Government Executive - Authors - Charlie Cook

Trump Is Having a Profound Impact on Regulatory Policy

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 09:41:24 -0400

It’s a popular refrain that President Trump and his administration are ineffectual and unable to achieve their goals. If you measure by legislation passed, that’s pretty much on target. Given that their four biggest priorities were Obamacare repeal, a major tax-reform or tax-cut bill, a $1 trillion, five-year infrastructure program, and a border wall, it’s hard to argue. If someone told you back on Jan. 20 when Trump took office that he would be going into the latter part of September with an 0-4 record, and that the only really significant legislation enacted was based on a deal with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a “D” grade would have been generous. Since Washington tends to put relations with Congress and enactment of legislation above almost anything else, the president would have a seat in the dunce’s corner.

But if you widen the lens to other areas, it turns out that Trump and his administration have made, and are likely to continue to make, an enormous impact on public policy. You can agree or disagree with the substance of what the Trump administration has set out to do, just as you can like or dislike Trump himself, but it’s hard ignore the significance what is happening.

First look at policy and regulation. Trump dropped out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he wants changes in the Paris Climate Accord, and he’s renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. The vast majority of policy decisions are not made in the Oval Office but rather in the bowels of Cabinet departments, agencies, and commissions. The administration is beginning to dismantle President Obama’s regulatory framework, and it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that virtually every controversial Obama-era regulation and policy is in jeopardy.

Decisions on the environmental front came first, but we are likely to see significant policy challenges across the whole policy horizon. The changes likely to occur in decisions by the National Labor Relations Board alone are huge. Corporate executives who find Trump’s style objectionable are nonetheless pleased with his aggressive approach to regulations.

Second, look at the judiciary. If Trump doesn’t get a single additional nominee for the Supreme Court, he will have already made an enormous impact. If newly minted Justice Neil Gorsuch, age 50, stays on the Supreme Court until he’s the same age as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is today, he will have served 34 years.

Then consider the potential for more changes. The oldest current member of the Court is Ginsburg, one of the most liberal members, who is 84. The next oldest is the swing vote on many issues, Anthony Kennedy, 81. Next oldest is another liberal, Stephen Breyer, 79. You have to go back a decade to find the next two oldest justices, Clarence Thomas, 69, and Samuel Alito, 67. Both are conservatives, as is Chief Justice John Roberts, 62. If there’s another high-court vacancy and Trump appoints someone in the mold of Gorsuch, the Supreme Court could have a conservative majority for a decade or more. Throw in openings on 13 U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal and 94 U.S. District Courts, and it’s likely that Trump will have a profound effect on the federal judiciary.

A bit more esoteric but vitally important is the Federal Reserve Board, which oversees monetary policy. The seven-member Fed currently has three vacant seats, and a fourth will open up in October, when Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer steps down. Also consider that while Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s term as a Fed governor doesn’t expire until the end of January 2024, her term as chair runs out Feb. 3. Trump has not indicated whether he will renominate her or seek a replacement. At the very least, a majority of the Fed governors, as well as its chair and vice chair, will be Trump appointees.

A few weeks ago, I sat in on a speech in New York by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump backer. Gingrich made the point that if you consider what most of us would have assumed 18 months ago—namely, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president—the policies she would have pursued would have been staggeringly different.

“Elections have consequences” may be a worn-out cliché, but it has particular relevance to what happened in 2016. The irony is that so many Trump voters probably didn’t think he had a chance of winning but cast their ballots for him anyway. Many others were so turned off by Hillary Clinton and by the disclosure of Trump’s lewd Access Hollywoodcomments that they either stayed home or threw their votes to Green Party nominee Jill Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson. On top of all that, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes out of 128.7 million cast. He may be an accidental president, but he’s changing the direction of the country.

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Analysis: Can Kelly Rein in the Unruly President?

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 09:25:22 -0400

One of the more interesting political questions these days is whether Gen. John Kelly can bring some semblance of order to the Trump White House. If anyone can transform the most disorganized and confused White House in modern history into something resembling a functional Office of the President of the United States, it might be a retired four-star Marine general. President Trump seems to respect only high-ranking generals and people who have been as successful or more successful than he’s been in the business world, and for now he’s giving Kelly more latitude than outgoing Chief of Staff Reince Priebus ever dreamed of.

It can be argued that given the level of dysfunction at the White House, any improvement would be immediately obvious. But then again, the chaos flows from the top down. President Trump is not someone who values order and reflection, rigorous fact-gathering, and analytical decision-making, so any structure that is imposed is more cosmetic than real.

So far, Kelly’s moves have been impressive. Before he arrived, friends, family, and advisers meandered into the Oval Office, seemingly at will. Meetings dragged on endlessly and often with little direction. Paper reached the president’s desk from every direction. Some of the memos were inaccurate and few warranted a president’s attention. In short, the place was a mess, and under Kelly it seems to have gotten somewhat better. Heading into the August lull, this is a natural reset point, and it couldn’t have come too soon.

One thing that could help Kelly is Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s announced crackdown on leaks. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m a journalist, and I thrive on getting inside information and insights. Leaks can play an important role in informing the public on what the government is really up to. The Pentagon Papers, for example, opened a window into what was going wrong in Vietnam and played a pivotal role in changing how Americans viewed the war. But a lot of the leaking in this administration has been sophomoric towel-snapping designed to subvert rivals or curry favor with journalists. The effect is to make the entire operation and everyone in it look bad. Some of the leaks were aimed at embarrassing the president, who after all is their boss. The blatant disloyalty of many of the leakers really makes you wonder what makes them tick. My question is, if you don’t like, respect, and support the guy you’re working for, why not resign and do work that you consider important and honorable?

Some analysts have noted that it’s one thing for the White House chief of staff to manage down, but quite another to manage up, especially when your boss is a 71-year-old man with deeply ingrained traits. But in Kelly’s early days, the president’s more unhelpful tweets have become more infrequent, and if he’s had any outbursts they have remained behind closed doors and not made public. The trouble is, if Kelly is given credit for reining in the boss, Trump may resent being treated like a child and may turn on his minder.

An important question is how running a tighter ship in the White House matters at this point. Obviously we are only at Day 200 of a presidency that will last 1,460 days, but Trump’s disapproval ratings seem locked in at the high 50’s, his approval ratings are stubbornly stuck around 39 or 40 percent, and the Republican Party in Congress is both badly divided and held back by narrow majorities and so far has no major legislative accomplishments. The Washington Post’s Paul Kane pointed out last week that the Senate has passed fewer than 10 bills this year that required roll-call votes. Raising the debt limit and passing a budget before Oct. 1 are likely to move to center stage when Congress returns next month, putting an even greater squeeze on the next big goals of tax reform and a major infrastructure program.

In terms of things that can be done unilaterally by the administration, through executive orders or decisions made at the Cabinet department, agency, or commission level, the Trump administration is making a strong impact on policy and achieving many of its goals, particularly in terms of rolling back many Obama administration policies and rules, most specifically in the area of the environment and increasingly on the labor-relations side as well.

From the standpoint of Congress, a president should want to be some combination of loved and feared, but at the very least respected. It doesn’t take too many conversations with people on Capitol Hill to find that this President is a big zero on big issues despite his congressional majority, but all but a handful of Republicans have to be a bit more circumspect with their views because 80-plus percent of Republican voters approve of the job that Trump is doing and 90-plus percent of Trump voters say they would vote for him again.

Even if the White House suddenly and miraculously becomes a well-oiled and highly functioning machine, this administration still faces formidable challenges. But at the very least, the perception that incompetence, backbiting, and infighting takes precedence over policy making, really undercuts any chance to be effective.

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Shutdown Crisis Looms for GOP

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 10:06:15 -0400

If you could be a fly on the wall eavesdropping on a meeting these days, only one would be more interesting than the brainstorming sessions that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are having with their respective leadership teams. It would be the meeting at which White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and his legislative-affairs team explain to President Trump the mechanics and consequences of a looming April 29 government shutdown, which would coincidentally fall on Trump’s 100th day in office. The timeline is tight: Congress leaves this Friday for the Easter-Passover recess, the Senate returns on April 24, the House returns on April 25, and the current continuing resolution expires at midnight on April 28.

A shutdown would affect virtually the entire federal government. Last year, only one of the 12 appropriations bills, for veterans and military construction, was funded beyond April 28. In recent years, Congress has become heavily dependent on passing omnibus appropriations bills, with virtually everything tossed into the mix.

Threats of a possible government shutdown occur from time to time. The last one occurred from Sept. 30 to Oct. 17, 2013, during President Obama’s second term. There were none during President George W. Bush’s tenure. President Clinton had two—Nov. 13-19, 1995, and again from Dec. 15, 1995 to Jan. 6, 1996. The single shutdown during George H.W. Bush’s presidency occurred on Oct. 5-9, 1990. There were a whopping eight shutdowns during the Reagan administration. Of course, a government shutdown is not entirely or necessarily the president’s fault; it’s usually the result of at least one chamber of Congress being in the hands of a party different from the president’s.

What would set this one apart is that Republicans hold the White House as well as majorities in the House and Senate. It would be the first same-party shutdown in 37 years. The last occurred when President Carter had five separate periods in which one spending bill expired before another one was adopted, all with Democratic Congresses in place, though in those days only partial shutdowns took place. The main hang-up then was abortion.

So why is a shutdown very possible with Republicans in charge of all three levers in the budget process? Maybe it’s because they are not all members of the same Republican Party. One Republican Party would be adamantly opposed to funding for Planned Parenthood. Another Republican Party is dominated by the Freedom Caucus, whose members are boiling over the potshots they took from Trump after “repeal and replace” failed in the House. A mishmash of Republicans are ambivalent about a proposal to hike defense spending by 10 percent. None of these Republican factions can expect help from Democrats, who oppose the big hike in military outlays, ridicule funding for a border wall, and—under the Senate dome—remain livid over Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s treatment by Republicans and hanker for payback against Trump’s pick, Neil Gorsuch.

This situation has the potential to be a major disaster for Trump and Republicans. They face the possibility of government grinding to a halt, with massive furloughs of government employees that result in deferred payrolls. With an economy that is still pretty fragile and a House majority that is awfully thin, it doesn’t take much of an imagination to see how this becomes a political nightmare.

Some White House operatives naively think they could blame a government shutdown on Democrats. They would probably buy beachfront property in West Virginia, too. Coming on the heels of Republicans being unable to get their act together on a health care bill, the odds of them being able to pin the tail on the Democratic donkey, while Republicans are in charge of the budget machinery, seem highly remote. And it’s hard to imagine the hostile media doing a backflip and helping Trump sell this fiction.

It isn’t clear that Trump fully understands what is going on, and what it means for a president with job-approval ratings below 40 percent and disapprovals in the high 50s even before the budget problem comes into view. If some voters didn’t think he was in over his head before, a lot more would come to that conclusion if the government shuts down. For that matter, the two-thirds of Republican House members and 60 percent of GOP senators who have never served with a Republican president have no experience with the real-word compromises need to push through a budget.

A government shutdown would not be seen by most voters as a policy dispute. It would be perceived as a matter of competence—nothing more, nothing less. The author of The Art of the Deal is going to be tested on whether he can strike a big bargain inside the Beltway.

(Image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore)

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Why Trump's Immigration Switch Won't Move the Needle

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 14:48:17 -0400

The topic du jour is Donald Trump’s attempted walk-back of his position on immigration—roughly speaking, from an absolutist policy to one that’s merely tough. The operative question is whether he can strike a balance, enticing into his column the undecided voters that he previously alienated with his “send ‘em all back” position, while simultaneously holding onto those who supported his original, hard-line position. This is essential to his winning the election; he cannot win with just the support he currently has, as he is now a handful of percentage points and dozens of electoral votes shy of winning this election.

My hunch is that there is both good news and bad news for Trump in this move. I don’t think he will alienate many of his core supporters with this attempted rhetorical and substantive walk-back, but it’s also likely that he won’t win over many new backers with this maneuver.

