The Point of No Return

I was listening to some political pundits discussing the midterm elections the other day, and I wondered something.

At which point do we acknowledge what everyone seems to know but relatively few are willing to admit — that the midterms are going to be bad for Democrats?

Some people insist on drawing a line between bad and very bad. While I am not exactly inclined to designate degrees of bad, there is — and always has been — a way to distinguish a bad outcome from a very bad outcome. Bad is when you do not achieve your goal. Very bad is when you not only fail to achieve your goal but your adversary does achieve his. The Democrats' goal in 2014 is to take the House from the Republicans. The Republicans' goal is to take the Senate from the Democrats.

And, as I observed a few months ago, for Democrats to win control of the House, they need to take 17 seats from the Republicans. The constituencies of House districts are more compact — and easier to predict — than statewide constituencies, and nearly all districts are predisposed to vote one way or another — until the next census makes redistricting necessary. It is why I am 100% certain that, although House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was beaten in the Republican primary, the district will remain in Republican hands. The mood among the electorate in 2014 is not anti–incumbent; it is anti–Democrat.

If voters really were in an anti–incumbent mood, we would be seeing more congressional incumbents lose on both sides of the aisle.

It's been clear since March — when Democrats lost a special House election in Florida — that their 2014 objective simply was not going to happen. But still they nursed the hope that they could do well enough to turn the midterms into a no–win for everyone.

Here we are, roughly four months from the election, and nearly all political observers see Democrats making few, if any, gains in the House, where they are already outnumbered by 33.

That could change, of course. Four months can be an eternity in politics. But, barring a major event, it seems very unlikely that anything will change.

Bad outcome for the Democrats. Plan B = avoid a very bad outcome.

To keep it from becoming a very bad outcome, the Democrats must focus all their attention and resources on denying Republicans the six Senate seats they need to win control of that chamber. To do that, my guess is that Democrats will need to resort to negative campaigning.

It is going to be a tall order. My guess is that Democrats will find ways to blame the immigration crisis on Republicans — even when the Republican in the race is not the incumbent — and they will try to whip up anger over secondary — and, in some cases, nonexistent — issues. Because the biggest problem Democrats face in this year's Senate races is the fact that so many are in Democrat hands.

This is the crop of senators who were elected six years ago when Barack Obama won his first term as president. Remember the atmosphere? The economy imploded in September 2008, and Democrats seized nine Senate seats from the Republicans, winning an outright majority for the first time in 14 years.

Two years earlier, when George W. Bush's Republicans lost control of both chambers, most polls showed Bush's approval numbers in the upper 30s and low 40s.

Obama's numbers have been hovering in the low 40s for months now. Will improved jobs numbers help the Democrats? Or will the Benghazi hearings — and further revelations about the IRS, VA, NSA, etc. — erode any political gains the Democrats might enjoy?

That would almost certainly increase the problems for the Democrats, who are already fighting an uphill battle with a metaphorical avalanche coming down around them.

When do we reach the point of no return?

'Several Cities' Likely to Have No Paper by 2010

Editor & Publisher has some worrisome news for advocates of the First Amendment.

"Newspapers and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year — leaving 'several cities' with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday," writes Mark Fitzgerald.

"Fitch is generally pessimistic across the board," he continues, "assigning negative outlets to nearly all sectors from Yellow Pages to radio and TV and theme parks. But the newspaper industry is the most at risk of defaulting, it says."

That's bad news for those who believe a culture benefits from the printed word.

With advertising revenues declining and a credit freeze in effect, the recession of 2009 promises to be more severe than the recession of 2001. And, in a world in which more and more people depend on the visual media — TV and the internet — for news and information, newspapers are becoming expendable.

Editor & Publisher also reported today that there will be about 2,000 job cuts at Gannett newspapers across the country — "the result of economic declines," says the vice president of corporate communications.

The cutbacks were announced in October — but exact numbers weren't released at that time.

There is no real freedom without freedom of the press.

But how can freedom be preserved if the press isn't profitable?

God and Politics, 2008 Style

As North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole's beleaguered re-election campaign has chosen to raise the specter of God in the waning days of the campaign, I decided to pay a long-overdue visit to the God-o-Meter, belief.net's ranking of each candidate's faith.

It's been months since I visited the "God-o-Meter," but it appears to give Barack Obama a higher rating on religious issues than it gives John McCain.

It also had immediate reflections on the "godless" campaign commercial the Dole campaign has used recently.

Dan Gilgoff writes for the God-o-Meter that the rapid response ad produced by the campaign for Kay Hagan, Dole's opponent, "is a very post-2004 way for a Democrat to respond to a faith-based attack: quickly responding to the attack head-on and testifying unabashedly about one's faith commitment."

Hagan's tactic, Gilgoff says, is "a very 'Obama' way to respond to a faith-based attack, as opposed to the 'Kerry' way of responding: wringing one's hands and marrying each public pronouncement about one's faith to a reaffirmation of support for the complete separation of church and state."

