Revisiting the Three-way bet

By Dave Anderson:

For 2010, Democrats are going to take significant losses in their majorities in both the House and Senate.  It is an of-year election, the Democratic margin is composed of less likely to be super-voters groups, and the economy sucks.  The question is whether or not the losses are minimized.  The Democrats are making a three-way bet that would lead to significant but non-majority threatening losses:

• Discredited Republican Party will make swing voters hold their noses before voting GOP or voting at all.


• Teabagger v. Establishment Republican civil war


• Democrats would maintain the money edge

Outside the Beltway has a de facto follow-up on two of the three components of the bet.

it�s important to point out some other important metrics that make a Republican takeover of Congress in November pretty unlikely.

1. The hard right turn in the primaries cuts against the GOP.

The biggest group of voters who are angry and anti-incumbent can be found among the most conservative GOP voters. This is producing some interesting conundrums, like Charlie Crist in Florida, Bennett�s fight for his life in Utah, and McCain�s struggles against J.D. Hayworth. These are all pretty conservative folks losing to very conservative candidates. But here�s the thing�the polling for those favorite conservative candidates is terrible. Let�s say, for example, that J.D. Hayworth beats McCain in the GOP primaries (a very possible outcome). Hayworth, who is very well known due to the hard-fought primary, right now trails the virtually unknown Democratic candidate Rodney Glassman. And Charlie Crist has a really good shot of winning a three-way race in Florida. The numbers in Nevada are, I think, trending back towards Harry Reid thanks to the ultra-conservatives on the GOP side there, too....

2. The public prefers Democrats to Republicans. On almost everything.

The ABC News-WaPo Poll that James cites below is really illuminating on this score, and it�s in lines with the trends that I�ve been following for the past few months. For one thing, the voters in this survey prefer Republicans to Democrats by 5 points. And this, in particular, is revealing:

In a party-to-party measure, Americans by 46-32 percent said they trust the Democratic Party over the Republicans to handle the main problems the country faces during the next few years. That slipped for the Republicans from a 43-37 percent division in February.

You�ve got that right�since February, more voters trust Democrats and fewer voters trust Republicans to govern responsibly. That�s not a good trend for those who believe in a GOP takeover.

The one area where the Democratic bet is under serious question is the marginal money edge. We have seen Big Finance shift their donations from a majority of money going to Democrats back to a majority of their money going to Republicans.  That should provide an easy, populist club to use against baby seals, but the Democrats are complicit in whoring themselves out to Wall Street so that club will not be used. However, the Democrats are raising as much or more money than than Republicans and they have more cash and net cash on hand than the national Republican committees.  

The tactical bet that the economy will get 'good enough, soon enough' is still in play.  If  that is the case, then the three components of the Democratic 2010 loss minimization bet are still in play.