As Jay H. Ell has been blogging, the 2014 midterm elections are a crap shoot - nobody really has a clue as to how the cookie will crumble. (Blogs: “Why the GOP in 2014? - Its the Plutocrats, Obamacare and Voter Suppression Stupid”, “2014: Dems and GOP’s Conflicting Strategies” and “2014 Elections: Who Cares as the GOP are Dying Anyway”).
Briefly, the burden of Jay H. Ell’s message has been: On the face of it, the fragmented GOP, who have no policies to offer, should not have a ghost of a chance; However, the midterm elections and the demographics of them coupled with GOP money, voter suppression and the hatred of Obama had served to make the GOP outright favorites. Favorites to the extent that it was the consensus of the pundits that the it was all over bar the shouting and the GOP would take over the Senate; Finally, as this all boils down to mobilizing the base of the respective parties, who really knows what will happen? In this fluctuating environment the pendulum now appears to be giving the Democrats a chance of holding the Senate but as Jay H. Ell’s life does not depend on it he would not bet a dime.
The Senate elections are not the only feature on the card as there are, also of importance, the House of Representatives and the Governorships that are being contested. Of this trifecta the only one that isn’t raising any interest at all is the House. The 2014 midterms are a long yawn to the majority of the electorate, the latter having given up on Washington. Their disdain is juxtaposed with the frenetic activity of the two parties who are wrestling frantically to wake up their stuporous bases in an effort to drag them to the polls. Record amounts of money have been spent in attempt to motivate a tiny number of citizens to perform their patriotic duty by exercising their franchise.
Jay H. Ell believes that the GOP is in the end stage of a terminal disease and win lose or draw they will be annihilated in the 2016 election. But as they have not reached Kubler Ross’s fifth phase of the emotions of a dying patient, namely acceptance, and are stuck in the first stage, denial, the charade continues. At best the Republicans can hope for is to live another two years. Having made that declaration, Jay H. Ell will proceed with his thesis that these elections can go anyway.
THE SENATE
Ostensibly the Republicans were going to win the Senate in a cakewalk. The pundits said it as did the polls. Not that too many are listening to those either, excepting the addicted like yours truly. Nate Silver, who is close as you can get to Nostradamus on these matters, rated the Republicans a sixty - eight percent chance of so doing for most of the run up to now. Fox News has never hesitated and is still running their competition as to which seats the GOP will pick up in their march to continue to do nothing. Because if they try to do anything substantive, like give an alternative health care plan, frame immigration reform, revise the tax code, for example, they will precipitate the long awaited split of the Party. So whatever the outcome they will carry on attacking the President and try and reverse Obamacare and leave it to the Supreme Court to enact the laws of the country.
The Race
To recap, there are 36 Senate seats up for grabs. The Republicans need to win six Democratically held constituencies if they are going to control the Senate. Conventional wisdom ordained that they had three in the bag - South Dakota, Montana and West Virginia with one almost certain, North Carolina. This meant they only needed two more and the prize of the mummified Senate would be theirs. (To this day no one has explained to Jay H. Ell what they were going to do, with fifty - one votes that the Democrats couldn’t do with fifty - five). Continuing with this argument the Republicans needed only two of Georgia, Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, and Colorado to obtain seven Democratic seats. The champagne corks have been popping nightly in anticipation.
So what is going wrong?
The Fat Lady Has Still Got To Sing
Well to start with three of the GOP held "safe" constituencies have been taken out of the bank and are on the block. Both in South Dakota and Kansas the GOP candidates are facing a momentum that threatens to overtake them in the polls. In South Dakota there are three candidates that have more or less split the vote three ways. The other two are an independent Republican, who has voted for Obama on two occasions, and the Democrat. The Democrats will pour a million into that race attacking the complacent Republican, in the belief that whoever else wins it is a victory for them. In the Republican stronghold of Kansas the weak incumbent, backed by the not inconsiderable Republican war chest, is fighting to stave of a challenge by an Independent Republican, who is committed to back the winning side. (This gives the Dems the edge as if the Senate is 50 - 50 Biden becomes the casting vote). In addition to these two sudden “certainties” unravelling, Kentucky, a Republican held seat is literally a toss up, with a plucky assault by a highly capable charismatic but politically “unstable” candidate, Alison Grimes.
