Can Democrats Take the House!?!?!

In a word, no.

There has been MUCH talk about the 2006 mid-term elections. Since The GOP seems to be in a weekly freefall, there has been much speculation over the ability of the Democrats to win back the House of Representatives. There has also been a great bit of comparison to the 1994 election cycle where the House and Senate switched to Republican leadership and has so remained ever since. Can the Dems win it all back?

Don't Believe it!

There are 2 key elements missing so far, and there is no reason these things will likely appear on the horizon anytime soon.

1. The Democrats have no unified plan. Ideas help and the dems have a few. the problem is that they are scattered and there is no successful effort being made to unify a group of Democratic Ideas for the candidates, across the board, to use. You cannot simply be against everything the GOP wants and call that a plan. If everything is going VERY poorly, as it is, you can get some mileage out of it, but there has to be a basic alternative plan or you will not win over enough people. We have to move beyond "THIS is a bad idea" as a campaign theory. It can be used, but to little effect without being paired with the new, better Democratic idea (whatever that is).


2. The maps are drawn against Democrats. Since the 2000 Census, the boundry lines for the US Congressional seats have been drawn in a way that is favorable to the Republicans. The GOP, most notably in Texas, has redrawn the districts to water down traditional Democratic support. Basically, after the realignment of the 1990s, the districts were re-drawn to favor the incumbents (GOP) and water down the Democratic presence in the various district. The effect here is that even with a dip in popularity, the Dems have their base in each district so watered down that they will have trouble putting together a coalition.

The GOP decided to make some districts a "SUPER" Democrat district that they'll never lose, but at the expense of other districts that might be in play. The worst part is that, in some areas, the Democrats inadvertantly helped the GOP do this (oh my, the stories I could tell)! Think about this country: evenly divided.

The Senate? nearly evenly divided.
The Presidential election? Split by only a few percentage points.
The House? Republican dominated!

This is because of a coordinated effort to make the GOP the party in power for generations. This is also the fact that seems to be ignored or omitted in every article i've read about the upcoming elections. Nationally, there is no bigger obstacle than this for the Dems and no one seems to want to talk about it.