Hearing footsteps

It will be interesting to see how many Democrats in Congress change their positions after the Republican blow out win last Tuesday. We have already heard from President Obama that the problem was not with his policies but rather with his poor efforts at communicating with the American people. This seemingly delusional position may just be a ploy by Obama, but it certainly makes clear that Obama does not intend to change course after the election. At the moment, it seems that Obama is staking his re-election chances on whether or not the economy recovers enough by 2012 to allow him to win. Things are different for the Democrats in the Senate, however. First of all, the field in 2012 is such that gains by the GOP will relatively easy. Of the 33 senators up for re-election in 2012, only 10 are Republicans. Of these 10 Republicans, only three are in races that could go to the Democrats: Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe in Maine (who is rumored to be retiring) and John Ensign in Nevada (who has had legal problems). If Snowe runs again, she should win -- she won by the biggest margin of all Republicans in 2006 when this group was elected. On the other side there are 23 Democrats up for re-election including the two nominal independents, Sanders of Vermont and Lieberman of Connecticut. In this group, there are senators like McCaskill of Missouri, Casey of Pennsylvania, Brown of Ohio, Kohl of Wisconsin, Nelson of Nebraska, Nelson of Florida, Stabenow of Michigan, Tester of Montana, Conrad of North Dakota and Webb of Virginia who come from states that swung strongly towards the Republicans this year. Lieberman is also likely to face a strong challenge from both the left and the right. That makes 11 Democrats who may be on shaky ground as 2012 approaches. Obviously, there may be others in trouble on both sides, but right now, the current status seems to strongly favor the GOP.

In the House, there will certainly be many seats that the Republicans will have to defend next time given the enormous gains made this year. By 2012, however, we will have seen redistricting that will have made major changes to about a third of the districts in the country. Every district other than those which are statewide will have seen some modification. this makes even long intrenched incumbents more vulnerable than usual. Districts that were designed previously to favor the Democrats may suddenly change character to favor Republicans. I assume that in those states where seats are bing lost, we may see quite a number of Democrats forced into the same district as another Democrat. In other words, the redistricting will substantially lessen the impact of the normal bounce back one would expect after a blow out like this year's election.

Given all of this, it will indeed be interesting to see if the Democrats now moderate their positions to move more towards what the country said it wanted on election day. Whether or not Obama wants to move to the center, his party may go ahead without him.

One would do well to remember the articles that were written right after the 2008 election explaining how the Democrats would have big advantages in the 2010 senate races on the same sort of basis as that I just described. Despite that advantage for the Democrats, they managed to lose a net of six seats. So there is no guarantee that the GOP will pick up more seats in 2012 and take control of the Senate. Nevertheless, it seem like a good bet right now.