“Obama’s greatest setback to date has been the 2010 midterm elections. Gains that Republicans scored in the House and Senate still circumscribe his agenda. It is no surprise, then, that the Obama White House wants to achieve something no other president has ever done: Retake full control of Congress in a midterm… Yet as next year’s battle for Congress begins to intensify, the odds favor the Republicans holding the House and getting yet another shot at the Senate.”
“At this point in the cycle, Democrats probably need to put at least another two dozen additional districts into play… and hold most of their own vulnerable seats to have a chance of netting 17 seats in the midterm elections. It’s a very tall order.”
All these pundits assume the President’s party will suffer losses in the 6-Year Itch midterm because that’s what’s always happened. Except it hasn’t. In 1998, the President’s party (i.e. the Democrats), picked 5 House seats and stayed even in the Senate. Further, all of our two term Presidents in modern times have had pretty horrible fifth and six years, or ongoing scandals, which have influenced how their party performed in the 6th year midterm. For example, President Johnson had Vietnam going to shit. President Nixon and Ford had the whole Watergate scandal and Ford’s pardon of Nixon right before the election. President Reagan had the Iran-Contra scandal going on. President Clinton had the whole Monica Lewinsky Affair, although he gained seats. President Obama has no scandals going on.
And chances are the only thing voters will be tired of come 2014 is Republican obstruction.
“It may not be too melodramatic to say that over the next couple of years, the Republican Party faces a fork in the road. Following one path, the GOP can seek to address what has gone wrong, the narrowness of the party’s appeal, and the intolerance that has alienated so many minority, female, young, and moderate voters that Republicans have a hard time prevailing in federal races outside of carefully drawn conservative enclaves. Taking the other road could lead the party over a cliff in 2016, in much the same way Barry Goldwater led Republicans to disaster in 1964.”
I wrote about his several weeks ago, about but how our “right to vote” is illusionary as it is not enshrined in the Constitution as a right and that is why racist Republicans can get away with passing laws that burden the exercise of the privilege to vote. Well, now Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellows Jonathan Soros and Mark Schmitt agree with me and argue that we need a Right to Vote Amendment to the Constitution to focus the activist movement and help ensure that you can participate in our political system even if you don’t have an “Inc.” after your name.