When Trump said in Iowa back in January that, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” no truer words were ever spoken. Trump’s voters would walk on hot coals for him. There is nothing he could say or do, or anyone else could say about him, that would appreciably diminish his current levels of support. For example, the fact that a significant share of conservative, evangelical Christians can support this vain and profane, thrice-married, once pro-choice casino owner who knows so little about the Bible as to refer to “Two Corinthians” and whose wife at least once posed for a nude photo shoot is worthy of contemplation. If they haven’t abandoned him yet, they won’t. His nonpolitician credentials are so well established that even a classic political hedge is unlikely to tarnish his reputation. Many will just say, “he’s doing what he has to do, he’s not really changing his position.” But at the same time, this substantive adjustment of his position on immigration isn’t likely to win over those whom he previously offended, even those who are exceedingly unenthusiastic about backing Hillary Clinton. They won’t believe he’s really changed either.

Let’s face it: This will be a “wince” election with a large segment of the electorate grimacing as they cast their ballot, not happy about their choices at all. The drumbeat of negative stories about additional Clinton emails and at least the appearance of inappropriate dealings between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department prevent many hard-core Trump critics from feeling good about their choice, but is unlikely to turn many back the other way. While the Clinton Foundation undoubtedly has done a lot of good things for needy people around the world, the optics of foundation staff serving as a go-between for those seeking an audience with or favor from the secretary of State—much as that’s the bread and butter for most Washington lobbyists—are terrible. Did the foundation really need that much money or go that far to raise it, throwing appearance to the wind? Clearly there is a long history of tone deafness to appearances that has plagued the Clintons, and something doesn’t have to be criminal to be inappropriate or at the very least to look bad.

All of this is why this race is likely to stay as close as it is. If Clinton goes on to win this election, as I think she will, one would hope that she would populate her administration with staff that would use better discretion than those who have worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton in the past. Many have observed that President Clinton could have been a much better or even great president had he not had certain shortcomings and allowed certain practices, e.g. using the Lincoln Bedroom as a bed-and-breakfast for generous political donors.

This election should be over and it isn’t, not quite, and it’s not the Clinton campaign’s fault. It is the fault of those at the top, who discounted that much of this would ever be public or held against them. I wonder if a lesson has been learned.

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The Trump-Clinton Race Is Not As Close As It Looks

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 31 May 2016 10:03:39 -0400

The latest round of polls released prior to Memorial Day weekend, which showed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a virtual tie, set off intense hand-wringing among Democrats, Clinton backers, and Trump detractors alike. They much preferred the polls from a month earlier giving the former secretary of State a double-digit lead over the real-estate mogul.

What’s lost on many people is that any trial heat between Trump and Clinton today is like comparing apples and oranges. Trump’s nomination fight is over while Clinton’s contest is still at a messy stage. Republicans who backed one of the 16 other GOP candidates have coalesced to a significant degree, painfully progressing through Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Many establishment figures, who I never thought would come to terms with Trump as the GOP nominee, have now moved to healing and closure, if somewhat reluctantly. They are quick to point out that Trump wasn’t their first choice, but, when the bugle sounded, they and other party war horses got in line. Sometimes it was more a matter of lining up against Clinton rather than behind Trump, and some even found it difficult to endorse Trump by name. One former Republican senator compared Trump to the villainous Harry Potter character Lord Voldemort, “he who must not be named.” Even so, most partisans ultimately get behind their candidate, for better or worse, and so it is with today’s Republicans.

By contrast, many of Bernie Sanders’s supporters still seem be in the denial and anger stages. Feelings are still raw, and the healing process has not yet begun. But after the last round of primaries on June 7, most of them will also move from depression to acceptance.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the always-prescient moderator Chuck Todd said much the same thing but approached it in another way. First Todd pointed to the May 15-19 NBC News/Wall Street Journalpoll, noting that Sanders bested Trump in the survey by 15 points, 54 to 39 percent, while Clinton had a scant 3-point edge over Trump, 46 to 43 percent. Todd then calculated that if 70 percent of the voters who supported Sanders against Trump subsequently moved into Clinton’s corner, she would then have an 8-point lead, 51 to 43 percent.

Shifting 70 percent of Sanders’s supporters into the Clinton column in the May 13-17 CBS News/New York Times poll would enlarge her lead over Trump from 6 points, 47 to 41 percent, to 9 points, 50 to 41 percent. Doing the same thing using the May 14-17 Fox News survey, which showed Trump ahead by 3 points, 45 to 42 percent, would produce a tie, 45 to 45 percent. Todd pointed out that in the first 2008 NBC/WSJ poll after Clinton dropped out against Barack Obama, Obama moved up 3 points, a sign that Clinton supporters were getting in line. This is a natural development after contested nominations are settled.

Keeping in mind that there are more Democrats than Republicans, and that 90 percent of partisans end up voting for their respective party’s presidential nominee, it’s not surprising that Democrats have had party identification advantages in four of the five most recent national polls: 2 points in CBS/NYT (33 to 31 percent), 5 points in NBC/WSJ (34 to 29 percent), 6 points in Gallup (31 to 25 percent), and 8 points in ABC/Washington Post (33 to 25 percent); only the Fox News poll gave the GOP an edge in party affiliation, 41 to 40 percent.

So it is logical that Democrats have an advantage of a few points once the nominations are truly settled and partisans have had time to make peace with their candidates. In the NBC/WSJ poll, a generic presidential race showed 47 percent preferring a Democratic president to 43 percent opting for a Republican. Likewise, when pollsters measure favorable-unfavorable or positive-negative ratings, Democrats maintain a steady advantage over Republicans.

In short, the parties have not evolved at the same rate. Trump has had the Republican field to himself and has begun healing party wounds, such as he can, while Clinton has not yet been afforded that opportunity because she has been busy fighting off Sanders.

It is exceedingly unlikely that Clinton will beat Trump by a wide margin because of her high negatives and the intense partisanship that has gripped the nation, but the probabilities still are in her favor. We are approaching a moment similar to the one in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy told her dog Toto that “we’re not in Kansas anymore.” No longer are we looking at a Republican nomination fight with an electorate dominated by the tea party. We are beginning to focus on a November electorate that is broader, more diverse, and considerably more moderate, in both ideology and temperament, than the one that selected Donald Trump. Chances are high that these voters will behave much differently than the ones in the GOP primaries.

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Florida and Ohio Primaries Critical in the 'Stop Trump' Movement

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 10:32:15 -0500

In this screwball year, it’s dangerous to say anything definitively, but it sure looks like Tuesday’s Ohio Republican primary will be the make-or-break point for the “Stop Trump” movement. This is assuming that Donald Trump beats Marco Rubio in Florida, which seems a bit more likely than not. Then it comes down to Ohio, where John Kasich has been holding a modest lead in the polls.

If Kasich holds Ohio, which is his home state, the delegate climb for Trump gets very steep. Trump has won 44 percent of all delegates selected so far. Imagine a straight, diagonal line from zero delegates in the bottom left corner at the beginning of the race, up to the number 1,237 in the upper right corner, the barest majority that secures a nomination. Every week, take a look and see if Trump is above or below that trajectory to the magic number. A Trump loss in the Buckeye State would lift the share of the remaining delegates that he would need to win to almost 60 percent, a very improbable challenge. So Trump really needs Ohio. Should Rubio pull out a win Florida, where polls show a very close race, and Kasich loses Ohio, Trump would be in the same predicament. If Trump wins both, the Republican Party better get used to the idea of having the real-estate mogul and reality-TV star as its nominee.

Some political analysts reason that the chances of stopping Trump are better if he’s opposed by several candidates, each with different appeals resonating with different audiences but with the shared goal of preventing him from getting 50 percent of the delegates each week. Others fervently believe that the anti-Trump side needs to rally behind a single candidate. Both theories are plausible. What’s right in one state might not be in another.

One currently nonaligned Republican pollster, for whom I have the utmost respect, on Thursday privately differed with my conclusion that a Trump loss would be a killer for him, suggesting that if Rubio lost Florida but Kasich won Ohio, it would “not be close to the ball game.”

He suggested that if Trump arrived in Cleveland with, say 1,100 delegates, 100 to 150 delegates shy of a majority, he feared “the party breaking apart.” According to his reasoning, Republican delegates would be faced with trying to ascertain the “least-worst” option—nominating Trump and risk losing the presidential race and down-ballot contests, or not nominating him and risk a fight that would make the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago look like a kids’ birthday party.

Head-to-head polls pitting each of the Republican candidates against Clinton show the downside of nominating Trump.

In a Clinton-Cruz matchup, the March 3-6 NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll gives Clinton a 2-point edge, 47 to 45 percent. Clinton carried Democrats 88 to 9 percent, while Cruz won among Republicans (85 to 7 percent) and independents (50 to 39 percent). Last month, a CNN poll gave Cruz a 1-point edge over Clinton, 49 to 48 percent, and Fox News also had him ahead by 1 point, 46 to 45 percent.

The NBC/WSJ poll had Clinton and Rubio tied with 46 percent each, with Clinton holding 85 percent of the Democratic vote, Rubio 86 percent of the Republican vote, and independents favoring Rubio by 11 points. The CNN poll put Rubio ahead by 3 points, 50 to 47 percent, and Fox gave Rubio a 4-point edge, 48 to 44 percent.

The NBC/WSJ poll didn’t match Clinton and Kasich, but the February Fox poll showed Kasich up by 3 points, 47 to 44 percent.

By contrast, the NBC/WSJ poll showed Trump losing to Clinton by 13 points, 51 to 38 percent. In the ABC News/Washington Post survey, Clinton led Trump by 9 points, 50 to 41 percent. Clinton led among Democrats 88 to 9 percent, Trump was ahead among Republicans by a less impressive 74 to 12 percent, and Trump would win independents by just 3 points, 43 to 40 percent. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll gave Clinton a 9-point advantage over Trump, 50 to 41 percent; CNN had Clinton up by 8 points, 52 to 44 percent; Fox had Clinton up by 5 points, 47 to 42 percent.

The bottom line is that a placebo running as the Republican nominee would be extremely competitive and might well beat Clinton, but not Donald Trump.

The Stop Trump folks either need Rubio to win in Florida or Kasich to prevail in Ohio. If either wins their home states, Trump’s nomination becomes highly problematic. If both win, Trump’s balloon loses an awful lot of air. But if both lose, a Trump nomination would be all but unstoppable.

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The GOP Nod Will Go to Trump or Cruz, Unless the Establishment Sorts Itself Out

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 10:28:38 -0500

With every passing day, the odds increase that the Republican presidential nomination will come down to a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Even with Chris Christie’s decision to suspend his campaign, three conventional, establishment-oriented candidates—Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio—remain in the race. Which is two too many. The longer it takes for the establishment side of the party to coalesce behind a single candidate, the tougher it will be for him to secure the nomination.

Each of these three are smart and able men, and each has enough support and strong qualities to keep running, but none is strong enough yet to pull away from the others. It is the opposite of what happened on the conservative side, which Cruz has dominated after pushing aside Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum. Ben Carson is still technically running, but he hasn’t been viable in months and isn’t drawing enough support to cut into Cruz or Trump in any meaningful way.

According to RealClearPolitics.com’s average of polls ahead of the South Carolina primary, Trump now leads with 37 percent, Cruz is 20 points back with 17 percent, Rubio is third at 14.3 percent, followed by John Kasich and Jeb Bush who are pretty much tied with 10.5 and 10 percent, respectively. Private tracking polls for various candidates and super PACs show a much closer fight between Trump and Cruz with each in the 20’s and murkier readings for third, fourth, and fifth place.

Nationally, the RCP averages put Trump ahead with 29 percent, with Cruz and Rubio neck-and-neck with 21 and 20.3 percent, Carson with 7 percent, and Bush at 4 percent. Obviously there is no national primary, which is what a national poll would test, but the figures serve as a point of reference, giving a rough idea of how things stand in other places before the circus comes to town.

The reason I remain very confident in saying that Trump will not be the nominee is that while he is getting 29 percent or so of the support of Republicans nationally, 100 percent know who he is and are fairly familiar with him. If they aren’t, the odds of them being a primary or caucus voter someplace is almost nonexistent. The 71 percent of Republicans who are not for Donald Trump may well agree with him on immigration or some other issue, and they like his blunt manner, his defiance of political correctness, or his antiestablishment, anti-politician, anti-Washington message. But they are not for him, nor are they likely to move to his column.

Each of the other candidates is less known and defined, and thus has more room for growth. It does not mean that someone for Cruz today is likely to jump sides and move to Bush, Kasich, or Rubio, or that a supporter of one of these three is likely to jump to Cruz. While the poll numbers are a little soft, and while voters don’t necessarily stay in the lanes that analysts put them in, they usually do.

