Wither the Democrats or will the Democrats Weather It

That’s the big question on the upcoming elections. The elections that are just about four weeks away. How much will the Democrats get their collective asses kicked? It seemed over the summer the Republicans were steam rolling their way to controlling the House an in all likelihood the Senate as well.

I’m not so sure that that is still the case. For one thing there are no more primaries for the press to focus on how well the Tea Party candidate is doing. It was a shock that O’Donnell won in Delaware. At least that’s what all the pundits say.

I’m not so sure. Delaware points to what can happen in an election when a very motivated group of people get out and go to the polls. Couple that with low turnout to begin with and you can have the “upsets” that the Tea Party pulled. As I’ve said for many years, the smaller the turn out in elections the easier it is for a candidate out of the main stream to win. The more people participate the harder it is for that extreme candidate to win. There are only so many people in the core constituency that the candidate can call upon. The more people turn out the higher the core needs to turn out. At some point in time there are not enough of them to win the election. That forces the candidate to broaden their positions in order to win more votes.

So it is one thing for the Tea Party candidate to win in a primary but another to win in a general election. Having said that the Democrats are still in a huge mess. The unemployment rate is still incredibly high. And even though economists say the recession is over, the vast majority of people don’t feel that way. People are still loosing their jobs and their houses and they can’t pay their bills and well you get the idea. The party in power when the economy is in the tank is always the party to get the blame for it. One of the main mistakes of the Obama administration was to say they didn’t think the unemployment rate would go much above 8 percent. A huge mistake especially it seems to be stuck at around 9.5 percent.

But one wonders what people are thinking when they want to give the Republicans another shot. After all we are still cleaning up the economic mess from the last time they were in control. And the Republican pledge to America is laughable at best. Seems the same old ideas that the Republicans always come up with. Let’s make every millionaire into a billionaire and that will solve all our problems. We need to rein in entitlements but there are few to any specifics on how to do that.

Obama has also finally got his act together. Pushing back against the Republicans and the pledge. I'd like him to continue to push on this. To show just exactly what the Republicans want to do. Time will tell if it will influence the outcome in November.