A recent Rasmussen poll came out which showed significant strength for Democrats in Congress:
Forty-five percent (45%) of American voters say they would currently vote for the Democrat in their district while 35% would pull the voting lever for a Republican. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found 6% favoring a third-party option while 15% are not sure.
Democrats lead by five percentage points among men, by fourteen points among women. Nancy Pelosi’s party holds a staggering 30-percentage point lead among voters under 30. Separate surveys have shown that a declining number of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans. [MY EMPHASIS]
Younger voters are not common voters, but if my current generation behaves politically like every other generation, my non-voting peers will as they begin to vote on a regular basis vote in a manner consistent with the rest of their generational peers. And right now my generation is firmly anchoring into the Democratic Party on the basis of anti-Iraq war, environmentalism and social/cultural liberalism. For different reasons, the growing Hispanic voting blocs in the United States are also anchoring to the Democratic Party out of self-interest and protection incentives.
These two trends are commonly noted and often written about because they are important, they are large, and they are noticeable. Activity and district challenging has not been as extensively written about, but this information is providing significant indications of the Democrats being on the upswing with conservatives and Republicans becoming descendant.
In 2003, 2004, and 2005 when Democratic and more importantly liberal power was at its recent nadir, the activist class of the Democratic Party was still looking for fights on hostile terrain. They supported Howard Dean as a wake-up call of a long list of grievances, and they gave significant support to a series of Democrats who were running in special elections to replace long term Republican incumbents. These Democrats were able to win more often than they lost; Herseth in South Dakota and Chandler in Kentucky were victories while Hackett in Ohio was a very narrow loss. These local, long shot successes helped to build a common consensus to support an aggressive wave strategy of running and funding candidates in as many seats as possible. The early belief was that the vast majority of these non-traditional races would be blow-outs with a purpose; fixed and hold Republican incumbents and force disproportionate Republican resources to be diverted to races that normally would not be contested. By October several of these long shot races were first and second tier races, and on election day, some of the fourth tier races became Democratic pick-ups with liberals replacing conservatives.
I am not seeing any comparable level of organization or commitment for a political counterattack on the right against traditionally Democratic seats. The NRCC is targeting Democratic seats held by conservative Democrats in moderate to slightly conservative districts. This makes sense to challenge the marginal seats of the Democratic coalition, but the NRCC is targeting eleven seats at this time, when they need at least fifteen net pick-ups to win. Additionally, the traditional liberal netroots complaint that a narrow focus strategy of the DCCC comes into play; to gain a majority, the narrow focus system needs to win every seat and no friendly seats can be unlikely losses.
More importantly in my mind is the state of play of a seat in Massachusetts. Marty Meehan (D-Lowell) is a long term Democratic Rep of the Merrimack Valley, but he is retiring to take over the University of Massachusetts-Lowell [which was my first ISP on a 1200 Baud modem] this summer. This is a strongly Democratic seat, but no more so than South Dakota-At Large or OH-2 were strong Republican seats. Dems mounted strong challenges for both seats, winning one, and losing one.
Left in Lowell, an excellent Massachusetts political and activism blog, is tracking this race and the entire field is composed of Democrats. Local backstabbing, back stories, and back-room deals will determine the primary winner and the primary winner will trounce token, at best, Republican opposition in the general special election.
Right now, I believe that the GOP and its activist classes are still in a state of apathetic ass-covering trauma while the Democratic leaning activist classes are still highly motivated and looking to be as aggressive as possible in winning as many elections as possible while still forcing the party to respond to a progressive voice and vision.
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