Getting Tired of Others Carrying Your Water?
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 10/05/2002 3:09:57 AM PDT by Freedomsfriend
Matthew Engel in Washington Saturday October 5, 2002 The Guardian
Everyone admires Connie Morella. She is one of those female politicians who comes across as nice and mumsy without being ineffectual. Her Washington colleagues regard her highly. And after 16 years in Congress, she is well enough known for her campaign posters to say simply "Connie".
But Mrs Morella is in deep political trouble, and the chances are that a month from today, when the US midterm elections are held, the voters of her district in Maryland will decide to make her an ex-congresswoman. On her fate - and that of a handful of others - hangs, not the existence of the Bush presidency, but much of its power.
Mrs Morella represents the mainly wealthy suburbs that sprawl north of Washington DC. The area is full of up-market Democrats, and her campaign agenda - election finance reform, the environment, public transport - sounds more Gore-ite than Bushie. Her liberal Republicanism makes her heiress to a once-vibrant tradition that dates back to Abraham Lincoln, and American voters often ignore party lines to support a politician they know and like.
But, as her opponent, Chris van Hollen, keeps pointing out, the first votes she will cast if she gets re-elected will be to support her party's rightwing leaders for the top jobs in the House of Representatives. In the current partisan atmosphere, that is a telling and perhaps decisive argument.
Though the presidency is not at stake, the midterm elections involve all 435 House seats and 34 of the 100 Senate seats, along with all but 14 of the 50 state governorships. At the moment, the Republicans control the House by a 223-212 margin. If the Democrats knock off Ms Morella and five others, they would finally win back control of a body that for the past eight years has been an engine room of rightwing radicalism.
Unfortunately for them, they find it hard to name five more seats they really expect to gain.
They control the Senate by one seat, achieved after the defection of the Republican Jim Jeffords last year. But they are fearful of losing that advantage and, with it, control of the committees and the leverage that has helped them thwart the president on a whole range of policies.
Historically, the party in the White House is the one at risk in midterm elections. But these are strange times, and in the past two weeks the sense of desperation has grown among Democrats. The president's high poll numbers do not necessarily translate into success in individual local contests, but they do prevent the opposition the kind of momentum that might translate into serious gains, especially if they cannot even get air time for the issues they want to address (ie anything but Iraq).
Four of the Democrats' Senate seats are now endangered. In New Jersey, an ethically challenged incumbent, Robert Torricelli, withdrew in embarrassment this week, to be replaced by an 78-year-old ex-senator, Frank Lautenberg, who happens to be Mr Torricelli's worst enemy.
This is now going to the supreme court. The Republicans, hoping for another decision to match Bush v Gore in 2000, claim it is too late for a replacement on the ballot.
They also have a strong target seat in South Dakota, and are hurling everything at this to embarrass the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, in his home state by ousting his colleague, Tim Johnson. Next door in Minnesota, the anti-war liberal Paul Wellstone, who reneged on a promise he would only serve for two terms, may be granted his original wish.
There is also a fascinating battle in Missouri, the state where John Ashcroft, now the attorney general, contrived in 2000 to lose his seat to a dead man. That was Mel Carnahan, killed in a plane crash just before the vote. His widow, Jean, was temporarily installed as senator, but could now be beaten, in which case the Democrats would lose their majority at once, rather than in January. Because the Missouri vote is a "special election", Mrs Carnahan would be out right away.
It is so far unclear whether a scandal-ette in Iowa, where an aide to Senator Tom Harkin was caught bugging a Republican strategy meeting, might add that to the list of potential Republican gains.
The Democrats themselves have hopes in New Hampshire, Arkansas (where the "family values" Republican senator has just left his family), Colorado and Texas, where the black former mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, has a chance of breaching the currently all-white Senate.
But those hopes are fading, just as they are in several House seats the Democrats would normally expect to pick up. The sad irony is that, the way things are going, Connie Morella - a Republican they actually like - might be one of a handful they succeed in removing.
How do you "contrive" to lose your seat to a dead man?
If only that were true.
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