Alex Isenstadt / Politico / October 31, 2010
(There's little left for Joe Biden and other Dems to do but wait for the expected losses of Election Day.)
The last TV ads have been cut. The final polls have been conducted. The end-of-campaign expenditures are being made.
Now, for Democratic consultants and campaign officials who have plotted and strategized for months to preserve the embattled House majority, there's nothing left to do but sit and wait for the expected horrors of Election Day to unfold.
There is nearly uniform consensus among Democratic campaign professionals that the House is gone — the only question, it seems, is how many seats they will lose.
While few will say so on the record for fear of alienating party officials or depressing turnout, every one of nearly a dozen Democratic House consultants and political strategists surveyed expect a GOP majority to be elected Tuesday — the consensus was that Democrats would lose somewhere between 50 and 60 seats.
A senior party consultant who was on the low end with his predictions said the party would lose between 40 and 50 seats. On the high end, one Democratic consultant said losses could number around 70 seats.
All spoke to the grimness of the mood.
"It sucks," said Dave Beattie, a Florida-based Democratic pollster who is working on a slate of competitive House races and who acknowledges that the lower congressional chamber is lost. "I'm resigned to the fact that it sucks."
While there was optimistic talk within party circles early this month that the electoral environment was improving for the party, the operatives said those conversations don't take place anymore.
"If some Democratic consultant told you they are feeling better, they must have dropped some heavy drugs," said a senior pollster who is working for candidates in competitive races. "It's hard."
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this week launched something of a last-ditch offensive to save some of its incumbents, purchasing airtime to defend endangered members like Iowa Rep. Dave Loebsack, Illinois Rep. Bill Foster and New Jersey Rep. John Adler — all of whom are highly vulnerable but whom party officials believe could ultimately prevail.
The committee also sought to shore up incumbents who until recently were not thought to be in electoral peril: Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley and North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre.
Still, among those in the Democratic consulting class, there's a gloomy acknowledgment that many of the incumbents the DCCC has spent millions of dollars to protect won't be coming back to Congress.
"Everybody that is tied will lose, and everyone that is ahead by a few points will lose because of the GOP wave," said one party media consultant who is involved in a wide array of House races. "There are going to be some surprises."
Some strategists have resigned themselves to an election night that will bring an early end to the promising careers of Democrats they shepherded to victories in 2006 and 2008.
"In a wave election, part of the problem is that you feel powerless. Everything I feel I know how to do, that I'm trained to do, I can't do. And that feeling is pervasive," said the pollster. "There's a sense that there's nothing you can do about it. When you know your friends are on the chopping block, it's hard."
"There's nothing worse than talking to an incumbent member of Congress who's been cut off by the DCCC and who has no money," said another Democratic consultant who has worked on crafting some of the party’s TV ads this cycle. "It's like talking to a dead man walking."
But Nov. 2 will also bring a welcome end to a rough final stretch that left many party strategists frustrated. Some talked about having to switch campaign strategies multiple times in hapless attempts to raise rock-bottom poll numbers.
"It's a 24-hour labor," said John Anzalone, an Alabama-based pollster who works closely with the DCCC. "In 2006 and 2008, everything was going your way. This is brutal."
There is ongoing debate within Democratic circles about when, exactly, the party lost its handle on the electoral environment. Some consultants say they realized they lost the House in early October, when it finally became apparent that incumbents couldn't move their poll numbers.
But others say the electoral map hardened this spring, after the House passed a health care bill that remains deeply unpopular among voters. Democratic campaign officials say it is no accident that there are few Democrats in moderate-to-conservative districts who have promoted their support for the health care measure on the campaign trail, and most don't even acknowledge it.
"To a lot of folks, it was a symbol of government," said Beattie, the Florida-based pollster. "It's not about the content for most voters."
Already, the finger-pointing is beginning. With outside conservative groups pouring millions of dollars into races across the country, some operatives singled out liberal interest groups for not engaging in the election.
"If there's one person to blame, it's the liberal groups who said they would get involved early but they didn't," said the media consultant. "I think they’ve been totally unhelpful."
But, most of the consultants said, much of the post-election scrutiny would surround President Barack Obama and a White House political operation that over the past two years struggled to sell an ambitious agenda that turned out to be radioactive to a wide swath of the electorate.
"Here's the part of this that bothers me the most: This is not an embracing of Republicans. It's a rejection of Democrats," said Andrew Myers, a veteran Democratic pollster who worked on several House campaigns.
