ebola?
Obviously, the current Ebola crisis has enhanced the trouble the Democrats are in, and it may end up being seen as the coup de grace in this election. The Ebola crisis could have been managed better if the White House had reached out to an admiral in a crisp uniform and made him the Ebola Czar. If that had happened, every Democrat would be quoting him and demanding that everyone defer to him, and no Republican would want to outright challenge what a military officer was saying we should do. Even if the White House had appointed someone like former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (who is also a doctor) to be Ebola Czar, the dynamics of the Ebola crisis could be very different for the Democrats.
The cascade of debacles brought about by the incompetence of this administration is so constant that the half-life of any given crisis is very short. But it doesn’t look like the Ebola crisis will completely fade in the next week.
Anyway, here we are, one week from Election Day, and the Democrats’ situation reminds us that in politics, bad gets worse.
Follow Ed on Twitter: @EdRogersDC