One useful exercise is to total up the shares of support in each of the three ideological lanes. If Cruz is pulling 21 percent and Carson 7.3 percent, as the RCP averages suggest, that means that 28.3 percent of GOP voters are in the conservative lane and 29 percent in Trump’s lane. The sum of Rubio’s 20.3 percent, Kasich’s 4.7 percent, and Bush’s 4 percent is 31 percent. That means the three lanes are separated by fewer than 3 points, an amazingly even balance. Even if you move Carson’s 7 percent into the Trump column—although it’s hard to imagine Carson’s deeply religious, evangelical supporters gravitating to the often-profane and more-secular Trump—that would only get him up to 36.3 percent, still a long way from the nomination.

Obviously the ultimate goal is delegates, not polls. My Cook Political Report colleague David Wasserman has put together an elaborate system that looks at delegate allocation and the demographics of each state to track how well each candidate is doing in pursuit of the nomination. By Wasserman’s estimation, after Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump is on track to capture 81 percent of the delegates he needs to win the nomination, Cruz is second with 69 percent, Rubio third with 50 percent, Kasich next with 25 percent, and Bush fifth with 20 percent. Clearly the others are chasing Trump, though an important caveat is how well Trump will do when the field is further winnowed.

While Bush, Kasich, and Rubio reflect the kind of GOP that has traditionally won Republican nominations, the party is much more conservative than it was even seven years ago when President George W. Bush left office, and light years away from the Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan years.

The center of gravity in the party seems closer to Cruz than to the establishment. That is why, at least at this point, Cruz seems to have the best single shot at the nomination. As this column suggested last week, if Bush, Kasich, or Rubio do not emerge alone in the next couple of weeks, leaders of the establishment wing of the Republican Party may go to the Cleveland convention with an enormously painful choice between Trump and Cruz, both of whom are anathema to them.

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A Time for Culling, Not for Winning

Charlie Cook — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:42:48 -0500

It’s now less than a week before the Iowa caucuses, two weeks before the New Hampshire primary, and thus time for political aficionados to whip themselves into frenzy. People often become so preoccupied with the two contests that they lose sight of the larger picture. So take a deep breath, everyone: Neither party’s nomination is likely to be settled by the outcomes in Iowa or New Hampshire, or even the two combined. The Republican race is likely to be determined much closer to Memorial Day than New Year’s Day, and the Democratic nomination should be obvious by Easter, quite possibly much sooner, but not likely in February.

Iowa should winnow the more conservative half of the GOP field, likely ending the campaigns of Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum and allowing Ted Cruz to consolidate the more strongly ideological wing of the party. Conversely, New Hampshire is likely to cull the herd of conventional Republican candidates—Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio. All are not likely to remain contenders after the Granite State votes.

The only question is whether New Hampshire will push one or two of the conventional candidates from the race, or even three if there is a big gap between the first-place establishment candidate and the runner-up. Thus the results and fallout from Iowa and New Hampshire should provide a lot more clarity to a race in which Republicans were faced with a dizzying array of choices, much like a kid walking into Baskin-Robbins for the first time.

While it is easy to see this GOP race quickly becoming a contest between populist Trump, conservative Cruz, and an establishment candidate to be determined by the end of February (after South Carolina and Nevada), that three-way race could go deep into May or June, or even to the July convention in Cleveland. While I thought I would never live to see a contested convention, this race has the ingredients to prove me wrong. (But let’s not use the term “brokered convention” because there are no brokers left anymore. Party elders and leaders have lost their sway over independent-minded delegates.)

With only three Democrats running, there is little herd to cull. Suffice it to say that Martin O’Malley will be gone before President’s Day weekend. More telling will be whether Sanders has succeeded in expanding his support beyond millennials and white liberals. While Sanders seems to be succeeding in winning over the younger part of the Obama coalition, he has not yet made inroads with African-American and Latino voters, who are crucial in states more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire. To break out beyond New England and the caucus states, Sanders has to draw a much wider swath of support.

While Washington was being buried by snow, The New York Times heated up the race with its story reporting that Michael Bloomberg was seriously considering an independent bid for president. While it is no secret that Bloomberg has long wanted to run for president and thinks he would be an effective chief executive (as do many others), he is a pragmatist and has no desire to be a spoiler. He would run only if he saw a realistic path to winning.

The challenge for Bloomberg or any independent is that there is a structural barrier to winning a three-way race. Even assuming that an independent candidate had a powerful message, a great campaign, and plenty of money, winning a majority of the Electoral College votes would be nearly impossible. Assuming the Electoral College did not produce a winner, the election would then be thrown into the House of Representatives, with each state getting a single vote. Since Republicans hold a majority of votes in 34 state delegations, how could an independent, or a Democrat for that matter, win? One of the major-party nominees would have to completely collapse before an independent could win.

While Bloomberg is a very serious guy, don’t hold your breath for him to actually get into the race unless one party nominates someone so weak that he or she cannot even carry the states that represent the party’s base, a highly unlikely eventuality. If Bloomberg gets into the race, look carefully to see how circumstances have changed. They would have had to change a lot before he or any other independent candidate could realistically hit 270 Electoral College votes.

(Image via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com )

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Next Phase of the Republican Campaign May Look More Like What We've Seen in Past Elections

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:00:00 -0400

One or even two opinion polls don’t constitute a trend, and it’s foolhardy to put too much emphasis on such a small sampling. But the first live-telephone-interview survey released after last week’s Republican presidential debate, the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll conducted September 17-19, will get—and deserves—a lot of attention. It gives Republican leaders and strategists, at least those of a traditional bent, the first reassuring news in a while: It suggests that support for the candidates who are most anti-establishment may have reached—or passed—its peak, while other candidates are showing signs of life.

The poll of 444 voters (two-thirds of them Republicans and the rest GOP-leaning independents) put Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon, still in first place, with 24 percent. But he has slipped by 8 percentage points since the previous survey, conducted September 4-8. Retired neurologist Ben Carson, the other completely outside-the-box candidate, also lost ground, dropping 5 points, to 14 percent. Both declines fell within the poll’s margin of error of +/- 4.5 percent, but my hunch is that the shift in Republicans’ attitudes is real.

Other candidates, as they’re gaining visibility, are attracting more support. The biggest beneficiary: Carly Fiorina, the Hewlett Packard CEO, who quintupled her support—from 3 percent to 15 percent. This vaulted her into second place, behind Trump, and a percentage point ahead of Carson. Marco Rubio more than tripled his share of Republican supporters, from 3 percent to 11 percent. No one else in the crowded field moved very much in the poll, gaining or losing a percentage point or so. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker dropped from 5 percent in the early September poll to less than 1 percent, no doubt a factor in his decision to drop out of the race Monday afternoon.

A second poll, issued on Monday morning, showed similar results. It was an online survey conducted September 16-18, after the debate, for NBC News by Survey Monkey. I’m not completely on-board yet with online polling, but the results of the sample of 2,070 Republicans are worth considering next to CNN’s more traditional live-interview survey. Trump led the field here, too, but with 29 percent of the vote (5 points above the CNN showing). Carson was in second place, with 14 percent (as with CNN), and Fiorina was in third, at 11 percent, a gain of just 3 points since before the debate (and 4 points less than CNN found). Jeb Bush finished next (8 percent), followed by Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mike Huckabee (all at 7 percent), and by Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and Rick Santorum (all at 3 percent). John Kasich drew just 2 percent.

For conventionally minded Republicans, a couple of things are worth noting. Trump and Carson, the GOP contenders who quite clearly know the least about public policy—and show little interest in learning—dropped a combined 13 points, from 51 percent to 38 percent in CNN’s polls. This suggests that, after two Republican debates, even voters who desperately want to give establishment politicians the middle finger are tiring at last of candidates who run on content-free rhetoric and intellectually bankrupt platitudes.

Fiorina is just as much an outsider as Trump and Carson are. Still, her performances in both rounds of debates have made it obvious that she has studied up on the issues and shows far more insight on public policy than do Trump, Carson, or even many long-time elected officials. Her leap in the polls reflects that. Similarly, if Rubio weren’t so handsome (note: this is a reference to the looks of a man, not a woman), he’d probably be called a nerd; in less than five years in the Senate, he has worked hard to master this new set of issues and has done well with it.

It is clear that many Republicans—half of the party, more or less—are frustrated, angry, and desperately want change. That’s fine, but it is somewhat reassuring if they seek change from people who work hard to master the content. One can agree or disagree with Fiorina on the issues—or, for that matter, with Sens. Cruz or Paul, who also inhabit that anti-establishment, anti-Washington camp—but all of them make their case intelligently. Certainly Fiorina will face challenges—notably, defending her much-criticized performance at the helm of HP. But she has become a force to be reckoned with, and not one that embarrasses the GOP.

The competition for preeminence in the party’s more establishment-oriented wing, which usually drives the GOP’s nominations, now looks wide open. Rubio, Christie, Kasich, and Bush—one senator, two governors, one ex-governor—are all clearly in the hunt. Things may be different this year, but my hunch is that the race for the Republican presidential nomination will, at the end, pit an angry outsider against a more conventional candidate.

It should be noted that the candidates’ own pollsters have become increasingly critical of media polling in this race. Their beef: None of the polls use samples derived from voter files, which would assure that all respondents are actually registered to vote (and usually report when and how often respondents have voted in the past). Polls this summer that relied on voter rolls showed Trump and Carson leading but by smaller margins than the publicly issued polls. This criticism is valid, but the media polls are consistent over time in how they choose their samples, so they measure movement—apples-to-apples—in the candidates’ standing.

The bottom line: The Trump/Carson surge is no longer snowballing and may have topped out, while other candidates are starting to pick up support. The next phase of this campaign may start to look more like what we expected to see, and less like what we saw over the summer.

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What's Behind the Recent Political Upheaval?

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 17:51:44 -0400

Normally, the hopes and fears of the two major political parties are roughly symmetric. If one party is worried or pessimistic, the other party is usually hopeful or optimistic. There are occasional exceptions—say, if one side is increasingly optimistic about an election while the opposition is in denial or even delusional; they should be worried but aren’t.

None of that is the case now. This is one of the few times when the leaders, top strategists, and establishments of both parties are panicky, and for good reason. Democrats are understandably worried that their long-time front-runner for the presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, is falling behind Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the crucial states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Nationally, Sanders’s support is growing while, in virtually every opinion poll you look at, Clinton’s numbers are softening if not sinking like a stone. Her leads against possible Republican opponents, once strong, are now gone.

At the same time, it would be daunting to find a party leader or a strategist not on Sanders’s payroll who thinks the self-described Democratic socialist is a plausible victor in a general election. Clinton isn’t necessarily the only Democrat who could win a presidential race in 2016, but the candidate who now has the momentum isn’t a good bet to capture 217 electoral votes.

Conversely, Republican leaders and strategists are equally petrified at the prospect of either Donald Trump or Ben Carson as their nominee. The two nonpoliticians are running first and second in just about every poll, and every candidate who has a realistic chance to win a general election is far behind, in single digits or just above.

Some of the best minds in both parties are now questioning their own competence, wondering whether they are losing their touch, having missed an upheaval in American politics.

What explains it? I would point to three things, in combination: ideology, populism, and an angry-outsider, antiestablishment dynamic.

It isn’t news that the Democratic Party is moving to the left while the Republican Party is moving to the right. Still, consider how much more liberal the Democratic Party is today than in 2001, when Bill (and Hillary) Clinton left the White House. Symmetrically, the Republican Party has become far more conservative than when George W. Bush’s tenure ended in 2009. Not only has each party’s center of gravity moved toward the extreme; the ideological spans of parties no longer overlap. Vote ratings for members of Congress show that not a single Democrat is more conservative than any Republican (and, necessarily, vice versa—no Republican is more liberal than any Democrat).

Even among voters, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats are virtually extinct, while moderates have lost their voice and influence. Some of these estranged partisans have given up and now identify as independents. Others remain nominally in their party but are no longer activists, whether as candidates, donors, precinct captains, or door-to-door canvassers. As the two parties have become ideologically more cohesive, centrist or moderate candidates—of the sort that both parties’ establishments have traditionally embraced—are bound to lose in primary elections, if they run at all.

