As Republicans, Democrats and journalists discuss the meaning of this year’s midterm elections, it’s become clear to me that many of questions they ponder present false choices that obscure the lessons of Nov. 2. Here are some of them:
Question No. 1: Were the 2010 midterms “about” jobs…
Elections both reflect a political party’s appeal and create a new face that ultimately recasts that image. And the midterm elections of 2010 are no exception.
For Democrats, “diversity” has been about ideology and region recently — proving to Americans that the party isn’t a bunch of liberals…
Five new Republicans will join the Ohio Congressional delegation in January, but they may not want to get too comfortable on Capitol Hill.
The GOP wave that swept across the Buckeye State last week dramatically changed the makeup of the delegation from 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans to…
There were many messages and lessons to be drawn from the 2010 midterm results, but the most obvious one is that Republican, conservative and swing voters fired Democrats — even Democrats they liked, and even Democrats who took care to vote as their constituents wanted.
Sure, freshmen Democratic…
So what happened this election cycle? As voters across the country head to the polls today, here are a few thoughts.
• Democrats never succeeded in changing the trajectory of the election cycle that developed roughly midway through last year.
Once voters decided President Barack Obama and…
Election Day is still five days off, but already Republican strategists are whispering that they outmaneuvered their Democratic counterparts.
The National Republican Congressional Committee and certain other GOP-allied groups adopted a reasonable but risky strategy, which proved effective. Those strategists decided to spend their limited financial resources early…
More than a few Democratic veterans of the political wars are now talking about their party suffering extraordinary losses of at least 60 seats. The problem that both they and we see is that dozens of Democratic incumbents are sitting under 50% in ballot tests (and often in the…
With a week to go until Election Day, House Democrats face the potential of a political bloodbath the size of which we haven’t seen since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The largest midterm House loss for the president’s party during the last 50 years was 52 seats…
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is slated to air ads, starting Tuesday, on broadcast television in the expensive New York City media market to help Cong. John Hall (D – 19th District).
Public and private polls show that Hall is locked in a very competitive race against GOP…
The number of Democratic incumbents who are sitting in the middle or low 40s in ballot tests is mind-boggling, creating a stunning number of opportunities for the GOP. Democrats dispute that assessment, arguing that their incumbents are much better off. But Republican polling finds eight or nine dozen Democratic…
