Every serious politico is baffled by the polling on this fall’s elections, in which Democratic Senate candidates across the country are doing a remarkable job of hanging in despite the general consensus that under conventional circumstances this would be a “wave” year for Republicans.
It should be a wave, experts say, because a) President Obama has a very low approval rating, b) a huge majority of Americans says the country is on the wrong track and c) more Americans say it’s time to replace their own representatives than ever before in modern history.
The “issue environment,” as they say, also works against the Democrats. ObamaCare remains unpopular. The world is in chaos, and Obama’s foreign policy appears inept at best. There hasn’t been a good piece of news out of Washington in God only knows how long.
Meanwhile, in the realm of electoral politics, the GOP has cleaned up its act. In 2010 and 2012, Republican efforts to capture the Senate fell short thanks to the profound weaknesses of certain GOP candidates, who self-destructed spectacularly.
That’s not the case this year, when by common consent Republicans have a pretty remarkable slate of candidates across the country.
Even in Minnesota, a state where the GOP has little hope, Sen. Al Franken faces a first-rate challenger in businessman Mike McFadden, who whomped Franken in a debate last week.
Speaking of debates, I watched one between Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall and challenger Cory Gardner, in which it would not be hyperbole to say Gardner wiped the floor with the incumbent.
This race is emblematic of the improvement in the Republican Party’s overall approach in 2014.
Gardner, a dynamic House member, only secured his party’s nomination when the Colorado GOP cleared his path by ensuring his congressional seat would be Ken Buck’s for the taking.
Buck, a social-conservative darling in a purple state, had lost a race for Senate he should’ve won in 2010 and likely would’ve lost again this year.
Gardner is leading Udall by less than a point. If the “fundamentals” were working as one might have expected, he’d probably have put this race away by now.
The same is true in Arkansas, where Rep. Tom Cotton is neck-and-neck with Sen. Mark Pryor — although the state has moved far to Pryor’s right.
So why aren’t Republicans sitting pretty?
The answer, I think, is far more technical than ideological. Democrats are vastly superior when it comes to the mechanics of American politics, and have been for nearly a decade, while the GOP’s technical skills have withered since 2004.
President George W. Bush was re-elected in ’04 with a vote total 22 percent larger than in 2000, in part because the GOP harnessed the power of volunteers to get out the vote block by block in key states.
Democrats, who’d begun to master the use of the Internet as an organizing tool in 2003 and 2004, saw what the Bush campaign did and realized they could duplicate those efforts and then blow them out of the water using then-nascent social-media and mapping techniques.
These began to bear fruit in 2006, were crucial to the Obama 2008 primary victory and subsequent landslide — and made all the difference in 2012.
The great triumph of Obama’s re-election was his campaign’s success at turning out so-called “unenthusiastic voters” — people who would, if pressed, pull the lever for the guy but who were unmotivated to do so.
If Democrats do better in 2014 than the fundamentals suggest, it’ll be because they’ve been able to bring these techniques to bear on the midterm electorate, which has always been significantly smaller and far more engaged than the presidential electorate.
But why couldn’t the Democrats press their technical advantage in 2010, when Republicans won 63 seats in the House and nearly 700 down-ticket races across the country?
The answer: Technique doesn’t mean everything. When the electorate wants to send a message to Washington in no uncertain terms, as it did after Obama’s legislative overreach in 2009 and 2010, the message will be sent.
But this year Republicans decided this wouldn’t be an issue-based election, in part because the party itself isn’t sure where it stands collectively on a variety of issues — and in part because, having recruited a first-class team of candidates, it was thought they would do better making a case for themselves state by state.
Republicans are almost certain to pick up five Senate seats. They need six to take over. Will sheer political skill save the Senate for the Democrats? The odds say it won’t, but if the GOP hasn’t closed the sale yet, it may not be able to do so 27 days from now.