A second factor that is fueling this upheaval in American politics is the populism on the rise within each party and nationwide. Strong feelings are bubbling up from below. Just as the Occupy Wall Street movement led to the canonization of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and the success of Sanders in her stead, the grassroots tea-party movement made possible the surge of Trump and Carson—interestingly, a billionaire and a retired neurosurgeon. In both parties, big institutions are now suspect and wield less clout.

Overshadowing everything is the anger toward Washington and career politicians that has profoundly affected the races on both sides. Most acutely, it has hurt Clinton and Jeb Bush, the dynastic candidates. We now have a “Scarlet P”—calling someone a politician has become as slanderous a slur as there is. Among voters in both parties, the prevailing emotion seems to be: How could a Trump, a Carson, or a Sanders do worse than politicians of the past? While Sanders has been in elective office for all but two of the past 34 years—as mayor of Burlington, as a congressman, and now as a senator—he is seen as something different from a politician. Being impolitic helps.

Where all of this is going and which side should be more petrified is absolutely unknowable. We are at a point where a knowledge of political history and an understanding of what usually happens in a given situation are useless. The expectation has been that these insurgents will soar high and then collapse, like Howard Dean, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain before them. That remains a decent guess, but it is only a guess. Nobody really knows anything.

(Image via pashabo / Shutterstock.com)

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The Donald Trump Conundrum

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 09:00:00 -0400

August is arriving, and we are entering week six of Donald Trump's rise—first into the double digits, now into first place—in the national polls for the Republican presidential primary race. While there are few if any experienced GOP pros or political reporters who think Trump can actually win the nomination, it's hard to argue with where he is right now. Even after his unfortunate remark questioning the heroism of Sen. John McCain—who was held captive and tortured for five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp while Trump cooled his heels stateside on one draft deferment after another (student, then medical)—the bombastic real-estate mogul remains at the head of the Republican pack.

Donald Trump talks to the media during his trip to Laredo, Texas, July 23, 2015. (Matthew Busch/Getty Images)The fact that Trump's very conservative, anti-immigration, militantly anti-establishment, and—most important—angry backers never cared much for the independent and sometimes-moderate McCain helps to explain why the comment had so little effect on the businessman's poll numbers. But the McCain incident also suggests that, while Trump's candidacy is almost certainly destined to fail, he is less likely to pop like a balloon than to deflate gradually, like a car tire with a leak. Republican pollsters and strategists privately suggest that his trajectory will resemble a bell curve: a roughly symmetrical rise and fall, much like those then-Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain experienced in 2011.

Chris Cillizza, who writes The Washington Post's feature "The Fix" (and is a former colleague of mine), highlighted the essence of the Trump message by pointing to a remark made by billionaire businessman, Dallas Mavericks owner, and Trump supporter Mark Cuban: "I don't care what his actual positions are. I don't care if he says the wrong thing. He says what's on his mind. He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years."

That comment not only boils down Trump's appeal, it also highlights the question faced by the nine Republicans who will share the stage with Trump on August 6 in Cleveland: How do you handle someone like this in a debate? Earlier this week, Taegan Goddard's website, Politicalwire.com, published as the quote of the day a tweet by John Weaver, who was a top aide to the 2008 McCain campaign and is working with Ohio Gov. John Kasich's campaign this time around. In it, Weaver describes the dilemma: "Imagine a NASCAR driver mentally preparing for a race knowing one of the drivers will be drunk. That's what prepping for this debate is like." (While it is unclear whether Kasich will make the cut to be included in the debate, Weaver's analogy is apt.)

So how should the rest of the GOP field handle the debate? All of them would probably benefit from following the vulgar but apt Southern advice, "Don't get into a pissing match with a skunk." My hunch, however, is that the strategies of former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, both of whom are certain to be among the top-10 candidates in the national polls, and both of whom come from the more conventional and mainstream wing of the party, will be very different from those of the candidates from the more exotic wing of the GOP. (It should be noted that, while Rubio was elected to the Senate in 2010 as a tea-party candidate, in Washington he has pursued a more conventional, buttoned-down approach.)

For Bush and Rubio (and Kasich if he makes the cut), the best advice would probably be to stay out of Trump's way. Focus on making a positive impression on—and hopefully connecting with—Republican primary voters and caucus attendees. Each of them should have a game plan for achieving those goals and stick to it, almost no matter what Trump does. Approximately 60 percent of GOP primary voters belong to that more conventional wing of the party—and while that number is lower in Iowa, it is still not low enough to make it sensible for these candidates to court the anger crowd.

But for Sen. Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Rand Paul, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and, if he makes the cut, former Sen. Rick Santorum—all of whom are running from a distinctly more ideological wing of the party—a wise strategy would be not only to follow the aforementioned advice but also to demonstrate enough anger that they plausibly stand to inherit Trump's supporters if he does start to drop in the polls.

When asked which candidates might logically benefit if—or, more likely, when—Trump deflates, some smart and unaffiliated Republican strategists homed in on two: Cruz and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. While on the surface they are very different people, Cruz and Christie both arguably channel anger more effectively than their rivals and might be able to tap into that energy if Trump starts bleeding support. Cruz articulates an extremely conservative, anti-Washington form of anger. Christie's ire is not quite so ideological but still pretty conservative, and he vents it well; as with Trump, no one ever accused Christie of pulling his punches. Although others might be able to latch onto some Trump defectors—polls suggest he has drawn support away from at least four or five of his rivals—these two seem like pretty logical beneficiaries of a Trump exit. Which could make next week's debate an especially important one for them.

(Image via Andrew Cline / Shutterstock.com )

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Crowded Primary Field Is Good News for Republican Voters

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:00:00 -0400

The situation in which Republican voters find themselves these days is looking more and more like the experience of someone visiting a Baskin-Robbins. Walking into the ice-cream shop, one is immediately overwhelmed by the choices afforded by 31 flavors, but delight soon sets in. One starts off with a large number of options to consider, narrows it down to a handful, and maybe samples a few before making a final decision.

While GOP apparatchiks are concerned about the consequences of the unprecedented size of the field of contenders, Republican voters are deliriously happy with the large and varied selection of candidates. Particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire, where party activists crave being courted, they are in heaven these days.

There is nothing inherently wrong with starting out with a big field; typically, the Darwinian course of caucuses and primaries ultimately serves to winnow it. That natural-selection process was disrupted in 2012, when a couple of wealthy benefactors kept a few candidates on life support, allowing them to stick around longer than they would have otherwise. There's no question that the extended nomination fight, which dragged well into April, made Mitt Romney's odds even longer than they would have been. But in this cycle the party seems to have a greater awareness of that potential problem.

Then there is the matter of Donald Trump. His remarks are unquestionably toxic among Mexican-Americans, highly damaging among other Latinos, and probably unhelpful among other minorities and white moderates. Indeed, when one minority group witnesses overt racism or racial intolerance toward members of a different minority group, it can have a profound negative impact. Asian-Americans, who voted against Bill Clinton in 1992 and were evenly split in 1996, voted against Romney by a 47-percentage-point margin; he did 3 points worse with Asians than he did among Latinos. One would be hard-pressed to come up with anything Romney or any other prominent Republican said that would directly offend Asian-Americans (Romney's "self-deportation" remark wasn't aimed at them), but the broader insensitivity appears to have taken its toll.

The good news for Republicans is that it is very unlikely that Trump's numbers will remain high for long. The novelty will wear off, and GOP voters, who almost universally loathe Hillary Clinton, will realize that giving Trump a lot of attention does not advance their cause. And with the general election more than 15 months away, there is still plenty of time for Trump to fade into the background. There is always some possibility that Trump will run as an independent candidate and be a spoiler, but the odds are pretty high that he won't. He is already paying a price for his actions: losing his television show, having his beauty pageant damaged, seeing retail chains pull his merchandise. The risk is less to his wealth than to his celebrity status, but that is an asset that has become like oxygen for him. At some point, Trump will realize—if he hasn't already—that he is hurting his franchise and his brand, and that if he continues his presidential bid, it is unlikely that he will recover his lost star power.

It's still a great question how this Republican nomination race will sort out once this Trump nonsense ends. The GOP splits roughly 60-40 these days: 60 percent of its voters are pretty conventional, mainstream Republicans, while the other 40 percent are of a somewhat more exotic variety, up from just a third a decade ago. This latter group is made up of three subgroups: secular, anti-establishment, tea-party adherents; evangelical conservatives driven chiefly by cultural issues; and those who are just really conservative and more ideologically driven than your normal garden-variety Republicans. Historically, this collection of less-conventional Republicans has loomed large in Iowa, then gradually given way to more-mainstream GOP voters in the final stretch, but the harder-edged Republicans have been on the ascendency and may play an even greater role in choosing the nominee this time around than in the past.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Senator Marco Rubio, and Governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and John Kasich can be expected to dominate the competition for that 60-percent bloc of more-conventional conservatives, while Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, former Governors Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry, along with Ben Carson and former Senator Rick Santorum, among others, will fight it out for the more ideologically driven 40 percent of the GOP electorate. But, at least at the outset, in this field, there is something for everyone.

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A Momentous Week, and a GOP That Needs to Change

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 12:00:00 -0400

The momentous events of the last week can be interpreted in numerous ways. But one thing has become increasingly clear: The Republican Party needs to change.

One of the key organizing principles—an obsession, even—of Republicans in recent years has been their vehement opposition to the Affordable Care Act. This has been the centerpiece of Republican rhetoric and a focus of the party's legislative agenda, with the House of Representatives having voted something like 60 times to repeal or defund all or parts of the law. Obamacare will long be in the GOP stable of examples of what they say are President Obama's and congressional Democrats' extreme policies, but with the Supreme Court's King v. Burwell decision, their focus will need to shift to something else now.

Though Obamacare has been a divisive subject, it is the controversy over the Confederate battle flag and the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision on gay marriage that bring to sharp focus the cultural and generational disconnect between the Republican Party's conservative base and the direction of the country as a whole.

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina church and the resulting focus on the Confederate flag, with the notable exception of Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and to a lesser extent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the GOP contenders initially avoided taking a firm stand on the flag. That is fine with many in their base but not with moderate and/or independent swing voters, or for that matter, many Republicans. And the gay-marriage decision again put GOP presidential contenders in a position of choosing between their base and being on the wrong side of history—with all but a couple choosing the latter.

Simply put, Republicans are loaded up in a car, racing toward a generational cliff with their eyes focused on the rearview mirror, with many (but notably not all) oblivious to the societal changes taking place all around them and the growing wedge building between their comfort zone and presidential swing voters.

For me as a white Southerner, born in Louisiana and spending my first 18 years there, the Confederate flag is a complicated issue. I spent much of my childhood wearing a Confederate uniform with a Johnny Reb cap (with the battle flag on the front) and carrying a toy replica of a Civil War rifle, crawling across my backyard in a make-believe battle. From roughly age 7 to 12, I can remember my hometown newspaper, the Shreveport Times, carrying, often on the front page, an "On this day in…" feature with whatever notable Civil War events occurred exactly 100 years before. I can recall seeing the death notices of some of the last of the Confederate soldiers; generally they had been the young drummers of their hometown units. In the 1960s, the Confederate battle flag represented our heritage and our ancestors—and yes, both my wife and I had relatives who fought in the Confederate Army (though none to our knowledge owned, or could have afforded to own, slaves).

But over time, the balance has shifted. That flag has come to represent something different, something that should, as Bush pushed for while he was governor of Florida, move off the flagpoles and into the museums, out of respect for Americans, many of whom are the descendants of slaves, who are just as much citizens as we are. The symbolism shifted from heritage to hate; rather than paying homage to history, the flag came to make the South a prisoner of its history. It is time for the South and conservatives in the region to move on, and allow the Republican Party to move on as well, not hold it prisoner.

For those upset over the gay-marriage decision, their views were the majority opinion in this country and carried the weight of law for a long time, just as bans on interracial marriage and adoption once were too. Giving women the right to vote once seemed heretical to many. But society moves on. Change is often difficult to accept initially, but it is inevitable. I wrote about my own evolution on this issue in January of last year; my journey probably wasn't that different from that of many other people and from what, I suspect, many of the current opponents will eventually have. But politically speaking, all Republicans have to do is to take a peek into the future, look at the polls, at public attitudes of Americans—including conservatives—under 40 and particularly under 30 years of age. There are fights worth fighting, but this one, like the one over the Confederate battle flag, is futile and will only contribute to the perception of a Republican Party with anachronistic views of our society.

