Politics vs. public interest

Last week, I handicapped the Senate races of interest in 2002. This weekend past, the Washington Post undertook the same exercise. The Post’s Dan Balz and David Broder surveyed the prospects of the parties at all levels, including contests for governorships and in the House of Representatives, but they echoed my conclusions of a week ago. In the Senate, the numbers favor the GOP.

The Post agrees that four Democratic incumbents face heavy weather – Johnson in South Dakota; Harkin in Iowa; Carnahan in Missouri; and especially Wellstone in Minnesota. The reporters also speculate that the GOP has some vulnerability in New Hampshire and Arkansas, which is fair enough. The paper ought to have put the spotlight on Democrats Landrieu in Louisiana and Cleland in Georgia who have voted significantly to the left of their state’s majority and are thus vulnerable, but overall the piece shows that a conventional wisdom has solidified about the race for the Senate in 2002.

But there is a bit of bad reporting at work in the article and throughout the political press: The myth of the bad “outyear.” Talking heads have been knowingly nodding about how tough it is for a first-term president to avoid seeing his party take big losses in the first election following his win. The Post even provides a handy chart under the conclusion: “The midterm election after a new president enters the White House historically yields gains in Congress for the opposing party.”

What the Post should have noted is that this little nugget just isn’t true when it comes to Republican presidents and the U.S. Senate.

In 1990, the first Bush saw a net loss of one seat in the Senate for the GOP. But in 1982, Ronald Reagan saw his party pick up a seat in the upper chamber. And in 1970, Nixon watched as the Republicans picked up a net of 2 seats in the Senate. While Democrats Johnson, Carter, and Clinton lost 4, 3, and 8 net seats in 1966, 1978 and 1994, the Republicans have won two out of the three midterm contests when it comes to the Senate.

This little bit of historical accuracy is critical because the media will be working overtime to keep the Senate in Tom Daschle’s hands. History, the issues, the vulnerability of Democratic incumbents and even the fund-raising is all working against the Democrats – as is the president’s huge popularity. That’s the story, and the media should be exploring Daschle’s increasingly desperate attempt to turn that tide rather than calling it a horse race, or even running with the misleading conventional wisdom about “midterms.”

With the corrected record in mind, it is a little bit easier to understand Daschle’s call for higher taxes last week. I didn’t see the entire speech, and it’s possible that Daschle went on to call for a return to Smoot-Hawley tariffs, but what I saw was enough to confirm the suspicion that Daschle is going to say whatever he has to in order to fire up some semblance of enthusiasm is his base of organized labor.

Daschle’s decision to criticize the tax cuts and to call for their repeal is a stunning admission of his preference for politics over the public interest. His defenders have been attempting to argue that he didn’t really call for a tax hike, but the war on the tax cut package already passed is just a tax hike by another name. No reputable group of economists will rally around such a loopy prescription in the midst of a recession, but Daschle looked at the political environment and concluded the only way to stay the “majority” leader was to try and play the class-envy card.

Al Gore made the same calculation, and while it worked in urban areas and made the election of 2000 close (with the assist from the networks on election afternoon and evening) the tactic did not play in the Bush “Red States.” The key Democratic Senate races of South Dakota, Louisiana, Georgia, and Montana are all in Red States. So Daschle has resolved to embrace a losing strategy. More power to him.

Click here for the web address of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And when you spot an outbreak in the media of the conventional wisdom concerning midterms and the Senate, please let me know. I will try and keep count.

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