Let Republicans take control of Congress, PLEASE?

Do I speak heresy for a Democratic voter, or the first bit of common sense in a Republican wave year?

This post will contain clear and inherent bias, as it is intended as a suggested Democratic perspective on the Midterm elections.


Let me level with you. Republicans are going to win and they are going to win big this year. In the House, it would not be out of possibility for them to sweep the system, taking out 70 incumbent Democrats. In the Senate it is conceivable for them to overturn as many as 10 seats, a roughly equivalent proportion as wins in the House. And while those numbers represent very worst case scenarios, Democrats are playing defense and right now and it'll be considered a significant UPSET if Democrats are able to hold onto simple majorities in both the House and the Senate.

I can already hear the leagues of Democratic voters wailing in self-righteous desperation. Must think! Who's to blame? Right! Its all the fault of those perennial enthusiasts, those formerly loyal Obama supporters who have the nerve to abandon the Party when they're really needed. Damn those pollsters and their likely voter models! Fools! All of them!

But wait! Before you torch the house of the nearest racial minority or young adult who you think is too lazy or uninformed to go to the polls, hear me out! There are hate crime statues to consider!

Instead look at it this way: If Republicans want Congress, let's give it to 'em. But just barely. Or just in one chamber of Congress as its looking to become currently. Fight for seats, yes, but hold off some of that strategic money till 2012.

How about this instead? It's about damn time that the American people see what kinds of proposals Republicans have to put forward. Obama is still President for the next 2 years, let him use his bully pulpit to show Republicans up for how hypocritical most of their debt-reducing-yet-tax-reducing proposals are. To expose on a National stage the extreme positions of Tea Partiers and the chaos of a truly gridlocked government.

In the meantime, let's keep Democrats in the best non-majority position that we can, and use that magic filibuster tactic against the Republicans who seem to like it so much. Or, even better, just let Obama veto anything that comes across his desk that he can't take explicit credit for. If Republicans do pass anything, make sure its branded "Obama" so strongly that the American people begin seeing the President as the great uniter that he promised to be.

Meanwhile, all fingers crossed, the economy is getting better, helped in no small part by increased confidence in legislative stability with Republicans in control and (quite honestly) the historically relative cyclical nature of these recessions. Obama can take credit for the economy rebounding as well, if he likes; who cares whether or not the Recovery Act was actually what swung America out of a downturn, the point is that the economy arrow went up during the Obama Administration. Tout, tout, tout! If Clinton could get through it in 1995, Obama can handle it in 2011. And good news for Dems: Clinton went on to get re-elected; Obama's got a good shot at that too.

Of course if Democrats stay in control, Republicans can continue to use the same stalling tactics and blame an even weaker Democratic Party for not getting anything done. They'll likely have the momentum in 2012, telling voters to send 'em all packin', including the President so that the Government works again. If Republicans take some control, it's possible the Government will also come to a standstill, but this time, Republicans get their share of the blame.


But hold on a minute. If things are made so good by Democrats "letting" Republicans take some control, why isn't that the Democratic strategy, at least secretly?

Well there is a lot of conventional wisdom in trying to maintain Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. Regardless of what the Government does at this point, the economy is liable to get better, as is the way with these things. Democrats are reasonably confident that they can take credit for the good economy if they can just hold on long enough for the economy to actually improve. Then there's the incumbency factor. The same reason that Obama is already nominally favored to win the 2012 election, as mentioned above, also favors all currently sitting politicians. Name recognition is already higher with incumbents, not to mention the great fundraising platform incumbency affords. This Democrats figure they'll have a lot of hurdles to overcome in the next 3 election cycles if they lose the incumbency factor in this one election. And finally there's the policy considerations. With less power, Democrats have less control over policy, Republican proposals are more likely to be adopted and signed into law.


The point of this article is to recognize some serious advantages on which Democrats might be able to capitalize if Republicans take control of either the House, or Senate, or both. Since at least one of those scenarios is likely, it will be interesting to see if Democrats use any of the strategies outlined in this piece.

I'll have a different discussion on Republican strategies in the near future.