As President Obama scans the chairs at the joint session of Congress Tuesday night, he can’t escape the foreboding that a year from now both houses, not just one, will be controlled by Republicans.
Democrat departures are reportedly on the way. Democrats need a turnover of 17 seats to take back the House.
With each passing week, that hill gets steeper.
They need to retain at least six Democrat seats in the Senate to keep the majority there – and that is far from assured, with Senate incumbents in Alaska, Louisiana and Arkansas facing challenges.
The Democrat are in a funk.
They are in the dumps because the leader of the party has parked his charisma somewhere, even with liberals.
Last week’s Quinnipiac University poll tells a grim story. Quinnipiac thought it was now relevant to ask whether Obama is “paying attention” to his job. When was the last time a national poll asked that about a president?
By a margin of 53 percent to 42 percent, responders said Obama is not competent to be president. Obama is a net negative on trustworthiness, handling of the economy, health care and foreign policy.
Little of what the president says Tuesday night will have a positive bearing on this year’s midterms.
For all Obama’s fuss about income inequality, Democrats’ House and Senate races will be largely local. The underlying theme of the their campaigns will be about surviving Obama.
Which opens to the president the course he likes best: talk. And in the first remarks Obama made this month, he handed the Republicans an issue.
Returning from vacation, he boasted that he has “a pen and a phone.”
This is a renewal of his threat to govern devoid of Congress through arm-twisting and by executive order.
A question, then, for all voters this November: Do you really want to give this man more power?
http://www.buffalonews.com/columns/opinion/uphill-battle-awaits-slumping-democrats-20140127
