Democrats' 2010 Election Strategy

Presuming that health care reform passes and is signed into law sometime early next year, what is the Democrats' political strategy for the 2010 midterm elections. Apparently the strategy is to run on the health care reform bill and George W. Bush.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's theory is that once health care reform is passed, the slide in the polls that President Obama and the Democrats have been enduring will reverse and will start to creep upward. There also seems to be the sense that Americans just do not understand the benefits that Democrats say health care reform will bring.

Rahm Emanuel points to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was unpopular with Democratic constituencies at the time, but then enjoyed a bounce in support. The problem is that a more appropriate example would be the passage of the Clinton tax increases by one vote each in the Senate and the House in 1993, which started to permanently sour voters on the then decades old Democratic controlled Congress. Tax increases (which are also a feature of Obamacare) do not tend to improve with age.

The second part of the Democrats' strategy was revealed by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the head of the Democrats Congressional Campaign Committee. The idea is that Democratic Congressional candidates will run not so much against their opponents than against George W. Bush. The message will be that the rascally Republicans just want to turn the clock back to George W. Bush, who left office less than a year ago with abysmal approval ratings.

The problem is that there is a growing nostalgia for George W. Bush, increasingly being seen as a decisive war leader whose administration, for the most part, featured prosperity. A recent poll, using a imaginary match up, placed Bush just six points behind President Obama, a remarkable result considering that Bush is depicted in the media as Satan and Obama as Christ, only cooler.

An objective analyst might suggest that the Democrats are just in denial about the depths of the trouble they are in. Passing a sweeping piece of legislation that the vast majority of the American people are opposed to will not cause those same American people to vote for the Senators and Congressmen who vote for it. George W. Bush will not be on the ballot next year, though a case could be made that if he were, he just might be an asset.

The first part of reaction to impending doom is denial. One can hardly wait for bargaining, anger, depression, and then, finally, acceptance.

Sources:Democrats Pin 2010 Hopes on Bill, Jonathon Weisman, Wall Street Journal, December 21st, 2009

2010 Campaign Preview: Democrats To Say GOP Still Party Of Bush, Christina Bellantoni, TPMDC, December 17th, 2009

Americans Are Starting to Miss President Bush, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, November 8th, 2009

Bush Closes the Gap, Ben Smith, Politico, December 8th, 2009