Thoughts about the Election/Looking Forward Thread

[sam h]

I imagine we will have plenty of posts about the recounts and so I thought I would start a thread about some broader trends coming out of the election and some ideas about the road ahead. Here are a few points I think are especially interesting:

(1) Territorial Polarization

Democratic pickups were overwhelmingly located in the northeast and midwestern “border” areas. We are thus seeing a continuation in the congress of the trend that has been present in presidential elections for some time. Dems are consolidating their strength in their geographic stronghold. Pennsylvania, once targeted by the GOP as the easiest part of the northeast to make inroads, now is looking much bluer. New Hampshire is almost entirely blue at this point. Perhaps most importantly for future concerns, Ohio also has experienced a huge color shift (more on this below).

(2) The End of Southern Domination?

For the first time in a very long while, the party controlling congress will not be the dominant party in the south of the country. As much as we heard about the Dem’s “50 state strategy”, this is a huge point – there is a winning congressional coalition that can be carved out of the northeast, west, midwest, and select urban districts elsewhere.

(3) Looking Ahead to the Presidential in 08

The biggest news for the Dems is that Ohio and (to a less important extent) New Hampshire have gotten much bluer. Not only did Ohio overwhelmingly elect a democratic governor and senator, they also elected two candidates who are pretty ardent about meat and potatoes distributive Democratic domestic issues. This bodes well for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008.

I think it is hard to tell how yesterday's results affected any specific candidate. My only intuition is that the gains Democrats made in Ohio and New Hampshire gives some incentive to the party to be more conservative about their nominee. Holding the Kerry states and keeping the newly blue Ohio is a winning formula. What you don't want is somebody with an obvious weakness (ie, Hillary) that might be exploited to change the conversation.

(4)Looking at the Future Congressional Outlook

The senate is obviously a lot easier to forecast in this respect than the house. Overall, the picture looks very rosy for the Dems in the senate. Because the Dems won so many total states yesterday, and because there were quite a few close GOP wins in 2002/2004 when the party was in much better shape overall, it looks like the GOP will be playing more defense in 2008 and 2010. Specifically, there are GOP senate seats up in 2008 in Colorado, Minnesota, and New Hampshire that also seem very winnable for the Democrats right now. The GOP strategy will probably focus on holding these and targeting Dems in Arkansas and South Dakota. As I said, who knows what will happen in the house? All that is clear is that 15 seats will be a lot for the GOP to pick up in the next cycle given that we still have a GOP president. Bottom line is that there is a pretty good chance of a democratic senate for the next six years and a democratic house for the next four.

(5) The GOP's Response

I think this is the big wildcard right now. The smart move is one that heads to the center, where the Dems just beat them pretty badly. But because so many centrist congressional Republicans just lost, the already shrinking "big tent" looks even smaller today. Its hard to organize a shift back toward the center when the powers-that-be are increasingly less likely to be of a centrist persuasion. I think one of the biggest points here comes out of exit polling regarding the economy. Despite the booming Dow and good underlying fundamentals in many respects, people who cared about the economy broke strongly Democratic. We hear a lot about how the GOP has to get back to its economic and fiscal fundamentals - the whole "we came to change Washington but Washington changed us" line - but it is not clear to me at all that this is really part of a winning strategy.