Another interpretation of the events of last week, though some in the GOP and in the conservative movement will be reluctant to see and accept this, is that these developments were a good thing for the Republican Party. While midterm elections are usually about the past—referenda on the last two or six years—presidential elections are generally forward-oriented, about the future. Just as generals are often said to want to fight the last war, some in politics instinctively seem to want to debate the last debate. The 2016 election will be about the next eight years, not the last. Additionally, the last thing that Republicans should want to deal with going into 2016 is more than 6 million Americans in states with no exchanges suddenly losing their health insurance subsidies and many effectively losing their health care coverage. Privately, many Republican elected officials and strategists had been very worried about this and are relieved that the threat has passed.

One can believe that the Affordable Care Act was hurriedly pushed through at the wrong time, during the depths of the Great Recession, when the focus should have been on job creation. One can believe that while it was well-intentioned, it was a deeply flawed approach. But it is, now and for the foreseeable future, the law, and rather than fighting over the past, both parties should now be focused on making it work, on reaching compromises to address its shortcomings.

Republicans need to do some soul-searching about their future and their relationships with voters of generations to come. Vibrant parties change with the times, adapt themselves to changing conditions and circumstances. Maybe this past week will help the GOP do this.

(Image via Rena Schild / Shutterstock.com)

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Bernie Sanders and the Age Question

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 11:00:00 -0400

In recent weeks, many have started treating Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination seriously, but without addressing or even acknowledging the elephant in the room—Sanders' age.

Sanders, now 73 years old, will be turning 75 on Sept. 8, 2016, two months before the presidential general election. That makes him six years and six weeks older than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the strong favorite for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton, 67, will be turning 69 on Oct. 26, 2016, about two weeks before the election. This is not to argue that Clinton is too old to run or serve; if elected, she would be about eight months younger than Ronald Reagan was when he won his first term in 1980. People age at different paces, and there is debate over whether Reagan's capacity began getting taxed either late in his first term (as his son maintains), during his second term, or not until he left office. But I suspect that most people would agree that being 69 years old when first elected president is at the very high end of the acceptable age range.

For those on the left who believe that raising Sanders' age as a consideration is a cheap shot: If they weren't too young to have taken that shot at Reagan in 1980, there is a good chance that they took one at Sen. John McCain, who turned 72 about two months before the 2008 election. That's three years younger than Sanders would be if elected.

To be sure, there are some who simply won't see Sanders' age as an issue and would not have a problem with him beating out Reagan by over five years to become the oldest newly elected president in our history. That he would be 79 years old at the end of a first term and 83 at the end of a second, if he were reelected, I guess wouldn't be a concern for them. They might even point out that Reagan lived to 93 years old and that Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are 90 and 91 years old, respectively, and counting. But I suspect those people are a relatively limited group; most would grow uneasy with the age issue.

My hunch is that while Clinton's campaign people are sometimes annoyed by Sanders and his hearty supporters, the age issue is precisely why they are not feeling threatened by Sanders. Indeed, Sanders is consuming energy on the left that might otherwise be channeled toward former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who at 52 today and turning 53 in January, is well within the comfort zone that most people would have for presidential ages. I don't see why Clinton would feel threatened by either man, or by former Sen. and Gov. Lincoln Chafee or former Sen. Jim Webb. Yet if one was going to do better than the others, the likeliest would be O'Malley simply because at the end of the day, few will see Sanders as fitting the job description that they have in mind.

My hunch is that in their heart of hearts, relatively few Sanders supporters think he actually will be elected or even beat Clinton, but rather see this as a cause. It's a protest against a Democratic Party that is considerably more liberal today than it was even when Bill Clinton was president, but still isn't liberal enough to suit them. President Obama has not been liberal enough to suit their tastes and Hillary Clinton certainly isn't. Just this Sunday, Chuck Todd on NBC'sMeet the Press put up a graphic showing that while 102 House Democrats backed the North American Free Trade Agreement during Bill Clinton's presidency, only 28 supported Trade Promotion Authority last week. If the centrist-pro-business element within the Democratic Party were any smaller than it is today, you couldn't measure it at all—a mirror image of the demise of moderate Republicans on the other side.

Much has been said in recent days crediting (or blaming, depending upon one's perspective) organized labor with the defeat of the Trade Adjustment Assistance proposal that was needed for any chance of passage of a Trans-Pacific Partnership. A certain amount of credit or blame should also go to the ascendant non-labor Left—the Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.org, Democracy for America movement, personified by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which beat out labor on its much-desired Keystone pipeline. This group has at least as much juice in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses as labor, and it is growing, rather than fighting for survival and relevancy. This sector, far more than labor, is where Sanders' campaign is getting its oxygen and nourishment.

The bottom line is that the only person who can stop Hillary Clinton from being the Democratic nominee is Hillary Clinton. How she performs over the next few months, how she projects as being more relevant to the future than to the past, as a candidate of big, bold and new ideas, and whether people can visualize her in the job—those are the thresholds that she has to clear, not these opponents.

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Why Hillary Clinton Is Underwater

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:00:00 -0400

Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy roughly eight weeks ago, and since then, a few things have become apparent.

On the positive side for her, she has put together a first-class team of professionals, a blending of some of the younger people from her 2008 campaign who have gone on to impressive careers since then, a second group of very talented pros from the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and a third, smaller group of inner-circle folks from Hillaryland to create a comfort zone—familiar faces that know and understand her, and vice versa. Her campaign launch seemed quite successful and designed to draw a contrast with the royal trappings of her previous presidential effort.

On the negative side, a decision was made early on—by whom, it is not clear—to keep the media at a distance, to make her generally unavailable for questions. As predictable as the sun coming up in the east, this resulted in several weeks of sustained negative coverage emphasizing the arrogance and aloofness of her candidacy and campaign. This was precisely what the carefully planned and executed launch and rollout was designed to prevent. At one point, counts were publicized of how many days it had been since she had last answered a media question, and there were even counts of total questions answered since her announcement. And there was the factoid that her husband, whose political career is over, had answered more media questions than the current presidential contender. In reporters' minds, a candidate can never be accessible enough; they would prefer that all candidates and elected officials be permanently hooked with a sodium-pentothal drip. Given that Hillary Clinton has a pretty nimble mind and is less accident-prone than most candidates, the strategy invited negative coverage and undercut the central message that the campaign was trying to convey.

While stories about her State Department emails dominated the early news for awhile, there is little evidence that they had an appreciable impact on Democratic voters—or for that matter, general-election swing voters. Subsequent coverage that raised questions about Clinton Foundation fundraising and the correlation between her husband's speeches, foundation contributions, and decisions during her tenure at the State Department does appear to have taken its toll on her numbers.

ust a cursory look at Clinton's favorable and unfavorable ratings over the last four years reveals a ski slope largely of plunges and plateaus, a pattern that would lead any Democrat to reach for the antacids. Take a look at The Huffington Post's Pollster.com graphs. During her post-2008 campaign tenure as secretary of State, Clinton's favorable ratings were typically between 57 and 62 percent, with unfavorable figures between 32 and 35 percent. For a polarizing figure like Clinton, that is as good as it gets. But because she was not seen in a political context during this period, those numbers were probably unrealistically high. Then, over a 13-month period from November 2012 through December 2013, her favorable numbers slipped down to roughly 50 percent with unfavorable rising to about 43 percent.

Part of this was fallout from the attack in Benghazi, but that incident largely drew the wrath of conservatives and Republicans. More importantly, Clinton began to be seen once again in a political rather than a diplomatic context. The gap has narrowed more and now, most polls show her, in pollster jargon, upside down or underwater, with favorables down to 46 percent and unfavorables up above 48 percent.

While these numbers are not ones that partisans want to see for their candidate, something in this ballpark is probably inevitable for a well-known and well-defined candidate in this increasingly polarized and partisan environment. Your side largely likes you, the other side hates you, and independents have decidedly mixed views. But the way Clinton and her campaign handle things will make a big difference on whether she stays on the sunny or shady side of that equilibrium, with favorables higher or lower than unfavorables.

One central question that both Clintons are going to have to confront is: How important is it to them that she be elected president? When you are in a hole, stop digging. If her election is really important to them, and I suspect it is, he is going to have to stop giving paid speeches and slow down all Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative fundraising, limiting it to only the pristine and totally defensible contributions. He'll also need to do a better job of communicating the good works that the Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative do. (Right now, it's being cast as the Clintons' personal piggy bank and slush fund.) Hillary Clinton has to come across as more open and approachable, and she has to stop giving journalists so many easy shots to make her look bad. Contrary to what most conservatives believe, the vast majority of reporters have not been in the tank for the Clintons since the mid-1990s, and many rather enjoy taking shots at them. A certain amount of that is inevitable, but why invite bad stories and encourage hostility?

Right now, Democrats seem mostly OK with putting all of their eggs in the Clinton basket, though concerns are growing as to the durability of the basket. But the Clintons should not mistake Democrats getting in line for them as falling in love.

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A Tough Question for 2016 Candidates

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 19 May 2015 14:00:00 -0400

Several developments over the past week in the presidential race seem worthy of note. Hillary Clinton is coming under increasing fire from journalists and opponents for not answering many questions from the media, while former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio probably are regretting answering any at all.

A National Journal piece in late April laid out eight questions Clinton had answered from reporters, noting that she had gone out of her way to avoid the press. A more liberal count of 13 was later cited by NPR, but it was a bit more inclusive, including such penetrating questions as, "How are you liking Iowa?"

Clinton was on the receiving end of friendly fire on the subject, with David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama, telling Chuck Todd on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that he thought the presumptive Democratic nominee was making a "terrible mistake" not answering more. Todd pointed out that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, answered 39 during that same period. The suggestion is that by not responding to questions, not putting herself out there, she is playing into the meme that the Clintons are arrogant, following a different set of rules than everyone else.

On the other side of the fence, Bush and Rubio are probably thinking that they might have been better off showing a little more arrogance and aloofness, by not asking questions. Both fumbled, Bush repeatedly, on questions about whether they would have chosen to invade Iraq in 2003 if they knew then what they know now. The irony is that both stepped in the same pile of excrement attempting to answer queries not from the hostile liberal media, but from Fox News, whose hosts in the respective interviews were Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. Both were just doing their jobs in a pretty straightforward way, not trying to lure the GOP candidates into traps but not tossing softballs either.

The point is not to absolve Clinton for not answering questions or to criticize Bush and Rubio for having done so, but to just observe that every time candidates make themselves available for a press question, they expose themselves to a potential mistake. It takes time for a candidate to get mentally into this high-stakes, no safety-net game. It is true that it has been a while since Clinton and Bush have put themselves out there for a campaign (seven years for Clinton, 13 years for Bush) and that Rubio has never had every word parsed to the extent that they are today, but every potential presidential contender should have carefully thought out responses to the 50 or so most potentially problematic questions. The odds of getting an original and unanticipated tough question are quite small. So Clinton is erring on the too-careful side while Bush and Rubio err on the insufficiently careful end of the spectrum. The best place is in the middle, allowing a moderate degree of exposure but being carefully prepared to deal with most any tough question. Of course at this point, only journalists and political aficionados are paying attention; normal people won't focus on this contest until this fall.

The other surprising development is that Bush exposed, to many of us, an unanticipated weakness. It was well-understood that Bush was facing stiff ideological headwinds, running in a party that has become significantly more conservative than when Bush held office, from 1999-2007. His problems include the immigration and education issues (specifically the Common Core curriculum), as well as "brother" and dynasty questions. But the widely held expectation was that he was already a presidential level performer who could play at this level. Now Bush and Rubio, who has enjoyed being the flavor of the last month, are showing that they haven't completely nailed playing on this skill level, reinforcing the flatness of this field. At this point, Bush and Rubio each have no better chance of winning the nomination than do Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has displayed similar problems, or Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Sen. Rand Paul has to demonstrate that certain positions, on foreign policy and other issues, don't limit his potential to expand his support enough to win a nomination.

Every week that goes by, we see underscored just how wide open this race is, how flat the field is, and why this GOP nomination contest is going to go a very long distance. We also see why Hillary Clinton's low-risk strategy may incur frequent and short-term pain but, in terms of nailing down the nomination, has a long-term gain.

