2010--Will The Real Outsider Please Stand Up2009-12-17

Conventional wisdom has it that the political party out of power almost always wins Congressional seats in a mid-term election. With the Democratic brand getting bruised in 2009, and a Republican brand still stained from the Bush years, it appears the likely big winner will be whoever can successfully coalesce around a non-partisan theme of candidates not beholden to the ways of Washington.

Three recent mid-terms (1994, 1998 and 2006) are instructive in the power of that message. While no seeing or thinking person would ever confuse Newt Gingrich with Nancy Pelosi, they both rode similar trains to the Speakers chair on the backs of manifestos that claimed their party deserved control of Congress because the ruling party had “lost touch.” While Pelosi’s call to “Change the Congress” (2006) or Gingrich’s Contract with America (1994) contained fodder for their respective ideological bases, the main audience for the message was made up of voters who were less beholden to political parties than those who vote in partisan primaries.

Contrast those two examples with 1998, when voters saw Republicans in Congress myopically focused on impeaching President Clinton and offering a Scrooge-like “Bah-humbug” to the public who was uncomfortable with the overt partisan tones of airing the (ahem) dirty laundry. The result: a net five-seat gain for Democrats.

Since roughly the time of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, polling has showed the public views the word Washington as a dirty adjective, and partisanship its Snidely Whiplash-like sinister twin tying the helpless maiden Nell to the train tracks. Last year, then Senator Obama was elected President not just because he was from the opposite party of George Bush (though it was a prime factor), but mainly because he branded himself early and often as a post-partisan figure who could break the gridlock in our nation’s capital.

Thus the big question heading into 2010 is which Republican Party will we see? Will it follow the storyline of the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election in which the party’s standard bearer ran teddy bear TV ads about green jobs, or will it fracture like in the 2009 special congressional election in New York CD 23 where right-wing ideological purists supported the Conservative Party candidate, forced the mainstream Republican nominee to drop out and handed the Democrats a seat they hadn’t won since the 1870’s?

 Looking at the 2010 Senate races, it appears we might see more nuanced results. In Florida and Pennsylvania, Republicans may very well be saddled with extreme ideologically driven nominees (Marco Rubio & Pat Toomey) whose presence on the ballot will allow their Democratic opponents to hang the partisan gridlock label around their necks, obscuring the new blood narrative.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, it’s a guarantee that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and scandal-plagued Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide/AIG) will be bandied about as poster children for the need to change Washington. It certainly won’t help the Democrats in Congress to have ethical cesspools surrounding powerful Chairmen like John Murtha and Charlie Rangel in this environment.

 Some pundits are chomping at the bit to claim 2010 will be yet another wave election, this time favoring the Republicans, although U.S. electoral history augurs against massive upheaval in three consecutive elections. Still, there are two Senate elections to watch closely to see if the trend develops. The first is in Delaware, where long-time popular moderate Republican Congressman Mike Castle will be taking on equally popular Attorney General Beau Biden for the seat his father vacated for the Vice Presidency. Like it or not, national interests are bound to make the younger Biden a proxy for his father’s policies. Because both families are political royalty in the state, a clear Castle victory will be used as Exhibit A that the country is moving in the wrong direction, while a Biden victory will be touted as evidence for full steam ahead for the Democrats.

The other race of interest is Louisiana where bordello visiting, family values Senator David Vitter (R) has framed himself early and often as a vocal opponent of a president who is unpopular in his state in order to shift focus away from his own personal transgressions. With most polling in recent months showing Republicans and conservatives more motivated to vote than Democrats, it will be fascinating to see if these staunchly partisan voters are so unhappy with the policies of the Obama administration that they are willing to forgive Vitter for his hypocrisy and more moderate voters for his overt partisanship on the campaign trail.

This is, of course, an oversimplification as there are any number of factors that determine elections from the state of the economy to the state of our foreign entanglements to the personalities running in each race and the money each candidate and the national parties raise; however, what is abundantly clear is if they hope for electoral redemption in 2010, Republicans will have to come up with an appealing set of ideas that demonstrates to the broad swath of voters up for grabs that they can positively change the tone and the content of the debate. In tennis terms—it’s their serve.