Are the Democrats failing or doing well as an opposition?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am reminded of a time magazine article from 2006 that used arrows to rate the situation for two Parties. The Republican arrow was pointing downward and the Democratic arrow was pointed sideways.


Opposition parties never have a coherent message or anything like that in the mid terms, or a clear leader. That is not the point and no one cares. What matters is 1) You are not the party in power, 2) Does the candidate fit well with the district and 3) What five, six, ten things are you going to do those first 100 days, if you get the majority.

This is how Pelosi got to be Speaker, on the backs of 50 Pro-life Democrats (20 of whom were new, 30 were already there), many of whom even signed off on Heath Shuler's SAVE Act which was an enforcement-only immigration bill. Of course Dems are going for a more suburban swing district strategy as opposed to a rural blue dog one.

But they were united in opposition to Bush's handling of Iraq (ranging from competence in the rebuilding to outright opposition to the war), raising the minimum wage, draining the swamp of the 109th Congresses corruption and fixing the "Donut hole" in Medicare Part D.

Ironically, there was a lot of commentary about the Republicans not being able to "cash in on the economy" at all during the midterms. Of course in hindsight that is obvious why, but at the time GDP growth was strong, unemployment was 4.6% and wages were finally starting to rise. Housing sales were starting to collapse on backs of 4% interest rates, but there was no comprehension of its impact on the larger economy and the credit crunch didn't start until the following summer. But a lot of the seats lost were in places where the economy was to seen to have "never recovered" including in OH and the rust belt, upstate NY and other places, where economic conditions were bad. Of course there were losses elsewhere where this wasn't a factor, it is hard to completely rule it out as playing some role in some races.