To get back to the other seats that are all technically deadlocked. In North Carolina the Democratic candidate still holds a slender lead. Then the Democrats maintain, more in hope than sincerity, that they are slightly ahead in Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky and Arkansas in addition.
The Math.
If the Republicans lose one of Kentucky, South Dakota or Kansas, the latter two had never even in contention till now, they have to win an additional five seats from the Democrats to be in control, (the GOP look certain to wrest Montana and West Virginia from the Dems ). With the current polls all over the place the Fox News laid back optimistic arrogance, where they wallow in the surety that it is a question of which seats the Republicans will win and how many, may be misplaced. The GOP would have to win these five seats from the following six, “too close to call”, states Georgia, Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado and Iowa - a really tall order. As the Democrats argue they only have to win one of the latter and Kentucky, which has been marginal all along, to retain the Senate. In this daily changing scenario the Democrats have abandoned their Kentucky candidate as a result of her continual attacks on President Obama. This is a very interesting development in that it shows the Democrats are thinking long term in so far that they would rather lose Senate control in 2014, as well as the opportunity of dethroning McConnell, than put up with the sustained abuse of the President from a member of their own party.
Whatever happens, it will be probably a couple of hundred thousand votes that will decide the control of the Senate. As Jay H. Ell has maintained from the get go, when the Republicans were fighting over which committees they were going to Chair in the Senate, that that election would hinge on the way the ball bounced.
The Pundits.
Needless to say the pundits are singing a different song now. Nate Silver only rates the Republican chance of taking the Senate at twenty - four percent and has reflected that the Democrats might be clawing their way to victory . The Washington Post ran with a story that, “The Democrats are surprising”. The Rasmussen Report still favors the Republicans to win. A report on Meet The Press on Sunday argued that the outcome of the election could turn out to be to be the worst case scenario for the Republicans. ABC News, maintained, presumably on the basis of al the factors that favored the GOP going into the midterms, that if the Republicans fail to take the Senate by one seat it would rank as one of the most spectacular failures of all time. It is still fair comment to reflect that the majority of polls still give the Republicans the nod to win the Senate.
GUBERNATORIAL RACES
The races for Governor in several states are closer than were predicted. There are two Republican Governors that are particularly in trouble in Kansas and Wisconsin and there is one Democrat in Illinois. Generally speaking the Republican Governors, across the board are under a harder ride. Wendy Davis really fancies her chances to win the Texas Governor’s race and even if she doesn’t win she will come close enough to really jolt the Republicans out of their Southern State complacency. Just looking at these races - Kansas is in trouble for a very pertinent reason. The GOP Governor decided to put his money where the GOP’s mouth was. He would get rid of all State taxes and the economy would thrive with all that stimulus of disposable extra money in the one per centers’ pockets. Needless to say Kansas has gone to hell in a hand basket deeply in debt with very little payed for. Obviously this no tax mantra plays much better in the theory than it does in practice. Wisconsin is particularly important because its incumbent is considered one of the bright young stars of the GOP. His loss would be significant as he is considered a serious Establishment Presidential possibility. Illinois with its chronic corruption and massive debt has a very weak Democratic Governor, Quinn, who succeeded the imprisoned Rod Blagojevich. While Quinn’s Republican opponent suffers from the same disabilities as the venture capitalist Romney did he has to have a a more than even chance as Illinois is still in an unbelievable fiscal mess.
