2006 General

Just over one month ago, the Crystal Ball argued that a larger wave than currently existed at the time would have to build in order for Republicans to lose their congressional majorities. At the time, the race-by-race rather than national dynamic of competitive races pointed more towards a “micro-wave” than a “macro-wave” for out-of-power Democrats. But now, with a quarter of time elapsed between that pulse-reading and the election, surer signs are emerging that something more substantial than a “micro-wave” is heating up this summer. Historical trends and big picture indicators–generic congressional ballot tests and approval ratings of President Bush’s job performance in particular – have always been heavily stacked against the GOP in this “sixth year itch” cycle, but aggregations of more race-specific indicators are now suggesting that Republicans are headed for their most serious midterm losses in decades. As national discontent over gas prices, Iraq, and general instability in the Middle East percolate, approval ratings of Congress, the president, and the national direction continue to languish at torrid depths. But as the Crystal Ball has cautioned again and again, Democrats cannot truly capitalize on the withering political climate faced by the GOP unless they succeed in convincing large

A recent trip to Israel–which concluded just before the outbreak of war between Israel and Lebanon–offered some lessons on civic engagement that Americans would be wise to learn. The escalating tensions in the region, including full-scale war in Gaza, provided a dramatic back-drop to a long series of briefings by high level officials in the government and the military. Among the many places we toured by bus and helicopter included the borders with Syria and Lebanon. At the latter, we took a close look at the Hezbollah camp from which, just days later, would come the daring raid into Israel to kidnap soldiers that sparked war. Never have I appreciated military guards with very large weapons quite as much as I did during that foray. The trip was sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, and the entourage included prominent U.S. pundits from the Beltway and New York. America nicely survived the absence of conventional wisdom while we were abroad. I leave to true Middle East experts, who spend a lifetime untangling the complex threads of identity and hatreds in the Holy Land, the analysis of the current crisis. But there were aspects of the trip that apply to domestic

The Israeli-Hezbollah war in the Middle East has become this summer’s obsession, and rightly so. The dangers of a wider war are ever present, and no story is equal to the misery of armed conflict in the world’s tinderbox. Nonetheless, one wishes that the television media could walk and chew gum simultaneously. Loads of important stories, like trees falling in the forest, are making no sound because they are not recorded. The bloodshed in Iraq is worse than ever; if this isn’t a civil war now raging there, it’s a good imitation. On the home front, President Bush’s first veto of a critical stem-cell research bill and his first White House appearance at an NAACP convention were barely one-day stories–major political events that got short shrift and deserved better. It’s the same with the 2006 midterm elections, which have essentially fallen off the radar screen for the time being (and this might be a lengthy war). However, the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is having, and will continue to have, an impact on the midterms in several ways. First, the absence of the usual level of media coverage makes it more difficult for many challengers to get the attention needed to defeat incumbents.

It’s manifestly obvious. The last thing the United States needs is more politics. Or so the American people, who hate politics, believe. And on this point, alas, they are very wrong. One reason citizens dislike politics is that the political system doesn’t work terribly well, but it doesn’t work well because we have neglected to create wise rules to govern it. We can place the blame for this deficiency squarely on the shoulders of the Founders. In so many respects, today’s political system is broken, and there is currently no reasonable prospect of fixing it. Our schedule of presidential primaries and caucuses is a front-loaded mess, and the Congress, the parties, and the states refuse seriously to tackle its reform. The Democrats are currently tinkering at the edges of reform, just as the Republicans attempted to do in prior years, but little will come of it because of the powerful interests with heavy investments in the status quo. Our scheme of campaign financing incorporates the worst of several worlds, and with each election cycle the process deteriorates further. Our partisan procedure for drawing legislative districts enforces vicious polarization rather than encouraging moderation and compromise. Are these calamities our fault? Certainly.

The bubble of conventional wisdom was burst last week, with the election of Republican Brian Bilbray to succeed disgraced Representative Duke Cunningham in California’s 50th House district. While most reporters and analysts, including this pundit, publicly bet a nickel on Bilbray because of the GOP nature of the district, we may have secretly rooted for Democratic challenger Francine Busby. No, Republican friends, this isn’t proof of partisanship. Rather, it’s that a Busby upset would have opened the floodgates for wild speculation about November 2006. Chaos, not stability, is what prognosticators live for! We had our historical precedents ready. When the GOP’s Ron Lewis won a special House election for a Democratic seat in Kentucky back in May 1994, it was a massive upset that signaled the Republican landslide to come that November. Some of us old-timers even recalled Democrat Richard Vander Veen, who captured Gerald Ford’s solidly Republican district in Grand Rapids, Michigan in early 1974, after Ford had been elevated to the Vice Presidency. This was an electrifying victory that foreshadowed the Democratic Watergate landslide of November 1974. (Lewis is still serving, by the way, while Vander Veen was a flash in the pan; He won a full term