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Clinton's Rough Road Ahead

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:00:00 -0400

The front-page headline in The Washington Post said it all: "Democrats in key states ask: Where is Hillary?" Putting aside the simple facts that the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary are both 10 months away and that Hillary Clinton is not expected to officially enter the race before next month, this headline says so much more. In fact, it telegraphs the coming story line.

For party activists in early states—particularly Iowa and New Hampshire, where there is an enormous sense of entitlement, much more so than in Nevada and South Carolina—a presidential contender can't come soon or often enough to satisfy their cravings for attention. This is their chance every four years to bask in the sun of national attention, and they don't want to miss one minute of it. Everyone wants his or her picture taken with someone who could be the next president of the United States or, better yet, give advice to that would-be commander in chief about what really needs to be done.

Then there are the overcaffeinated journalists, who desperately need stories—preferably ones accompanied by conflict and controversy, even when campaigns are in the embryonic stages—focusing on organizing and fundraising, two of the more mundane aspects of modern campaigns. Even the tiniest signs of bickering and infighting, real or not, are worth examining and often exaggerating. Reporters and producers need to get a story on the front page or on the nightly news, the oxygen they breathe.

Finally, there is the demand for pandering from those in the ideological bases of the party, on the right for Republicans, on the left for Democrats. Candidates are required to turn themselves inside out (unless they started there to begin with) during the primaries, then attempt to straighten themselves out for the general election, usually with varying degrees of success. While Clinton certainly seems more liberal than her husband was during his campaigns and presidency, the Democratic Party is considerably more liberal now than it was then. A fairly substantial and highly vocal part of the party would like a nominee who is more liberal than President Obama turned out to be. They see Obama's compromises on the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law and his support for NSA eavesdropping, drone strikes, and the troop surge in Afghanistan as just the beginning of a litany of sellouts of the Left.

How does all of this come together? Polls show Hillary Clinton to be a prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination; an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted earlier this month showed that 86 percent of Democratic primary voters could see themselves supporting her candidacy. But there are also forces of human nature that will try to chip away at that seeming inevitability. Those Democrats in early states, believing it was ordained in the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, and the Constitution that they be the screening committee for the nation, may well bridle at the suggestion that anyone's nomination is a fait accompli, at least before their state has weighed in. Neither party's activists see themselves as rubber stamps. Indeed, New Hampshire's voters have been known to side with a candidate other than the Iowa winner, just to make sure their 10 cents is counted; 2008 was a classic example.

Journalists looking for a good story, whether it truly exists or not, will endeavor to find a challenger and create a David and Goliath narrative, even if it means building David up to the point when he could be a realistic threat to the front-running Goliath. If there are multiple candidates auditioning for the David role, the media will size up each contender and then hype the one that seems most plausible as the real threat to Clinton.

Finally, the ideologues, the true believers, those who endeavor to spurn the good for the perfect, will promote one or more alternatives to put pressure on Clinton to move to the left at the time she is trying to maintain her general-election viability while steering toward a center-left course. Someone will emerge to coalesce disenfranchised ideologues, hoping to reach a critical mass that will attract journalists' attention.

While Clinton will kick off her campaign with very impressive numbers among fellow Democrats, there are very natural and predictable forces that will make what should be an easy route a much more challenging road than it now appears. For Clinton to waltz uneventfully through to the nomination would defy forces of human nature. Don't count on that happening

(Image via lev radin / Shutterstock.com)

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Bush, Clinton and the Fatigue Factor

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 09:00:00 -0500

There are some surprising events that warrant being taken very seriously; others, well, not so much. Prior to Thanksgiving, it looked pretty unlikely that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would actually pull the trigger and seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, even though it was obvious that he personally wanted to do it. Since then, things have changed dramatically, to the point that it is now essentially a done deal. It makes you wonder what transpired in the Bush household over turkey, dressing, and cranberries.

Bush's entry is an unexpected event with huge consequences, whether he ultimately wins the GOP nomination or not. He represents the most formidable fundraising network in the party, has candidate skills that are probably better than those of anyone else in the party, and was a highly successful governor of a big-time state, one that is of great significance both in terms of the GOP nomination and the general election. Many others show potential. Jeb Bush's bona fides are more concrete.

On the other hand, 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's disclosure that he wants to run is a bit harder to take seriously. In fact, it takes considerable effort not to see Romney's words as anything but a pathetic attempt to stay relevant, a reaction to being all but ignored as those few in the Republican establishment who aren't enthusiastic for Bush instead push for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The fact is that if the 2012 GOP field were stronger, Romney probably wouldn't have been the nominee. The center-right/establishment half of the Republican NCAA-like bracket gets pretty much filled by Bush and, even more so, by Christie, if in fact there is room for two.

Bush's challenges, and for that matter those of Hillary Clinton, were dramatically on display in an Aurora, Colo., focus group of 12 voters conducted last week by renowned Democratic pollster Peter Hart. The gathering was part of a 10-year-old series Hart has conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. While a focus group of just a dozen voters is hardly a cross section of the entire electorate, this kind of qualitative research provides a color and texture that is simply not available through normal quantitative polling that surveys hundreds or thousands of voters. By examining average Americans' actual words, voices, facial expressions, and body language, the "why" becomes more clear. The numbers just give you the "what."

Having sat behind the glass during many of these groups and watched a video live-streaming of this one, I know that Hart is a master at getting voters to open up about their views of their lives and personal struggles, as well as their perceptions of the economy, the country, political issues, and specific politicians. The pushback from Thursday night's focus group would be jarring to anyone who assumed that the nominations of Bush and Clinton are inevitable. When half a dozen voters in a conversation say they would back a law that would ban any Bush or Clinton from running, it makes you sit up and take notice.

When participants were asked to associate words or phrases with Clinton, some were positive, describing her as "strong" and a "spitfire" and just "I like her." Some were mixed—"politician, but gets things done"—but many more offerings were pejorative: One reference was to "Benghazi," and others included "crazy," "I don't like her," "more of the same," "next candidate, please," and "untrustworthy." For Bush, the positives were "intriguing" and "interesting," but like with Clinton, the negatives were far more numerous: "again?" "bad seed," "clown," "don't need him," "greedy," "joke," "no thank you," "scion," and "a wannabe."

Some of these are simply manifestations of the oft-discussed "dynasty" issue, the view that in a country of over 300 million people, aren't there qualified people from more than just two families that would be worthy of electing as our president? The retort is obviously that just because Bill Clinton served as president for eight years and Jeb Bush's father and brother served for a total of 12, can no other member of their families even be considered, no matter what their qualifications and attributes? But when people make the dynasty argument, it's unclear how much of that is a real, specific objection and how much is a roundabout way of saying they don't like this Bush and/or this Clinton personally. Some of the words and phrases seem awfully targeted beyond simply the concept of legacy candidacies.

For Bush, the unusually high negative ratings he scores in the polls, the focus-group reaction, and other anecdotal evidence suggest that he is like the guy whose older brother banged up the family car. Jeb Bush is being perceived more as part of a brand that was badly damaged by his brother and less by anything specifically related to him. How closely did critics watch his time as governor, and are they actually familiar with own political positions? This looks more like guilt by association than anything else; maybe voters will end up liking and agreeing with him, maybe they won't, but it doesn't look like he is being judged on his own terms. To succeed with rank-and-file voters—first Republicans, and later all general-election voters—he has to rebrand himself so that he will be perceived independently of his brother. Republican elites of the Wall Street, Fortune 500-executive, and GOP donor classes get the distinction, but it appears to be lost on nonelites. Bush starts off with a lot of big advantages over the rest of the field but he has a major image challenge that no other Republican has to face.

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Three Key Questions Will Determine What Direction Election Winds Are Blowing

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 11:00:00 -0500

The political environment usually is "set" in midterm elections around midsummer. At that point, it's generally easy to see which direction the partisan winds are blowing, and one usually has an idea as to whether those winds are light, moderate, or heavy. By this time in the cycle, now a week from the election, you can have a much better idea of the velocity of those winds, though it's still admittedly impossible to know precisely how many seats will fall to those winds. This degree of uncertainty is what keeps elections—even in fairly predictable years—interesting, along with, of course, the occasional unexpected outcome.

Here are the three key questions of this cycle:

1. Can Democrats save one or even two of the six Senate seats in states that Romney won by 14 points or more? These include the open seats in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia—all three highly unlikely seats for Dems to win—as well as incumbents Mark Begich (Alaska), Mark Pryor (Arkansas), and Mary Landrieu (Louisiana). Important to note: The outcome in Louisiana will probably be settled on Dec. 6, rather than Election Night, as no candidate is likely to get the 50 percent plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff.

All three of the previously listed incumbents are facing substantial headwinds. And of these six seats, if Democrats go 0-for-6, that's obviously very bad for them, but not necessarily fatal. If the party can salvage one seat, that's an in-the-middle situation. In the unlikely event that they save two seats from GOP control, that's a very troubling outcome for the GOP, but again not necessarily fatal to their chances.

2. Can Republicans hold on to Georgia, Kansas, and Kentucky? Republicans must defend an open seat in Georgia, as well as the contests in Kansas with Sen. Pat Roberts and Kentucky with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. While McConnell's race is still fairly close—he had a polling scare a couple of weeks ago—it seems relatively stable in his favor now, and it would be something of a surprise for McConnell to lose at this point. He's run a pitch-perfect race.

The seats in Georgia and Kansas are different stories entirely; both are extremely close and could very easily go either way. If Republicans hold both of these, as well as Kentucky, that would be a terrific outcome for them on Election Night. If they lose one seat, it would be an inconclusive development. And if Republicans lose two or more, that would be very bad for them. The most likely outcome is Democrats picking off one of these three seats.

3. Of the four Democratic-held seats up this year that could each easily tilt this situation in favor of either party, how will the chips fall? In New Hampshire and North Carolina, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Kay Hagan both have held mid-single-digit leads throughout their races that appear to have eroded in the last week or so. These are two very close races. Each are probably a little more likely to hang on to their seats than not, but we're really splitting hairs here.

Then you have the open seat in Iowa, as well as the race against Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado. Both of these races have been extremely close for some time now, and could still easily go either way. However, just as you might put a pinkie on the scale for Shaheen and Hagan, I'd put that same pinkie on the scale for state Sen. Joni Ernst and Rep. Cory Gardner, the GOP nominees in Iowa and Colorado, respectively.

Having written a political newsletter for more than 30 years now, while I believe I have developed pretty good intuition for determining which way most races will fall, with that intuition comes a certain degree of humility that may be missing in some of today's purely mathematical models, as well as among those partisan operatives desperately looking for every positive sign while ignoring or downplaying more negative developments. There have been plenty of relatively close races that have tipped in the opposite direction of what seemed most likely to happen. With this in mind, projecting high-percentage chances of outcomes on races that are fundamentally pretty close is awfully problematic. It's not that much fun to walk down the halls of the Russell Senate or Cannon House Office Buildings and have a member of Congress come over and exclaim, "And you said I was going to lose …."

The races between one, two, or even three points, those that are teetering on the edge going into the final days before an election, tend to fall one way or the other. A group of "toss up" races rarely splits down the middle. Whether it is a tiny gust of a last-minute wind or a brief lull in the prevailing winds of the political environment, either way the dominoes tend to fall more one way than the other.

If there is a wave, don't look at either the Romney +14 states, or the three Republican-held seats for evidence. It is the open seat in Iowa, the race in Colorado, and the Hagan and Shaheen seats that will sound the alarm. If Republicans win three, or sweep all four, that's a wave. However, counting normally Republican voters in Republican-tilting states voting Republican in a Republican-tilting year is not something that constitutes a wave. A wave is really when one side wins the lion's share of the purple swing states or pulls off a bunch of upsets. That is a wave. For now, it still looks like at least a 60 percent chance of the Senate going Republican, with a GOP gain of seven seats somewhat more likely than just a gain of five.

This article appears in the October 28, 2014 edition of NJ Daily.

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Questions and Possible Answers on the Midterm Elections

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:00:00 -0400

After the obvious "Who's going to control the Senate after this midterm election?" question, several more questions come up in most political conversations these days. One recurring inquiry focuses on the role of the Affordable Care Act, with many suggesting that it has faded as an issue in the eyes of voters. People who monitor advertising, however, argue with that.

