Following the 2008 election, I visited a Pachyderm meeting at the Red Lion Hotel in Kalispell. Despite winning a coveted seat for county commission and a solid showing in local legislatives races, there was reason for concern among Republicans. They were still standing in the wake of what was then determined to be a national “wave” election.
Statewide, Democrats now controlled the five highest statewide offices and incumbent Gov. Brian Schweitzer had trounced his GOP opponent Roy Brown – even in the Flathead’s reddest districts. Local Republicans said the outcome “should be a wake up call” and the party “needs to refocus.” The so-called “enthusiasm gap” between the two parties was vast.
Nationwide, Democrats had run up the score for the second election cycle in row, gaining more than 20 House seats, adding to the 29 they had flipped in 2006. They had also wrested control of the Senate and, it appeared, had a broad mandate to push their agenda with a Democratic president taking office.
Two years later the story line is quite different. The most popular narrative, based on polling, is that Democrats are in for a bludgeoning, will almost certainly lose the U.S. House and could also lose the Senate. A “generic ballot” test released by Gallup last month showed Republicans leading by a 10-point margin, the largest gap heading into a midterm in the 68-year history of the poll. It has since shrunk, but few pollsters predict anything but massive gains by the GOP come November, especially since the enthusiasm gap now favors Republicans two to one.
I listened to Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff, speak to a journalism class last week at the University of Montana. Much of his discussion focused on the science behind elections, which, for anyone who enjoys politics, was fascinating. But he did suggest, just as his boss has, that the upcoming election could be an uphill struggle.
He mentioned the two recent waves and said that Democrats hold seats they “haven’t held in a generation.” He pointed out that the president’s party often suffers at the polls. He sounded similar to Republicans in 2006. On Election Day of that year, then-Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman warned of a “six-year itch,” in which the White House loses seats in the sixth year of the administration.
Messina, a UM grad who was in town for Homecoming week, also spoke at the school a year prior, an off election year when Obama’s approval rating was still above 50 percent. During that lecture, after emphasizing that “you can’t govern by polls,” he still referred to an AP poll had the president up seven points and joked, “Now, I don’t care about that stuff, but on a graph, we were bottomed out in August.”
This year, few Democrats are looking to polls for comfort. The question isn’t about whether Republicans will gain seats, it’s how many. Republicans need 40 to take back the House and 10 to regain control of the Senate. If that happens it will be considered another wave, since many pundits define it as one party gaining at least 20 House seats. It would be the third in a row and the first time that has happened since 1948-1952.
There is little doubt that Montana’s Democrats were buoyed by their party’s momentum the last two election cycles. Now it’s the state’s Republicans who are poised to benefit from an unhappy electorate.
According to Charlie Cook, of the Cook Political Report, the 1994 election – another wave that ushered in the “Republican Revolution” and resulted in a net gain of 54 seats for the GOP in the House – proved “all politics is local, except when it’s not.”