Clift: Money Moves to Tight Races

Races that were never in play before are suddenly on Chuck Schumer's radar screen. The feisty and sometimes abrasive New York senator runs the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee like it's the campaign of a lifetime, and if the Democrats wrest control from the ruling party during a time of war, he deserves much of the credit. His counterpart, North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, has been no match, running the GOP campaign effort like a bureaucratic exercise and just one more box to check on her illustrious resume.

With the election just days away, Schumer met with reporters Thursday to announce he was moving a million dollars into Arizona, a GOP stronghold, where tracking numbers show a little-known challenger, Jim Pederson, within striking distance of Republican Sen. Jon Kyl. Told the Republicans were putting more resources into Maryland and Michigan, where their candidates were closing, Schumer grinned, "God bless 'em". Noting that polls were putting Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow comfortably ahead of her Republican rival, he added with a Cheshire-cat grin, "I think they're running out of places to put their money."

This is shaping up as one of those historic-wave elections, a primal scream from voters that says they're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. It happens about once a decade, a repudiation of the ruling class that reminds us we're still a democracy. We saw it in 1980 when the Republicans took control of the Senate and nationally known Democrats like Birch Bayh, George McGovern, Frank Church and John Culver, who thought they had seats for life, all went down to surprise defeats. The same thing happened in 1994 when the Republicans won 54 seats in the House, vaulting themselves into the majority for the first time in 40 years and capturing the seat of Democratic Speaker Tom Foley, who never dreamed he was vulnerable.

If the Democrats don't take back the House, it will be a stunning upset. The war in Iraq is the galvanizing, overriding issue. And in an election like this, where every national indicator points to big Democratic gains, the Senate is likely to mirror the House. Democrats can't quite believe that victory is at hand. "The underlying psychology is Charlie Brown kicking the football," says Paul Equale, a Democratic consultant. "Stick Karl Rove's face on Lucy, and that's your comic strip." This time, though, Rove's machinations can't overcome Bush's low approval rating, a Congress in the teens, right track/wrong track numbers that reflect an electorate ready for change and a generic ballot that shows a wider spread between Republicans and Democrats than existed in '94, the last big upheaval.

With so many people voting on the basis of Iraq, the president will have to abandon his pre-election bravado about sticking with his war team. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be in the cross hairs when the recriminations begin. While some Democrats will read the election results as a rejection of Bush's hard-line conservatism, it's really more about competence. "This is a tale of two cities, Baghdad and New Orleans," says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow with the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference. He traces the GOP decline to the handling of Hurricane Katrina, which pulled back the mask to reveal an administration in disarray and out of touch. Bush's performance in Iraq then came under greater scrutiny, exposing a lack of planning and naive idealism that cost him and his party the public's support and, ultimately, their control of Congress.

The Republican coalition that has held together since '94 is under severe stress. Shut out by the White House and expected to play the loyal cheerleaders, those who survive will be baring their souls once the election is behind them. There will be a lot more candid assessments about the war in Iraq, with Republican stalwarts like Virginia Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stepping up to the task of telling the White House that the country cannot sustain Bush's open-ended commitment in Iraq. They will have seen the toll the war has taken in this election and conclude that Bush's fantasy of establishing democracy in the Middle East is just that, a fantasy. Bush has told interviewers he's read three books about George Washington, and he marvels that they're still writing about his legacy, as though in 300 years a revisionist historian will come along and conclude Bush had it right when he staked his presidency on a war in Iraq. The first draft of history will be written on Tuesday. How Bush responds will determine the ultimate verdict on his presidency and his war.