What's certain in the election of 2010 is that both parties are going to have to bring out their base. Republicans have done a good job, to date, firing up conservatives by holding up a stop sign in an effort to prevent major Obama administration initiatives. While they weren't able to block several pieces of reform legislation, polls are clear that conservatives and conservative constituencies are solidly behind Republican candidates going into 2010. There is always the potential fly in the ointment for Republicans in the form of the Tea Party movement; will these angry populists and their supporters settle for mere conservatives in November?
On the flip side, there's President Obama and the Democrats. While the President can point to a strong record of reform legislation, half the country rejects it and some from his own base remain cool. In order for Democrats to cut their sure to be off-year losses, they will need to put together as much of the Obama winning coalition of 2008 as possible. In particular, this includes Hispanics, African Americans, and young voters, all of whom voted in record numbers. In addition, it includes some blue collar supporters and members of the more upscale creative class. To date, voters in these groups remain pretty cool and did not turn out to vote in the elections of 2009.
But there are two ways to fire up the base. One clearly is for Democrats to focus their message on successful results and to paint the opposition party as either lacking a program or carrying a program that is already failed. But there may be a second option for the Democrats -- and that's to let ultra-conservatives carry the ball for them by scaring the bejeezus out of key Democratic constituencies. We have some evidence so far this could be working. The President's numbers are in the mid-40s, which is nowhere near the low numbers achieved by Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. And while prospects are still tough for the Democrats, they still remain competitive in the congressional generic. Some Democratic governors have wondered why the Obama Administration, through Attorney General Eric Holder, has decided to challenge in court the Arizona immigration law. For an answer they need to look no further than our recent poll of July 16 showing Obama receiving a 15-point bump among Hispanics. The Shirley Sherrod issue represents a low point for all the parties involved, however, as of this writing, Ms. Sherrod has emerged as a hero and the President may have turned a very bad situation into something better. Notably, watch African American fear and enthusiasm rise. Each additional African American voter is usually a Democratic voter.
So where do Democrats go from here? They need to sit down with crusading blogger Andrew Breitbart, who can tell half the story by focusing on government spending, and the real story, about people being helped, will unfold. They should offer him the following video assignment:
- Catch a young family with a small child who has a previous existing health condition. Be sure to catch that family in the emergency room as their fully insured child is being treated with a positive outcome
- Film a computer programmer going back to work through a stimulus-funded project
- Go to an unemployment line and capture some people collecting a check after they've been cut off
- And pull the car over to where there are orange cones on a highway and a construction crew repaving a road
And by the way, don't forget the laid-off special education teacher who is now going back to work in September. In an election like this, where it's all about the base, remember, the base needs to hear positive accomplishments. But to rejigger the words of F.D.R., "nothing creates fear like fear itself."
Stay tuned to the Huffington Post for my advice to the Republicans.