"The ACA is back to being a top issue in these closing weeks, and it probably was never realistic to expect it to remain as dominant as Republicans made it last winter and spring, when they had the extra incentives of undermining enrollment and lousy headlines," says Kantar Media/CMAG chief Elizabeth Wilner, who is also a contributing editor for The Cook Political Report. Earlier this year, GOP strategists began advising their candidates and campaigns to diversify their message, saying that Republicans had milked the Obamacare cow to the point where there was no milk—that is, new support—to be gained. Strategists suggested that Republicans continue to talk about and advertise on the issue to a certain extent, to keep their base energized, but not to come across like a one-trick pony by talking solely about the ACA and the GOP's issues with it.

A newer question being asked is, "How will the Ebola threat and the government's handling of it impact the elections?" My hunch is that this will affect the elections very little; rather, the questions about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's response to two cases in the United States amount to another manifestation of public doubt about the broader competence of the administration. The threat of Ebola was a large concern for two focus groups of "Walmart moms" (female swing voters in key battleground states) in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New Orleans this past week. Many were worried about travel; one woman even said she was considering home-schooling her child. Overall, however, the spread of the deadly disease was seen by many as just the latest in a pattern of uncertainty and tragedy that includes the killing of two Americans by ISIS and the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Said one mom in Charlotte: "The sad things are becoming familiar."

In that sense, the concern surrounding Ebola is part of a continuum of problems for the administration—among which have been the Internal Revenue Service investigation of conservative groups, Benghazi, problems at the Veterans Affairs Department, and the problematic HealthCare.gov launch—rather than a new and distinct issue. In fact, the women in the focus groups placed most of the blame for the Ebola scare at the feet of the CDC. None of them considered Ebola a voting issue. Those already questioning the competence of the president and his administration very likely see these issues as simply more failings.

Another question heard around the political watercooler of late is whether Democrats can use their turnout magic—the mechanical and technological superiority they demonstrated in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns—to get minority voters and young voters out in big numbers this election. That is a great question. The Democrats' challenge this year is to rekindle the same energy, passion, and commitment that younger voters and minority voters displayed in electing our first African-American president in 2008, and reelecting him 2012. This year, Democrats need to funnel that energy toward moderate, white candidates who are somewhat less inspiring, such as Sens. Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, and Mark Pryor. The voters who surged to the polls in 2008 and 2012 are exactly the voters who usually stay home during midterm elections.

A final question that I have been hearing quite often is whether this election will make a difference—whether it has the potential to break up the logjam in Washington. If you are a Republican, you will see obvious value in putting the Senate in GOP hands. However, with a 51-49, 52-48, or even 53-47 majority, will the party be able to get much through the Senate—particularly measures that must pass a much more conservative House—knowing that there are seven Republicans up for reelection in 2016 in states carried by Obama in 2012? Will GOP Senate incumbents, such as Mark Kirk of Illinois or Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, be willing to embrace legislation that passes the House under the unofficial "Hastert rule"—having the support of a majority of House Republicans—or, in other words, legislation that is pretty conservative stuff? Then there is the issue of getting Obama to sign such legislation, or the daunting task of overriding his veto. Mark me down as a skeptic.

For now, political aficionados have to be content to work out the mathematical equation of what Democrats need to do to hold on to the Senate and, conversely, what equation Republicans need to win the majority.

Outcomes are still far from certain for Democratic incumbents Mark Begich, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Udall, Hagan, Landrieu, and Pryor, as well as for GOP incumbents Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts. The results of races for open seats in Georgia, Iowa, and Michigan are also in doubt (some would include South Dakota, but I'm unconvinced). Add the open Democratic seats in Montana and West Virginia that look to be sure turnovers, and there are seemingly infinite combinations of potential results in 2014.

This article appears in the October 25, 2014 edition of National Journal magazine.

(Image via Orhan Cam/Shutterstock.com)

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The Trench Warfare Begins

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:33:30 -0400

With just a little more than two weeks to go before the midterm election, Democrats are increasingly in need of a break or two to salvage their Senate majority. In my National Journal Daily column a month ago (September 14), after suggesting that Republicans had a 60 percent chance of scoring the six-seat net gain necessary for a majority, I asked what might go wrong for the GOP that could derail that outcome. It's useful in my business to ask, "If I am wrong about this, why am I wrong?"

There are two potential problems for Republicans that could cost them the majority in an election that certainly seems highly stacked in their favor—after all, the party just needs to get voters who normally vote Republican and live in Republican states to vote for Republican Senate candidates. Democrats are defending seven seats in states carried by Mitt Romney—six where the former presidential nominee won by margins of 14 points or more—compared with Republicans, who are defending just one seat in an Obama state (Susan Collins in Maine, who is safe). All three endangered GOP seats are in states comfortably won by Romney. This is not the fairest of fights.

My column from last month identified both money and the ground game on the Democratic side as possible obstacles for the GOP. The Democratic House and Senate campaign committees have raised considerably more money this cycle than their GOP counterparts, and the Democratic super PACs have been in a position to outgun their Republican foes by big margins as well.

Simply put, many Republican and conservative donors were enormously disappointed by their failure to pick up the three seats needed for a majority in 2012, and by Romney losing by almost 4 percentage points. They wondered if they had been misled by their leaders about the GOP's chances, or if their money had been wasted—or both. As a result, Republican donors have given considerably less, and some not at all, which has resulted in the GOP being outspent on advertising well into September in several key Senate states.

If Democrats somehow manage to hold on to the Senate, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Michael Bennet, Executive Director Guy Cecil, and their team, as well as Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Senate Majority PAC, headed by Susan McCue, will deserve a huge amount of credit. Virtually all of the dynamics have been working against them, but their fundraising was very impressive. Conversely, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, Executive Director Rob Collins, and their team have been forced to do more with less because of a demoralized donor base. At the grimmest point for the GOP a couple of months ago, one Senate strategist said that it was only with the efforts of the Koch brothers that they were still in the game.

It now appears that the reluctant and even despondent Republican donors woke up in mid-to-late September, with the influx of money evening out the advertising as we approached mid-October. The Democrats' advantage has been neutralized overall. Each side still has to make tough decisions—financial triage, if you will—which will mean cutting off additional funding for some candidates who aren't doing well to concentrate spending on those who are still seen as having a chance. For example, Republican funding for former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land in the Michigan open-seat race has diminished greatly, while the party is doubling down on House Speaker Thom Tillis in his challenge to Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan in North Carolina. Former Sen. Scott Brown is getting another week's funding in his challenge to incumbent Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, in a renewed stab at picking off that seat. On the opposite side, Democrats cut off additional advertising this week in Kentucky for Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes's challenge to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and are shifting money into South Dakota to try to grab the open seat there. No committee ever has enough money to do everything it wants to do, but at this point, the financial war seems headed for something close to a draw.

The other possible fly in the ointment for the GOP was the Democratic ground game. There is no question that while the 2004 Bush-Cheney reelection campaign had the most sophisticated voter-identification and get-out-the-vote presidential campaign operation in history, the GOP's state-of-the-art capabilities atrophied over the next eight years, with the Obama-Biden campaign outgunning the Republicans greatly in both 2008 and 2012. Earlier this year, Senate Democrats announced a $60 million voter-ID and GOTV program (labeled the Bannock Street Project) with the goal of paying 4,000 workers to use techniques employed by DSCC Chairman Bennet in his 2010 race in Colorado—techniques that were greatly expanded by the Obama campaign in 2012. While some Republicans have scoffed at Democrats' ability to mount such an effort, they concede that the Democratic ground game was superior two years ago and that, in midterm elections, if Democrats can crank up turnout among young, female, and minority voters—with young, single women a prime target—their chances of success increase.

Short of some "black swan" event that changes the dynamics, the result of this election may come down to whether Democrats can replicate their past successes in midterm elections—in many cases in non-swing states, with candidates who, for all their fine qualities, are not inspirational, aspirational, or charismatic. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to assess the quality and effectiveness of a ground game before an election. This is going to come down to old-fashioned trench warfare, fought on a race-by-race basis.

This article appears in the October 18, 2014 edition of National Journal Magazine as The Trench Warfare Begins.

(Image via Laura Gangi Pond/Shutterstock.com)

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Stacked Deck

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 17:00:00 -0400

While the outcomes of presidential races are pretty much decided by how the swing, or "purple," states split, in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate that is not always the case. The challenge for Democrats in this election is having so many seats up in very Republican states. Seven of those seats are in states carried by Mitt Romney, and—tougher still—six of the seven are states Romney carried by 14 points or more.

The challenge currently facing Democrats will likely be mirrored on the GOP side in 2016, when the Republicans have 24 Senate seats up, to only 10 for the Democrats. Seven of those 24 GOP seats are in states that President Obama won in 2012, and five are in states that he won by 5 points or more.

In Illinois, Mark Kirk will face voters in a state that Obama won by 17 points. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin will be running in a state where Obama prevailed by 7 points. Both Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Chuck Grassley in Iowa will have races in states that Obama won by 6 points. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania will be running in a state Obama won by 5 points. Ohio's Rob Portman will be up in a state Obama won by 3 points. Marco Rubio is up in Florida, which Obama won by 1 point.

While not all of those senators will necessarily seek reelection—Grassley, for example, will turn 83 in 2016—these aren't great states for Republicans in general, and in a presidential election year there will probably be a larger and more Democratic voter turnout. That is very unlike what we expect to see this year, when a smaller, older, whiter, more conservative, and Republican-leaning midterm electorate will likely put a thumb on the scale for the GOP.

While I was doing a dog-and-pony show the other day with my good friend and competitor Stuart Rothenberg, he made the excellent point that if Republicans do pick up a Senate majority this year, their governing challenge will be keeping some of their fellow Republicans in line—those who know they will eventually be facing voters who don't always fall in lockstep behind all of the goals and aspirations of the GOP. As a result, the Republican agenda, should the party win a majority this year, might not be as aggressively conservative as some in the party would hope.

This is the new political world we live in, as pointed out by a fascinating report on political polarization published in June by the Pew Research Center. The Pew team that wrote the report, headed by Michael Dimock, asserted that "Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines—and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive—than at any point in the last two decades." The share of Americans who express "more consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions" has more than doubled over the last 20 years, from 10 percent to 21 percent of the electorate, and ideological thinking is more consistent with partisanship than before.

The researchers found that 92 percent of Republicans are more conservative than the median Democrat and 94 percent of Democrats are more liberal than the median Republican. Along with this greater ideological and partisan cohesion, Pew also finds that partisan animosity has doubled since 1994. According to the report, "Most of these intense partisans believe the opposing party's policies are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being."

The end result of this new political world is that it is far more difficult for incumbents to survive if they are outside the ideological box of their own party or state. This year, it is Democrats Mark Begich in Alaska, Mark Pryor in Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana who are trying to survive in states where there are few conservative and moderate Democrats left, and even fewer Republicans willing to break ranks to support someone not wearing a GOP jersey. Two years from now, it will be Republicans in this position, as not a single Democrat will be up in a state that Mitt Romney carried in 2012.

If this year's Senate races were largely being fought in purple, swing, light-blue, or softly Democratic states, Democrats would still likely lose a few seats. They could easily lose the open seat in Iowa, as well as Mark Udall's race in Colorado, but it is unlikely they would be in as much danger of losing their Senate majority as they are now. Democrats simply have so many blue seats up in red states such as Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia—in addition to the highly vulnerable Begich, Landrieu, and Pryor.

That's why Republicans don't necessarily need a wave to win a majority. They just need red states to stay red.

This article appears in the October 4, 2014 edition of National Journal Magazineas Stacked Deck.

(Image via Mesut Dogan/Shutterstock.com)

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Is It Real, or Is It a Political Head Fake?

