Eleanor Clift

For all the attention women are getting this election, when it's all over, there will be fewer in Congress, with the total declining for the first time since 1978. Progressive groups that have long relied on support from their sisters in power are bracing for trouble.

Nov. 2 will doubtless bring its share of surprises, and one of them could be that Democrats suddenly awaken to the threat posed by a Republican takeover of Congress. The same enthusiasts who got Obama elected may decide that the chance to deliver another big blow to the GOP is just too enticing to pass up.

The latest theories about Democrats who might challenge Obama in 2012 are wrong.

It used to be that you couldn't attack a female candidate without helping her. Barack Obama's comment during a debate that Hillary Clinton was "likable enough" helped cost him the New Hampshire primary.

How President Obama adjusts to the new reality on Capitol Hill will determine not only his reelection chances, but the staying power of the progressive agenda that he has begun to put in place. Whatever happens on Election Day, it's evident that Obama will have to find a new legislative strategy.

I'm loath to admit it, but I think there's been a failure of leadership in this White House. Why else would a party on the verge of extinction less than two years ago be poised to take over one or perhaps both chambers of Congress?

Tea Party types are not the only ones boiling mad. President Obama's supporters are angry at a White House they think has grown insular, and at a president who's lost his touch. The African-American woman who told Obama in a CNBC town-hall meeting this week that she was tired of defending him expressed the searing disappointment that so many Democrats feel.

Unlike '94, which was a top-down revolution led by Newt Gingrich and his deputy Dick Armey, today's revolution is marked by bottom-up disgust with both parties, and with ideas that are as unworkable and unrealistic as Armey's rants against government benefits. If the Tea Party ever got its way, a lot of people would be left with a broken tea cup.

The upcoming election has nothing to do with the Republicans. They're the beneficiaries of a completely unearned gift, and if they behave true to form, they'll squander it. They're like someone who's won the lottery. They're getting a windfall, but they haven't put forth any serious ideas about legislating, or governing.

The country's economy may be booming, but the Chinese have to look no further than America to see what will happen if they don't curb their energy appetite and address the growing gap between rich and poor.

Like it or not, the midterm election is shaping up as a referendum on President Obama. His dizzying descent from the stratosphere of popularity to the kind of middling job approval associated with lesser talents could cost Democrats their majority in the House as well as effective control of the Senate. The only saving grace for Democrats is the roster of fringe candidates the GOP has served up, and the hope that voters will reject the change these Tea Party insurgents represent.

In defending the right of Muslims to build an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Ground Zero, President Obama said the right thing, but sometimes the right thing is not enough. Perhaps forgetting he is no longer a constitutional law professor and that his words would be amplified by the context in which he said them, Obama seemed genuinely surprised at the parsing of his words.

After six years, the corruption investigation of former Republican power broker Tom DeLay is dropped by Obama's Justice Department. Why that could be good for Democrats.

A trio of wealthy women running for office is set to transform the American political landscape, but not necessarily for the better.

As a kid who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, the son of an alderman, and a Democratic committeeman, Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski had a heightened appreciation for the symbols of power and wealth. One of his most prized possessions was a Camp David jacket presented to him by President George H.W. Bush.

Ted Stevens was born in Indiana, but it was Alaska and its rugged terrain that he identified with and that shaped his career, and his life. He chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee for many years, and from that perch he was able to steer an extraordinary amount of federal largesse to Alaska.

Two freshman Democrats from Virginia, swept into office on the wave of enthusiasm generated by Barack Obama, are now struggling to stay afloat in a sea of discontent about the president.

The powerful Ways and Means chairman may have thought his colleagues would cut him some slack. They didn't. Rangel's long and storied career now stands at a sad impasse.

There wasn't any real suspense about how the Senate would vote today on the Disclose Act, which would require a corporate or union sponsor of a campaign ad to physically appear in it so the public knows where the backing is coming from. So why was President Obama in the Rose Garden making an urgent appeal for passage?

There's a 2.0 version of health care's public-option debate, and her name is Elizabeth Warren. She's the Harvard law professor who's been giving Treasury Department insiders heartburn over their excessive generosity to Wall Street bigwigs. Liberals are lobbying hard for Warren to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, warning the White House that failure to do so would rival the left's disappointment over President Obama's refusal to fight for a public option.

Palin has George W. Bush's disdain for intellectual elites, and she lives the rhetoric. She's undisciplined intellectually, but she's got street smarts, and they count.

Confidence in President Obama as the agent of change to restore the economy and chart a positive course has deteriorated to the point where nearly six in 10 voters say they "lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country," according to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll.

The prospect of the November elections becoming a replay of 1994 has Democrats running scared everywhere except, apparently, at the White House, where the famous Obama cool keeps everyone's emotions in check. Sure, losses are expected in the first midterm of a new president, but let's not lose too much sleep over it.

By not clearly articulating a simple, bumper-sticker-friendly economic policy, Obama is risking the rest of his presidency.

The late senator from West Virginia was a stickler for following the rules. It made him one of the most powerful legislators of the last century.

Obama, stymied by the GOP, seems at a loss when it comes to creating jobs. The administration can turn around the bleak job numbers in time for his reelection, but not in time for Democrats this fall.

They object to Obama. Fine—but it's worth asking how they would handle something like the gulf oil spill.

The trailblazing journalist will be 90 years old on Aug. 4. She has been a fixture in Washington and an undisputed pioneer. It's her storied career that should be remembered, not just a few moments of a YouTube video.

Rather than naming yet another commission to examine what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, the president needs to do something more visibly demonstrative to address the problems caused by the catastrophe.

Separate interests have led to separate lives. And a definitive end to political life.