VOTER SUPPRESSION
Voter suppression which was to be the third leg in the GOP trifecta to win these elections, (Blog: “Why the GOP in 2014? - Its the Plutocrats, Obamacare and Voter Suppression Stupid”), is not going according to plan. The Supreme Court have not rubber stamped every State attempt to unashamedly to suppress voters. They have adopted an unpredictable approach to the various restrictive legislative Acts enacted by the various States. They upheld the North Carolina effort to stop voter registration on the day of the election and Ohio’s legislation to cut into early voting by a week . But they have halted the implementation of the Wisconsin Law that mandated the voters to produce identity documents which 600,000 voters did not have and that they logistically could not obtain to vote in the November election. Similarly a Federal Court opined that in Texas there was not enough evidence of voter fraud to introduce what was in effect a Poll Tax. As the Fifth Circuit of Appeals reversed that decision it is more than likely the Supreme Court will hear this case urgently.
In a devastating 30 page dissent to the rubber stamping of the Wisconsin Voter Suppression Law, a Conservative Judge Gerald Posner of the Seventh Circuit of Appeals, blew the myth that these laws were enacted on the basis of eliminating voter fraud which the Judge says there was next to none. What makes this respected jurist's opinion especially significant is that he has changed his initial view point on the subject articulated seven years ago. He maintained that over that period there has been only a few occurrences of voter fraud and at best the proponents of this argument were paranoid. His well reasoned legal argument will have to be addressed by the Supreme Court in their ultimate ruling on this subject. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court also threw out the voter ID law in that State. So it would appear that some suppressive voter ID laws may well be under fire by the courts.
Even more significant than the legal thrusts to nullify the voter suppression laws is the massive voter registration drive by the Democrats in the affected States. This may not be enough for this election but surely it will have achieved the desired outcome by 2016.
The Republicans, desperately clutching at the straws of survival, are even trying to sabotage legitimate attempts to register voters. In Georgia, one of the key States in the fight for the Senate, 50,000 voter registration applications have “disappeared”. The Republican Secretary of State refuses to be interviewed as to what may have happened to these. Ironically, the GOP attempts to suppress minorities and youth, that favor the Democrats, seem to have had the opposite effect with tens of thousands being mobilized to get on the registers.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
*The outcome of these elections do not matter very much. Win, lose or draw gridlock will continue in Washington. To everyone’s surprise the Democrats are making a credible fight.
*If the Republicans eventually do not gain the Senate it will hasten their demise.
* The see sawing of fortunes of the candidates is not surprising when one realizes that a few hundred thousand voters will decide the outcome of the race. Also the narrative keeps changing. At first it was Obamacare and jobs, then Benghazi and now it is Obama, Ebola and ISIS. The other variable is no-one knows whose base is going to be strongest and what the impact of voter suppression and the response to it - voter registration, might have.
* Regardless of the eventual winners nothing is going to happen in this election that will impair the Dems winning the House, Senate and Presidency in 2016.
*The Democrats are going to make inroads into the GOP Governorship roster.
*It hasn’t passed unnoticed that the Dems have several women candidates in these key fights.
- If nothing else this election will illustrate that the South will become a key battleground in future elections and not just a pushover for the GOP.
*There are only two races that should impact on the political scene with immediate effect. These are the Wisconsin Governorship and the Kentucky Senate race. If Governor Walker loses in Wisconsin that will dash a very viable GOP Establishment Presidential Candidate’s hopes. More catastrophic would be Mitch McConnell’s defeat in Kentucky. He is the current GOP leader in the Senate and his exit would create a power vacuum and a Tea Party/Establishment fight that will expose, even more sharply, the GOP ideological split that is surfacing more and more in the public arena.
*The Republican Establishment are still reeling from the shock defeat of Boehner’s understudy and obvious successor, Eric Cantor. This coup d’etat was executed at the hands of the Tea Party who obviously are adapting a “take no prisoners” approach. (Blog: “Cantor: Hype or Train Smash”).
*The electorate do not differentiate between the Republicans and the Democrats as to who is to blame for the gridlock. A recent survey revealed that only thirty - eight percent of those surveyed knew who controlled the House of Representatives.
*The election is showing up the glaring difficulties the Republicans have in maintaining a united front and that they cannot run forever with no policy other than to attack the agenda of the Democrats.
*Like all good forecasters, Jay H. Ell reserves his right to do a one hundred and eighty degree turn when the next polling figures are released.
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