It’s humbling for all involved in America’s electoral process to realize that each midterm election season–all the contests put together–comprises no more than a paragraph in the history books. The significant elections merit a bold, detailed paragraph, while the run-of-the-mill midterms get a tepid, sketchy paragraph. Most election paragraphs are tepid; big midterm earthquakes are rare. So what will 2006’s paragraph look like? Will it be lengthy and dramatic, or brief and underwhelming? To attempt to answer this, let’s see if we can discern any useful historical patterns among the post-World War II midterm congressional elections. Here’s my attempt to write an appropriate paragraph for the fifteen midterms from 1946 to 2002, from Midterm Madness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003): 1946: After fourteen years of solid Democratic control under FDR and Truman, voters want change. The end of World War II and post-war economic dislocation encourage the “time for a change” theme. Truman doesn’t seem up to the job–who would after Franklin Roosevelt?–and the mantra becomes, “To err is Truman.” So Republicans captured both houses of Congress, grabbing 55 House seats and 12 Senate seats, plus two more governorships (for a total of 25 out of 48). 1950: Truman’s come-from-behind presidential

The tradition in American politics has been for campaign season to unofficially kick off on Labor day, as candidates, campaigns, voters and journalists return from August vacations and focus their attention on the remaining nine weeks before Election Day. However–just as the presidential nomination process starts earlier and earlier–Congressional and gubernatorial campaigns are now beginning to follow a similar trend. Add to that this year’s increased Democratic motivation to take advantage of low presidential approval ratings, as well as Republican efforts to maintain control of the legislative branch, and the political environment is heating up faster than early summer temperatures. Each major party’s national committees are focusing energy and resources on the special elections and primary races that have taken place–and will continue to–this year, in hopes of generating real or perceived momentum for the fall. This past Tuesday, June 13, was no different, as several more states selected party nominees in contests for Senate and governor: Maine Governor Maine Senate North Dakota Senate South Carolina Governor Virginia Senate In some cases, these primary contests simply serve as an official verification of the de facto party standard-bearer, and as a result voter turnout is even lower than usual. In others,

Something significant happened on the political front last week. In the midst of Donald Rumsfeld’s trial by fire from hecklers and Porter Goss’s forced resignation as CIA director and George W. Bush’s inexorable fall in the polls, it was easy to underestimate the importance of Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s latest little scandal. After all, he is a Kennedy, and at some point in the future, Kennedy scandals will cease to be news since they are so common they will be dog-bites-man and not man-bites-dog. Yet as Kennedy flew to the Mayo Clinic for yet more drug dependency treatment, he took Democrats’ hopes of running against the Republican “culture of corruption” with him. What’s that you say? It’s just one little episode that will quickly fade to the back pages? Quite the contrary. This congressman with the celebrity name grabbed everyone’s attention, and he reminded the public in an unforgettable way that sleaze and corruption and special favors on Capitol Hill are very much bipartisan. That’s what the American people believe anyway, and now they have had it confirmed in new headlines. As 2006 opened, things looked bright for the Democrats on the corruption front. Congressman Tom DeLay was on trial in

The world is run by those who show up, and the most important factor in any election is the identity of the voters. Who bothers to show up at the polls? This question is especially crucial in a midterm election such as 2006. The voter turnout will be much smaller than in the 2004 presidential election. It is always true that a substantial number of people who had cast a ballot for President in the prior election skip the off-year contests. But how many fewer voters will there be in 2006? And who are the ones who turn up and the ones who drop out? To answer these queries, we have to go to the historical videotape. First, let’s take the long view–the really, really long view. Take a look at the following figure, taken from Karen O’Connor and Larry J. Sabato, American Government: Continuity and Change (Longman, 2006 edition): This graph shows the proportion of eligible Americans who actually voted in all the presidential and midterm elections from the late 1780s to the present. “Eligible” Americans means the “voting age population”–all those who, technically at least, were qualified to have registered to vote and to have shown up at

Every election season some candidates, officeholders, and party pooh-bahs make classic errors on their way to the general election. A few such decisions cost them seats. If an election is close, those losses can be decisive. Some mistakes are national and massive in scope; the name “Tom DeLay” more or less makes our point. Others attract national attention but primarily affect one state or district–let’s all say “Cynthia McKinney” together. (The congresswoman already lost her seat once, in 2002, and she’s begging to be defeated a second time–with many of her Democratic colleagues hoping for just that.) Seven months out from November, no one knows how tight the 2006 contests will be. But it’s already obvious that some major goofs and gaffes are affecting many races. If we listed them all, this Crystal Ball would be book-length. So we’re just going to pick a few personal favorites, starting with a lengthy inquiry into the political choices made by a major presidential candidate. VIRGINIA SENATE: If U.S. Senator George F. Allen (R) is as serious about running for the White House as he seems to be–and that’s been his obvious ambition for years–then why didn’t he forgo reelection and step down

