Republicans are demoralized about the 2008 election and they ought to be. By a significant margin, more voters now identify themselves as Democrats. And not only are Democrats raising more money, the party’s presidential candidates are generating considerably more enthusiasm than Republican candidates are. Then there’s the Senate, where Democrats may pick up 3 to 6 seats, and the House, where it’s highly unlikely Republicans will net the 16 seats necessary to recapture control. They’ll be fortunate to pick up a half-dozen seats. I hate to be so gloomy, but there’s no value in pretending that the 2006 election was an aberration and happy days for Republicans are on the horizon. They probably aren’t. I hedge by saying “probably” because my one rule of thumb in politics is that the future is never a straight-line projection of the present. Prospects may be brighter for Republicans a year from now. But for the moment, they stink.
At the risk of piling on, there are two problems for Republicans that haven’t gotten sufficient attention. The first is voter registration and turnout. I used to ignore this as unimportant on the grounds that the efforts by the parties cancel each other out. But I learned better in the 2004 election. Democrats in effect contracted out their voter contact drive to “independent” groups like Americans Coming Together, who hired thousands of paid professionals to sign up Democratic voters and get them to the polls. These groups did an amazingly effective job, the best ever done by Democrats. Republicans relied on volunteers, a strategy many political professionals figured would fail and many Democrats thought was imaginary, a figment of Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman’s dreams. But it wasn’t. Mehlman and his team recruited several million volunteers who worked night and day to get out the Republican vote. In New Mexico, the Democratic vote drive was phenomenally successful. But Democrats were outperformed by the Republican volunteers, who caused Republican turnout to grow even in areas of declining population. And New Mexico became one of two states to switch from Gore in 2000 to Bush in 2004. The majority of the Republican volunteers, I believe, were there for one reason. They were strongly committed to George W. Bush. And no matter who the Republican presidential nominee is in 2008, he won’t have that large an army of loyal volunteers working for him. But the Democrats will be able to repeat their impressive performance. All they need is money and they have plenty of it. The other problem for Republicans is the absence of an organizing idea, an overarching policy or initiative or talking point. Republicans win with ideas. They’ll have the war on terror and tax cuts to talk about. But they need a big idea. I think the broad notion of individual ownership and control of retirement, health care, education, and other funds would fill the idea vacuum, but I don’t see many Republicans gathering around it. There is, however, a unifying principle for Republicans: Hillary. Nearly all Republicans, plus a lot of independents, rally around the need to defeat Senator Hillary Clinton and keep her away from the presidency. So it follows, not entirely logically, that they wish for her to win the Democratic nomination. They believe she’d be the easiest Democrat to beat. Let’s assume she’s the nominee. She’d be an all-purpose aid to Republicans. She’d run poorly in the 61 congressional districts held by Democrats but won by Bush in 2004, helping Republican challengers. She’d make it harder for Democrats to win Senate seats in Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire. And at the presidential level, she’d make it difficult for an independent or third party conservative candidate to steal votes from her Republican rival. Of course, all this is speculative. Clinton may turn out to be likeable. But I doubt it. Imagine a general election campaign that lasts from early February, when most primaries are over, to election day in early November. Does anyone think Clinton would wear well over that period of time, when she’s front and center every day and can’t hide? She’s disciplined, but not that disciplined. Still, at this point, there’s a higher probability of a Democratic landslide in 2008 than there is of a serious Republican recovery. But holding the White House and losing only one or two Senate states is quite possible for Republicans. Call me cautiously pessimistic.
