President Barack Obama (left) has few high cards in his hand to win re-election. Running against the work of Speaker John Boehner and Congressional Republicans is a long shot, but at least it’s a coherent strategy, Stuart Rothenberg writes. Running against a dangerous Republican presidential nominee, though, would be better.
Conversely, I’d bet that when many Republicans hear the question, they picture Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and think of Congressional Democrats stymieing House GOP initiatives.
Yes, Republicans and Democrats both disapprove of Congress’ performance but for different reasons. And they have very different ideas of what they would like Congress to do before they would evaluate its performance differently than they do now.
The fact that so many respondents disapprove of Congress’ performance doesn’t mean that they are going to blame Congress for the nation’s problems or that they are going to vote against their party’s nominee for Congress.
Obviously, Congress as an institution is unpopular. It is unpopular among Republican, Democratic and independent voters. That reality could make some incumbents substantially more vulnerable in primaries (particularly in a redistricting cycle), and it certainly could change how Members run their re-election campaigns.
Some of the nation’s best pollsters warn repeatedly that we are in uncharted territory when it comes to public sentiment about our political institutions, political leaders and the nation’s political future.
Americans have lost confidence in our political institutions’ ability to deal with the nation’s short-term and long-term problems, and because of that, it’s hard to know how voters will behave next year.
But until we see some sort of new behavior, we probably ought to consider how voters have responded in similar circumstances rather than merely asserting that they will adopt an entirely new pattern of behavior. And voters usually blame presidents for bad news, not Congress — particularly when control of Congress is divided between the two parties.
President Harry Truman did successfully run against Congress in 1948. But the differences between Truman’s situation and Obama’s are striking. The New Deal coalition was solidly in control back then, so Truman needed merely to activate it against the GOP. The president has a much more difficult job now.
Obama has few high cards in his hand. Running against Congressional Republicans for blocking the recovery and choosing political gridlock over bipartisan cooperation is a long shot, but at least it’s a coherent strategy. Running against a dangerous Republican presidential nominee, of course, would be an even better one, but the president needs the GOP’s cooperation to put that strategy into effect.
A man from Kentucky attends a Tea Party Patriots rally on the West Front of the Capitol to protest the IRS' targeting of conservative political groups.
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