Meanwhile, In The Other Electoral Sphere…
While the Presidential races suck up all the oxygen (but not, apparently, the money), the Democratic party is continuing their only very recent trend of being able to raise more money than their Republican counterparts for Congressional races.
April numbers are in, and in the House, The DCCC has a whopping $9.4 million cash on hand, compared to the NRCC’s $1.6. Perhaps more disquieting for Republican chances, the Democrats are outraising themselves from 2005, while the Republicans are actually raising less than they did this time in 2005 (during an off-year with nowhere near the heat or attention as this one). This despite the fact that the Presidential money race–in which the Democrats are also crushing their Republican counterparts–presumably is soaking a lot of the same donors.
In the Senate, the picture is equally bleak. The Democrats are outraising the GOP at a three to one pace, and their cash on hand is $12.1 million, compared to the NRSC’s $3.4.
The Congressional picture for the Republicans doesn’t look so hot even given a level playing field–they’ll be able to flip some house seats that were won in deep red districts in 2004, and probably take LA in the Senate–but with a sizable money disadvantage, a party base that is unenthused, depressed, rapidly shrinking, and barely able to hold their fracturing coalition together, and a giant upticket boost in the opposing party from the notion of finally getting rid of Bush, it’s next to impossible to figure how the GOP doesn’t further backslide in Congress this cycle; my guess is, more significantly than expected.
It’s a related but not entirely overlapped trend to the widening demographic sag, and if those two trends calcify–a Democratic party that manages to retain both a healthy and reliable demographic as well as fund-raising advantage over the GOP, the brief glimpse the Republicans managed to get of majority rulership may be the last they see of it for a long, long time.
Retrospective Prediction: Had John Kerry been elected in 2004, the Republicans would still be in the majority in both houses, and the next President would almost certainly be a Republican. Conservatism would be enjoying not a total, but a healthy comeback. Now, we can see what a Bush reelection bought for the GOP.
Adam and I told you so.
Well, I never denied it. :)
Those fundraising numbers are staggering. It’s almost unimaginable that the Republicans make up the kind of deficit they’re creating for themselves through conventional tactics.
A sea change in policy is coming; if not now, then later. They might have to spend as much time out of power as the Tories did in Britain, but sooner or later, reform WILL happen.
Comment by Rojas — 5/21/2007 @ 5:47 pm