Democrats are heady with the intoxicating prospect of victory in the November mid-terms. Their internal polls, run by Stan Greenberg, suggest a wave of Republican defectors is coming their way, driven by resentment of Bush for Iraq, the wretched response to Hurricane Katrina and high petrol prices, and against the Republicans over corruption in congress. On the basis of Greenberg's numbers, pundit Jim Carville is reporting "major shifts in the deep south and rural areas… blue-collar white men, and the best-educated married men with high incomes… big Democratic gains among older (over 50) non-college voters, vulnerable women, practising Catholics and the best-educated men. It is as if the entire centre of the electorate shifted."
Since other polls give the Democrats a 16-20 per cent lead among independents, Carville expects the kind of victory that swept Newt Gingrich and his team to power in 1994. The Dems need to win 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six in the Senate. And the prospect of taking back even one house brings a devilish glint to their eyes because then they could use their control of congressional committees to start inquiries into just about everything the Bush team has done, starting with Iraq, WMD, intelligence and so on.
"It will be raining subpoenas," enthuses Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey. The entire White House and Pentagon political staffers will be making so many trips up to testify on Capitol Hill that they'll have little time for anything else—which is what the Republicans tried to do to Clinton after their 1994 win.
Don't forget about Rove
But no campaign is over until Karl Rove sings his fiendishly divisive arias. Over the next six months we will hear a lot about gay marriage, partial-birth abortion, God and country, as Rove rallies the faithful and the imposing Republican election machinery grinds out the vote. The real problem is the way gerrymandering of election districts has become so institutionalised that only a handful of incumbents are in danger of being voted out. The Dems are pumping money into the 18 Republican congressional seats in which Kerry beat Bush in the 2004 presidential race. But they have to win all but three. And they could lose one of their own Senate seats in Maryland, where the Republicans are running a popular black candidate.
The toxic president
Some Republicans are distancing themselves from their president. Judy Topinka is the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois, but she does not want her president coming to campaign for her. Columnist George Will asked Topinka and her top aide if she wanted Bush to visit. She stayed silent, and the aide replied: "We just want him to raise money." Long pause. "Late at night." Another pause. "In an undisclosed location." But there is one person less popular even than Bush—the Republicans' former leader in congress, Tom "the Hammer" DeLay, who has announced his resignation from the house to face charges of misusing campaign funds. Even though DeLay had just won the nomination in a contested primary to re-fight his seat, he has backed out, thanks to a little-known loophole in the election law that allows him to devote the $1.3m remaining in his campaign war chest to pay for his legal expenses. And whatever happens, he'll get an annual congress pension of $67,000 plus all medical bills.
Ted Kennedy saves democracy
Condoleezza Rice made a big event of her state department's 262-page report "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy," which boasted of an unprecedented $1.4bn spend on spreading democracy in 95 countries. But in Iraq, the reality is sharp cuts in democracy-building programmes. The National Democratic Institute and its Republican counterpart, which have been trying to help to build political parties and civil society in Iraq, see their grants from the state department's agency for international development end on 31st April. The US Institute of Peace has been hit with a 60 per cent cut in its funding for democracy promotion in Iraq. And the National Endowment for Democracy, where Bush first made his speech about building democracies in the Arab world, will have no money for Iraq by the end of the summer. Bush has asked for $117bn in extra funding for Iraq and Afghan wars in the last 12 months, but just $10m of that was for democracy promotion. The entire democracy programme would have collapsed but for Ted Kennedy, who opposed the war in the first place. He organised the Senate equivalent of a whip-round to secure bi-partisan support for an extra $56m.
Making the 2008 running
Political gambling is getting very short-term. Sportsbook.com is offering bets on whether Bush's approval ratings will be over or under 39 per cent on 1st May. The more conventional "Las Vegas line," set by odds-maker Danny Sheridan, will give you a 3-1 bet on Hillary in 2008, with John McCain at 6-1 and Rudy Giuliani and Virginia senator George Allen both at 7-1. The next Democrats in the betting are former Veep candidate John Edwards, Senator Evan Bayh and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, each at 20-1. Allen thinks the Republicans are toast in 2008, unless they run McCain and Giuliani.
