Are we seeing a full-scale Democratic Party meltdown? We might be.
The most recent polling shows the president at all-time lows. This matters because presidential approval has, in the past, been a key factor in the results of midterm elections.
The Democratic Party is using every bit of Big Data at its disposal to neutralize that presidential drag. This might help, but Big Data isn’t magic.
It might be able to tell Democrats where they’re hurting, but it can’t heal the wounds it diagnoses. Only good policy decisions can.
The president is backing his party into a corner. The health-care rollout has cast a permanent shadow on the 2014 election.
If Democrats in competitive races try to separate themselves from it, they will look weak and vascillatory. Even worse, they may get liberal donors angry.
Those same Democrats are going to have to explain their views on unfolding administration scandals like the supposedly missing and destroyed IRS emails that would tell the story of how conservative groups came to be targeted for their views.
If they carry water for the administration, they will not only be defending the indefensible but will be defending the IRS — never a smart-money move in a close race even when the tax man isn’t behaving in what appears to be a criminal fashion.
But if they attack, they will hear about it from the White House, from their leaders on Capitol Hill and from those same donors.
Then there’s foreign policy. It rarely plays a role in midterm elections.
But a general impression of chaos, incompetence and bad judgment certainly does, and that is what foreign policy has become for President Obama and the Democrats.
The disaster in Iraq caught Obama and his team flat-footed and very likely incapable of serious response.
Given that the president has spent two years praising his administration for pulling our forces out of Iraq, he has constructed a nearly impregnable barrier to a significant effort to reverse the gains of the combined terrorist-Saddamist onslaught.
The president clearly considers the removal of American forces from harm’s way a signal achievement of his administration, and would resist any policy that would alter his reputation as a war-ender.
He also acknowledges that Iraq’s collapse would be dangerous to our national interests and should be prevented. The problem is that he may not be able to have it both ways.
He and his party know voters don’t want Americans back on the ground in Iraq. Voters also don’t want to lose Iraq. So what does he have?
Apparently, he thinks he has an Iran card to play.
That is why he and his team are talking openly about making common cause with Iran to stabilize Iraq — even as Iran helped foment the political crisis that helped strengthen the insurgency and has been a signal contributor to fomenting the hellish chaos in Syria.
Not to mention, of course, the Iranian rush toward a nuke, out of which the Obama administration mysteriously believes it can seduce the mullahs through protracted negotiations.
These suggestions that we can and should play international footsie with Iran may not have a role in the polling that suggests a near-national panic about the collapse of American foreign policy.
After all, the public doesn’t follow the ins and outs of these matters that closely.
But over the past 35 years, Iran has been America’s most consistent ideological foe, and the public does not view that country or its leaders with favor, to put it mildly.
It is true that a great many Americans do not remember the 1979-80 hostage crisis, but a great many also do — and nearly everyone is old enough to remember former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly threatening Israel with literal annihilation during his eight-year presidency.
Add to that the fact that Vladimir Putin recently swallowed another country’s province whole while the West watched helplessly, China toying with Japan in the Pacific and tens of thousands of children pouring over our southwestern border — and you have a portrait of the most important and popular Democrat of the 21st century turning into the portrait of Dorian Gray before our eyes.
Then there are the self-inflicted wounds of his putative successor. Hillary Clinton has now spent two weeks on the book-publicity trail making gaffe after gaffe about her wealth and power.
Clinton has not only revealed herself to be a significantly less formidable candidate for 2016 than anyone thought just six weeks ago.
She has inadvertently exposed a truth about the present-day Democratic Party — which is that its aristocratic ruling class is, if anything, even more out of touch with the everyday lives of Americans than the Republicans are.
None of this is to say the GOP is in good shape. Except there are only two parties, and the Democrats are vastly worse off with Election Day only a little more than four months away.