The DCCC sends their members home with new talking points.

July 31, 2010

By JOHN FUND

Democratic House leaders are sending their members home for summer recess this Friday armed with special new talking points for donors and supporters. The message: The GOP can’t take over the House this November.

The effort is clearly designed to stem rising anxiety among Democrats that the fall elections could be a bloodbath. A memo prepared by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee bears the reassuring title “Seven reasons House Democrats will be successful in November” and is apparently designed to rebut the view expressed by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs this month that Republicans have put enough Democratic seats in play to win back a House majority.

First, the DCCC argues that Democrats are in line to win four seats currently held by Republicans in Democratic-majority districts, including those of Charles Djou in Hawaii and Joseph Cao in Louisiana. That means the GOP would have to win 43 seats to gain a House majority, rather than the 39 they would need if they suffered no losses. More importantly, the memo explains that “wave elections are largely fueled by open seats, and that there aren’t enough open seats this time around.” With only 20 Democrats retiring, even if Republicans win half their seats, the GOP would still need to beat 35 Democratic incumbents to take control, and Republicans just don’t have the money or organizational skill to pull that off, the DCCC asserts.

The DCCC certainly has history on its side, but polls in modern times also have never shown Republicans with as large a lead in generic ballot contests for the House. What’s more, though the memo makes a persuasive case on several points, much of its thinking on the Tea Party is happy talk.

The DCCC argues the Tea Party is a huge liability for the GOP because it has resulted in the nomination of extreme candidates who can’t win, forced candidates to take radical positions and fueled the presence of some 100 third-party candidacies that will drain support from the GOP nominee. However, Bill Galston, a former deputy domestic policy adviser to President Clinton, begs to differ. He argues in the New Republic that voters more closely identify with the Tea Party than liberals acknowledge, which could mean a surprise in November.

He points to a new survey from the Pew Center that asked voters to position themselves in relation to the two parties. “Voters now place themselves much closer to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party on this left-right continuum,” Mr. Galston writes. “And, startlingly, the electorate places itself a bit closer to the Tea Party movement (which is well to the right of the Republican Party) than to the Democratic Party. All this represents a major shift from five years ago, when mean voters placed themselves exactly halfway between their ideological perceptions of the Democratic and Republican parties.”

In short, the biggest problem Democrats face is that their recent policies appear to have alienated independents. “Today, 56% of Independents see the Democratic Party as more liberal than they themselves are, compared to only 39% who see the Republican Party as more conservative,” Mr. Galston concludes.

Read more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703999304575399311308129390.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

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