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 18:00:00 -0400

In the early 1970s there was a classic television commercial for Memorex, a company just entering the consumer market for high-quality audio cassettes. In the commercial, jazz great Ella Fitzgerald would hit a high note, shattering a wine glass. Then, they would play her back on tape, shattering the glass again. The tagline on the ad was, "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" Sometimes in politics, we see or sense something happening and wonder if it is real, if it is a new trend, or if it is just a noisy event or aberration. It seems that during most national elections, at some point between Labor Day and Election Day, there is a political head fake that takes place, something that briefly makes you wonder or starts to convince you that there has been a change in direction. Usually though, things just revert to where they were before.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've seen this happen again. Most independent analysts and astute observers were giving Republicans the edge in the fight for the Senate majority in the November elections, but then a few polls and the weirdness taking place in Kansas began to suggest that maybe the momentum had shifted away from the GOP. Now things seem to have reverted back almost to where they were a month ago. The fact is that politics is rarely entirely consistent; events and polls from week to week can bounce things around a bit even though the general direction does not change. My guess is that Republicans remain the favorite to get the six-seat net gain they need for a majority in the Senate. I'd still give them a 60 percent chance to do so, but admittedly, there will be a half-dozen or so races that will be within a point or two, maybe three points, and events that have yet to occur could still potentially change the outcomes. This fight could still go either way.

There are as many ways to look at the Senate math as there are observers. Here's my take. The three Democratic-held seats that have seemed the most in jeopardy since the beginning of the campaign remain very problematic for the party. There is no evidence that the open seats in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia are going to do anything but fall into the GOP column. The next three most vulnerable seats for Democrats involve incumbents in states that Mitt Romney carried by 14 points or more: Mark Begich in Alaska, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and Mark Pryor in Arkansas. If—and it's a big if—any of the three survive reelection, Begich appears to be the most likely to do so. But, again, it is far from certain.

If Republicans capture Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia and beat Begich, Landrieu, and Pryor, they win the Senate—unless they lose one of their own vulnerable seats. If either Sen. Pat Roberts in Kansas or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky are defeated, or if Republicans lose their open seat in Georgia, then winning the majority becomes a little more difficult. While all three of these races are very close, McConnell looks a good bit more likely than not to hold off his challenger, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. In Georgia, David Perdue is looking better against Democrat Michelle Nunn. It is Kansas, though, that is becoming the GOP's migraine.

If Republicans lose one of their own, like say, Kansas, it means that they must win a purple-state race, unseating either Sens. Mark Udall in Colorado or Kay Hagan in North Carolina, or picking up an open seat in Iowa or Michigan, which is a bit more blue than purple. So, if Republicans can hold the line in red states, with no losses, they win the Senate. But, if they lose one, they have to win the political equivalent of a road game.

The Kansas situation is definitely weird. Independent candidate Greg Orman is running neck and neck with Roberts. Meanwhile, despite a state Supreme Court decision, the fight continues over whether there will be a Democratic name on the ballot. Republicans say there has to be one, pointing to a state law regarding vacancies on the ballot. Democrats say they aren't required to replace their nominee (though one is trying to get onto the ballot, obviously without the help of the party apparatus). Privately, one Republican election-law expert wondered whether realistically a party could be forced to name a candidate. Even then, it isn't necessarily certain whether a Democrat on the ballot helps or hurts Orman's chances. The more conventional thought is that a Democrat on the ballot divides the anti-Roberts or non-Republican vote. The countervailing view is that the presence of a Democrat on the ballot helps Orman appear to be really an independent, even though most believe he would sit with Democrats if elected because he seems to walk and talk like a duck (Democrat). However, if independents and disgruntled Republicans see him as something other than a Democrat, they may feel more comfortable voting for him. The backstory in all of this is the increasingly bitter civil war within the GOP between, on one side, Gov. Sam Brownback, the hardcore conservatives, and Tea Party Republicans, and the less ideological Republican old guard on the other. Add to the mix the widely held view that Roberts has taken this election for granted for far too long. National Republicans have recently worked to retool his campaign. The question is whether they did it in time.

The political environment is so bad, the playing field is so tilted in favor of Republicans, and the midterm election electorate has started to favor Republicans so much so that there are simply many more routes for Republicans to get to 51 seats than there are for Democrats to keep 50. Winning every purple state and picking off a state in enemy red territory obviously can happen, but it usually doesn't with the other dynamics we see in play.

This article appears in the September 23, 2014 edition of NJ Daily.

(Image via Orhan Cam/Shutterstock.com)

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A Razor-Thin Lead for the GOP

Charlie Cook, National Journal — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:33:21 -0400

Are things getting better for Senate Democrats? Certainly many of the better (more reliable) statistical models seem to suggest they are. Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight moved from a 64 percent chance of the GOP gaining a majority, predicted on Sept. 3, to a 54.7 percent chance on Sept. 15. As of Sept. 16, The New York Times' Upshot model, nicknamed Leo, put GOP chances at 51 percent; they were at 67 percent on Aug. 26. The conventional wisdom also appears to have shifted over the past week. What, if anything, has happened to cause this shift?

A little bit of the change can be attributed to methodological shifts among forecasters; as statistical modelers add new elements to their computations, the new data affect the output of their models. But that does not explain all of the shift. The most significant reason seems to be that in this year's competitive Senate races in purple states—those where either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney won by narrow margins—Democrats are, for the most part, holding their own or even improving their odds.

In North Carolina, for example, Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan has now built a lead over GOP state House Speaker Thom Tillis in both private and public polling. Hagan led by 4 points in the Sept. 5-9 Elon University poll, 45 percent to 41 percent among likely voters. It is still a competitive race, and Tillis could very well win the seat, but for now the momentum seems to be with Hagan.

In the fight for the open seat in Michigan, Rep. Gary Peters seems to be getting a firmer grip on the contest, and his chances of winning have increased. Colorado's Democratic incumbent, Mark Udall, has built up a small but measurable lead over GOP Rep. Cory Gardner. Again, this is still a very close race, but Udall looks a bit better now than he did earlier in the cycle. In Iowa, Rep. Bruce Braley seems to have a tiny lead over GOP state Sen. Joni Ernst. The Democrat is still under-performing compared with how he should be doing, but he now looks a little better.

Models also show Republican Pat Roberts in Kansas shifting from safe to endangered, although it is far from certain which party independent Greg Orman would sit with if he upset Roberts (or, for that matter, how reliable a vote he would be for Democrats if he were to win and join their conference). Rather than an obvious shift in Democrats' favor, I still see uncertainty in Kansas.

At the same time, in Georgia—not quite a swing state but not deeply red, either—things are looking up for Republicans, with David Perdue starting to pull away from Democrat Michelle Nunn, although the race is still very competitive. Polls are producing conflicting results in New Hampshire; some show former Sen. Scott Brown closing the gap with incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, but I remain skeptical that the race has moved that much. Brown is a transplant who hasn't worked out as well as Republicans had hoped.

What isn't moving for Democrats: the group of six seats they're contesting in deeply red states that Romney carried by big margins. Things still look hopeless for Democrats trying to keep their open seats in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. In Alaska, there is no reason to believe the situation has improved for Mark Begich. Romney won this state by 14 points, and in the aftermath of a Begich TV ad that has been widely seen as grossly deceptive, things have probably gotten a bit worse. Arkansas's Mark Pryor certainly doesn't look any better than he did a month or two ago; Romney won Arkansas by a whopping 24-point margin in 2012. There is little reason to believe that Mary Landrieu will hit the 50 percent-plus-one-vote mark on Nov. 4 to escape a Dec. 6 runoff in Louisiana, and nothing to suggest that a runoff with GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy would turn out well for the Democrat. Her share of the vote does not appear to be elastic—that is, likely to expand—in a runoff; instead, the conservative and Republican vote will likely consolidate.

The key for Democrats is to either pray and work to keep one of the three scarlet-state, Democratic-held seats, or to pick up one Republican seat in a state such as Georgia, Kentucky (which is looking increasingly difficult for Democrats), or Kansas (who knows what will happen there?). If Begich, Pryor, or Landrieu survive, or if Democrats pick off Georgia, Kansas, or perhaps Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, then Republicans would have to win a swing or light-blue state contest somewhere, which would mean beating Udall, Hagan, or Shaheen, or winning Iowa or Michigan.

But if Republicans can just ensure that reliably Republican voters stay Republican in 2014, then the GOP doesn't need to win a single state that is purple, or blue of any hue, to win the Senate. The bottom line is that the odds of Republicans scoring a net gain of seven, eight, or more seats have gone down, but in my judgment a net gain of six—the minimum number they need for a Senate majority—remains pretty likely.

(Image via Mesut Dogan / Shutterstock.com)

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How Awful Will the Midterms be for the Democrats?

Charlie Cook — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 16:10:00 -0400

In bad midterm-election years, members of a president's party often find the political climate challenging. In some ways, it is like a swimmer encountering riptides or facing strong undertows. The degree of the danger varies from location to location, and in many cases, weak swimmers struggle in this environment; occasionally, even an Olympic-level swimmer perishes.

In 2010—President Obama's first midterm election—Democratic congressional candidates struggled mightily. The party suffered a net loss of six Senate seats and 63 seats in the House. That was the worst loss for either party in any election since 1948, and the largest loss in a midterm election since 1938. Fallout from the health care debate and the Affordable Care Act contributed heavily to Democratic losses, but that legislation was hardly the sole reason for them.

The shoe was on the other foot in 2006—President Bush's second midterm election—when, between an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq and the administration's mishandling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the election was a total horror show for GOP candidates. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. I vividly remember conversations with key GOP campaign committee strategists who began the cycle confident that their ample war chests would insulate their vulnerable candidates through a difficult election. But as Bush's and the Republican Party's problems mounted, their financial advantage was less and less comforting, and these top campaign pros became increasingly worried.

I also recall, in late 2005, I believe, over a steak dinner and good wine—it works well for building and lubricating relationships, plus is admittedly a lot of fun—a pair of House Republican pros nonchalantly asking me about how the 1994 Democratic debacle unfolded. The question came across as, "What did you see and when did you see it?"

These two seemed curious to know what the leading indicators were that the bottom was about to fall out for Democrats during President Clinton's first midterm election. This was the year when "Hillarycare" and tax increases became quicksand for the party's candidates in every corner of the country, but particularly in the South and the border South—small-town, rural, and suburban districts alike (pretty much everywhere but urban districts).

I told them the spring 1994 story about David Dixon, the then-political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who, after we had done a 50-state, off-the-record rundown of every competitive House race, casually asked me if I had noticed anything unusual in House contests over the past month or so. After I indicated I had not, Dixon mentioned that he had seen some unusual polling patterns over the previous month or two—specifically, the levels of support for Democratic incumbents whom one might expect to be in the mid- or high-50s (poll numbers looked different in those days) that were coming in just barely above 50. Dixon went on to explain that there were others you might expect to be at about 50 percent approval who were polling in the mid-40s. He suggested that there was a pattern of underperforming Democratic candidates in a wide variety of regions and types of districts.

At the time, I thought the very able Dixon and his equally impressive DCCC chairman, Vic Fazio, were lowballing, trying to bring down expectations so they would look good on election night. But, over the next month or so, my instincts—perhaps sensitized by Dixon's observation—began to pick up the same pattern.

As we got to late summer and early fall in 1994, it became clear that a wave was building, a big Republican wave, but it still looked unlikely that the GOP would score the 40-seat net gain needed to win a majority for the first time in 40 years. Giving Republicans every conceivable competitive race, you still couldn't count 40 Democratic losses.

On election night, the GOP picked up a mind-boggling 54 seats, winning districts that had never received a dime from the national party; long shots who had seemed to be jokes were actually winning.

Now, back at the Capital Grille dinner table in 2005, as I was relaying this story from the 1994 election, the National Republican Congressional Committee guys were listening intently, clearly trying not to show concern but wondering whether the signs from 1994 on the Democratic side were being replicated on the GOP side a dozen years later.

Not every midterm election unfolds like 1994, 2006, or 2010. In 1998, a backlash against the impeachment of Clinton resulted in Democrats escaping the typical midterm election jinx. In 2002, not even 14 months after September 11, the reverberations of tragedy insulated Republicans from the normal losses they might have suffered. These examples are the exceptions that prove the rule; the normal pattern is that midterm elections come in three varieties for the White House party: bad, really bad, and horrific.

Candidates in safe districts have little to worry about. They may or may not see a few points knocked off their typical election night performance. Others will have much closer margins than usual but will still win. Still others will barely survive, and some won't. It depends on the situation in the state or district; the strength of the candidates in the president's party; the quality of the opponent; the circumstances that year; and even luck. These factors are what Democrats have to be considering now.

This article appears in the September 13, 2014 edition of National Journal Magazine as How Awful Will It Be?.

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