If you know high school students who are bright and civically engaged, they need to participate in the International Youth Democracy Summit. From August 7-12, 2006, the University of Virginia through the coordination of the Center for Politics will host the International Youth Democracy Summit. This once-in-a-lifetime event will gather 300 high school student leaders from across the nation and around the world to the campus of the University of Virginia to discuss the importance of civic engagement to the founding and survival of Jamestown Settlement in Virginia as well as to democracies today. As part of the curriculum, students will travel to Jamestown, Williamsburg, Monticello, and Washington, D.C. to gain hands-on knowledge of the foundation, continuation and proliferation of modern democracy. The Summit, in partnership with the federal Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission and Presidential Classroom, is the opening conference of America’s 400th Anniversary’s Foundations and Future of Democracy conference series. Visit www.IYDS.net to learn more about the Summit and to download or request hardcopy applications for the qualified students that you know. Do not delay! The deadline for program applications is May 26, 2006. To learn more about how the Center for Politics is participating in the 400th anniversary

Now that the hub-hub about Dick Cheney’s shooting accident has died down, the Crystal Ball can add a bit of perspective. Quail-Gate was a classic media feeding frenzy, and your author wrote the book on the phenomenon entitled, well, Feeding Frenzy. Amazingly little has changed since the first edition was published in 1991. In the Kabuki Theater of American politics, everyone plays a well practiced role: The public official in the eye of the storm makes a mistake or commits a gaffe [The Shooting]. Instead of coming clean quickly and answering all the relevant questions, in order to limit the damage, he delays, obfuscates, or shifts blame [Long delay in releasing the news, the leak to the Corpus Christi paper only, an appearance of blaming the victim–Harry Whittington]. The public official’s assistants and superiors fail to make a strong case to him for a different handling of the problem, or fail to convince the official that he is headed for trouble [The Bush communications team seems to have understood what Cheney’s didn’t]. The incident plays into the “subtext” that has long existed for the public official [Cheney is secretive]. Where bad relations already exist between the media and the official,

In last week’s installment of the Crystal Ball, we explored the myriad of possible Republican White House contenders for 2008, the lack of an obvious successor to President Bush, as well as the wide open nature of the 2008 party primaries. This is only the fifth time since the dawn of the twentieth century that the incumbent President or Vice President has not been running–the earlier examples were 1908, 1920, 1928, and 1952. And now to the Democrats. The most compelling element of the 2008 contest for the Democrats, in the Crystal Ball’s view, will be their burning desire to end GOP control of the White House. George W. Bush’s reign will have extended over eight years, but to Democrats, who deeply despise this President, it has already seemed like an eternity. Hatred of a President among party activists can produce wise or unwise outcomes. Democratic true believers may incorrectly think that their fellow citizens fully share their opinion of Bush and will inevitably elect the person they choose as their nominee in order to punish the Republicans for Bush’s multitudinous sins. Or Democrats may allow reason to triumph over emotion by picking a nominee who does not fulfill all

As 2006 dawns, the presidential sweepstakes–or is it a lottery?–is taking on heightened visibility. Partly, it’s President Bush’s overall weakness, apparent or real. A lame duck residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue encourages early speculation about the Bush succession if only because political observers don’t believe George W. Bush can or will get much done for the balance of his term. (As usual, the political cognoscenti are probably wrong, but never mind…) Then, too, the wide open nature of the 2008 party primaries is remarkable. This is only the fifth time since the dawn of the twentieth century that the incumbent President or Vice President has not been running–the earlier examples were 1908, 1920, 1928, and 1952. In 1908 and 1928, the incumbent Republican Party had obvious, winning successors in William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover, who filled the early void much as a Vice President in-line to succeed Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge would have done. There is no obvious Republican successor to George W. Bush in 2008, an electoral situation that only Woodrow Wilson (laid low by a debilitating stroke) and Harry Truman (crippled by devastating unpopularity) faced. Wilson promoted no Democrat because he clearly hoped for a

For most, December conjures up memories of spending time with family, the occasional vision of dancing sugar plums and, of course, anxiety over the frenetic rush to buy the holiday season’s hot new toy. But on the morning of December 1, while many were running mad through their local malls scrambling for those last few X-Box 360s, we here at the Crystal Ball were bolting through the doors of the Hotel Washington and glued to C-SPAN 2, eagerly anticipating the start of December’s premier political event – the Eighth Annual American Democracy Conference. Hosted by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and National Journal’s the Hotline and sponsored by Altria, this year’s event featured some of the Beltway’s top movers, shakers, and campaign makers in three lively panel discussions. The day featured lots of insightful discourse on the state of American politics and bold predictions about what lies ahead in 2006. With so many Washington insiders offering up so much expert analysis, it’s safe to say that our post-election political junkie fix was satisfied. And for those that missed out, each panel discussion is available via the University of Virginia Podcast. Panel Discussion I – The Declining