Kicking Over My Traces

In contrast to last year’s noisy and dramatic confrontations at district meetings, this year has not yielded a bumper crop of online videos showing angry voters demanding answers from their Congressional representatives.

Yet according to well-regarded independent political analyst Larry Sabato the outgoing political tide is sucking the sand from beneath the feet of incumbent Democrats (and Republicans who went along to get along):

2010 was always going to be a Republican year, in the midterm tradition. It has simply been a question of degree. Several scenarios were possible, depending in large measure on whether, or how quickly, the deeply troubled American economy recovered from the Great Recession. Had Democratic hopes on economic revitalization materialized, it is easy to see how the party could have used its superior financial resources, combined with the tendency of Republicans in some districts and states to nominate ideological fringe candidates, to keep losses to the low 30s in the House and a handful in the Senate.

But conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low. The Democrats’ self-proclaimed “Recovery Summer” has become a term of derision, and to most voters—fair or not—it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered.

Why no voter-on-representative verbal violence?

The photo above shows Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA40) last month surrounded by voters from his district here in Southern California. He stuck around for a while after the official end of a townhall meeting in Cypress to answer more questions before heading to a second townhall meeting in Fullerton.

The questions asked, for the most part, revealed voters were well-informed and concerned about not just the economy and jobs but also the country’s overall direction.

(One fellow seemed to think that the government has been holding his payroll contributions to Social Security for decades. He was just about ready to redeem them. I do not envy the SSA worker who may need to explain that Social Security works as transfer payments — the money collected from current workers is immediately mailed to current pensioners. Al Gore’s lock box was and remains mythical.)

So here is how I explain the noticeably lower level of confrontation last month.

Many Democrats avoided townhall meetings entirely.

After August 2009, voters went home and self-organized. They showed up at the Washington march last year, went home and self-organized*. They watched the health care reform debate, turned off the television and self-organized.

They read and talked and pondered.

Really.

The recent Glenn Beck rally went some ways to confirm a new self-confidence in regular folks. They aren’t angry and surprised anymore.

They know what’s what. They know who’s been doing what to them. They have a plan. They have their eyes on the prize.

They’ve already collected the heads of three incumbent senators. More heads will roll (figuratively speaking, it should not need to be said).

Them’s my peeps.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Deep Wheat Checks In Before The Kansas Primary (cehwiedel.com)
• Reliable Analyst Sabato Predicts Virtual Political Katrina for Democrats In November (themoderatevoice.com)
• Outlook Dimming for Democrats (online.wsj.com)