As for Dole, Gilgoff observes, her commercial "is a stark reminder that faith-based attacks have been kept to a relative minimum in the presidential race."

Gilgoff goes on to point out that McCain has not used religion as a wedge issue in this campaign, not even using Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright to "skewer him for cozying up to a man of the cloth."

Although many voters have welcomed the de-emphasis of religion in the political debate, Gilgoff appears to draw the conclusion that refraining from "faith-based attacks" will cost McCain the election.

And he warns that could be the lesson Republicans take into the next presidential election cycle.

"[I]f [Sarah] Palin, Mike Huckabee, or another social conservative gets the nod in 2012, due to a post-McCain religious right uprising, we could be looking at more faith-based attacks at the presidential level," he writes.

Heaven forbid.

The 'Godless' Campaign

Kay Hagan, the Democrat who is challenging Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, announced she would file suit against Dole yesterday, claiming that she has been libeled by Dole's TV commercial that says Hagan is "godless."

It wouldn't surprise me if there's something to be said for Hagan's case. But it's a time-honored tradition for politicians who are losing to question their opponents' moral character. It's how politics is played.

Besides, the visage of God has been strangely absent from the proceedings this year. Sarah Palin's faith hasn't been mentioned frequently. Nor has Barack Obama's — once Jeremiah Wright departed the scene. But Dole's ad is proof that religion remains a potent issue for a politician to exploit, especially in a place like North Carolina, where many conservative Christians live.

Dole probably feels like she's under siege these days. Lately, she has been one of several Republicans in close Senate races who have been targeted by labor unions, according to a report in USA Today.

But does that justify labeling your opponent as "godless?"

Even if Hagan takes the matter to court, she won't receive a judicial ruling until after the voters have handed down their ruling.

And few, if any, voters will be able to dismiss the memory of the Dole campaign's assertion.

It reminds me of a scene in "Anatomy of a Murder," in which the defense attorney, James Stewart, is told that a question he has asked of a witness is improper.

Stewart's character, of course, didn't ask the question because he wanted to get the witness' answer. He asked it because it was a way of introducing something into the record that he had been restricted from mentioning.

He apologizes and withdraws the question, after which the judge instructs the jury that it is to "disregard" both the question and the answer.

When Stewart returns to the defense counsel's table, the defendant leans over and whispers, "How can a jury disregard what it's already heard?"

"They can't," Stewart replies. "They can't."

North Carolina's voters will go to the polls next Tuesday with Dole's "godless" allegation thundering in their ears.

The last time he assessed it, Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, judged the North Carolina Senate race to be a "toss-up." That was nearly four weeks ago, on Oct. 4. I wonder what his opinion is, now that the Republicans have made a blatant effort to engage conservative Christians in the last-minute debate.

The Candidates' Christmas Ads

Along with the usual Christmas commercials for products and services, this year we have seen commercials for presidential candidates with Christmas/holiday themes.

Ads by Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani and Barack Obama have been on the airwaves, and political strategist Dick Morris took some time to discuss the ads on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" recently.

Of the Clinton ad, Morris says it was a "terrible" ad, in which Clinton was surrounded by gift packages, each bearing a tag that mentioned a specific issue, like "Bring the Troops Home," "Universal Health Care" and "Middle Class Tax Breaks."

But Clinton's ad was more generic than the others, referring only to the "holiday season" and making no specific mention of Christmas, for which Clinton was punished by the God-o-Meter.

Huckabee's ad was the "greatest ad," in Morris' words, "because we have to appreciate, politically, that Christmas is Huckabee's season." And the Huckabee ad, as the God-o-Meter points out, is the only one that mentions the birth of Christ.

Besides, the God-o-Meter already punished Huckabee this week after Bob Novak reported that the"elite evangelicals" who support Huckabee's candidacy are short of Southern Baptists.

"He did not join the 'conservative resurgence' that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago," Novak writes of Huckabee, a former president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

Novak says Baptists aren't on board with Huckabee, but other Christian conservatives are, particularly in Iowa.

Morris says the "Huckabee-Romney split ... mirrors the division between economic and social conservatives. The country club, upper income, Wall Street, business community is [for] Romney, the Joe Six-Pack, Christian right community is with Huckabee. That's the fault line that's running through it."

And Morris predicts Huckabee will win Iowa.

Like the Clinton ad, Obama's ad was punished by the God-o-Meter, as was Giuliani's. The God-o-Meter hasn't said anything about the Edwards ad.

But Morris says he liked the Obama ad, which achieves the "warm and fuzzy" level Clinton sought by showing Obama with his family. Morris didn't particularly care for Giuliani's ad, in which the former New York mayor (sitting next to Santa Claus) "lists those issues" of concern to voters, as Clinton's does. Edwards, Morris points out, "discusses" them in his ad.

Morris also says he believes the "anti-Hillary vote is coalescing around Obama." He predicts that Obama will win in Iowa and when that happens, much of the Edwards vote will gravitate toward him, leading to Clinton's defeat in New Hampshire as well.

And that could produce a new front-runner among the Democrats a little over a week into the calendar year.