Democrats in trouble

Karl Rove:

Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia governors' races last week—despite eight campaign appearances in the two states by President Barack Obama—have unnerved Democrats.

Over the weekend, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod tried to calm jittery Democrats who might go wobbly on the president's ambitious agenda by telling NBC's Chuck Todd that next year's congressional elections will be "nationalized." Because they "will be a referendum on this White House," he said, voters will turn out for Mr. Obama. Mr. Todd summed up Mr. Axelrod's plans by saying, "It's almost like a page from the Bush playbook of 2002."

I appreciate the reference. Only two presidents have picked up seats in both houses of Congress for their party in their first midterm elections. One was FDR in 1934. The other was George W. Bush in 2002, whose party gained House seats and won back control of the Senate.

But those midterm elections might not be a favorable comparison for this White House. The congressional elections were nationalized seven years ago largely because national security was an overriding issue and Democrats put themselves on the wrong side of it by, among other things, catering to Big Labor.

At the time, there was a bipartisan agreement to create the new Department of Homeland Security. Democrats insisted that every inch of the department be subject to collective bargaining. They pushed for this even though sections of every other department can be declared off-limits to unionization for national security reasons. What Democrats wanted was shortsighted and dangerous. Voters pounded them for it.

Mr. Bush also had a record of bipartisanship that included winning passage of the No Child Left Behind Act with the support of Democrats Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller. And he had a popular agenda of tax cuts, regulatory reform, and sound leadership in the wake of 9/11 that the GOP could run on. Mr. Obama lacks a comparable foundation.

Instead, the narrative Obama White House officials are writing about themselves is that they are uncompromising, ungracious, and ready to run roughshod over popular opinion. They have mastered the Chicago way of politics: reward friends, punish enemies, and jam the opposition. Voters have a tendency to quickly grow tired of pugnacious governance.

That's only the beginning of Mr. Axelrod's problems. If the 2010 midterms are nationalized, they will be a referendum on Mr. Obama's increasingly unpopular policies. For example, in the newest Gallup survey released on Monday, only 29% say they'd advise their congressman to vote for the health-care bill. This is down from 40% last month. A Rasmussen poll out this week shows that 42% of Americans strongly oppose the bill, while only 25% strongly favor it.

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Strongly oppose may be an understatement. The passion on this issue is with the opposition to the Democrat health care bill and it is not going to dissipate because the bill passed. In fact it is very likely to become more intense by election time.

Rove goes on to point out another issue where voters are passionate and Obama is on the wrong side--the deficit. The Perot voters are outraged and they constitute many of the independents who have moved into the GOP camp on the generic ballot which puts Republicans a head of Democrats by several points right now.

Obama is starting to make noises about the deficit, but there is nothing he can really do, because he is tied to big spending programs like the stimulus which is not working and the health care bill which people do not want. On top of that he has vowed not to raise taxes and he can't fix the deficit by stopping the wars.