2010 Overview

On September 4th I think it's about time to take a minute to talk about the election coming up in November. Overall the narrative coming out of the 24/7 news machine is that it's an anti-incumbent, anti-democratic year. That's only partly true. It is an anti-Democratic year insofar as every midterm after a new president is elected is an anti-enter President's party here year. It isn't as much an anti-incumbent year as has been harped on by that same news machine. Only a couple handfuls of incumbents have lost so far; Arlen Specter, Bob Bennett, and Lisa Murkowski coming to mind. If this were truly as anti-incumbent a year as the media wants to claim it is you'd have seen upsets of other candidates like Blanche Lincoln and John McCain from the determined challengers they faced. But lets look more broadly at what we can expect.

For breakdowns of individual races, and all the statistics you could ever want check out Five Thirty Eight, which recently moved to a shiny new NY Times page. You'll find Nate Silver and his team's regressions predicting what will happen come November based on polling data. I'm going to go with something close to an educated guess using what I know (which includes Nate's regressions). All of what I said is true above. It's still a nasty year for Democrats. We can talk about why that is for hours. Some of it is the Bush Economy that we're still reeling from, some of it from simple electoral functions, and some of it from how badly the Democrats have dropped the ball on their messaging. Despite the Party of No, the DNC has plenty to run on including Health Care Reform, Credit Card Regulation, changes in the Student Loan department, and much more. And they're doing a terrible job messaging. This whole summer has been about nothing but how crazy the right is now. And even if they're scary, if that's all we're talking about, somebody at the DNC isn't doing their job. Scratch that. Everybody at the DNC isn't doing their job.

I expect the Democrats to hang onto control of both the House and the Senate this year. There. I've said it flat out. I don't expect it to be pretty and I don't expect their majorities to be described in terms besides words like small, pitiful, and ineffective, once the voting is done though. On the ugly side, that means we're likely to end up at 112th Congress that's even less effective and even more gridlocked than the 111th. On the good side, if the Democrats can maintain control of Congress, then they get to do the redrawing of the House District lines. That is something that we simply can't afford to have Republicans doing. Redistricting occurs only every ten years to match up with newly updated data from the Census. It has a much more far reaching effect on the country than having the Democrats receiving the blame for a highly divided and ineffective 112th Congress. As not fun as that will be. I'll be this up front about it. It is imperative that men like Jim DeMint and Chuck Grassley do not get to redraw the House Districts. Not that I expect the Dems to be wholly non-partisan if they get the opportunity, but because when Republicans do it, the do it for keeps. They use (dare I say abuse) the power to disenfranchise large groups of people of color and other maligned minorities. They manage, in essence, to mathematically for stall the day when conservative, white, fundamentalist Christians don't rule the roost. That day is coming, and having house lines drawn to represent the new makeup of America rather than fight it can make it arrive sooner.

And if I'm wrong? I expect the House to fall before the Senate. And while the idea of "Speaker Boehner" scares me to death (for the record, I'm not a massive fan of Speaker Pelosi either), it's better in the long run than having the Senate full of Republicans again. Not to be forgotten is the tiny (teeny tiny teeny teeny tiny) advantage of having the President of the Senate on our side. Who's the President of the Senate? Why, the Vice President of course, Joe Biden. In cases where the Senate ends in a tied vote, the Vice President casts the tie breaker. One of the many rewards for winning the Executive two years ago.

So in short, get on message, get out the vote, cross your fingers.