Seven million dollars a day: That's how much money the Obama campaign is raking in. Together with the eye-popping $150 million the campaign amassed in September, we are witnessing the equivalent of a collective scream from the voters. In the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling that declared political contributions are a form of speech, millions of donors to the Obama campaign are shouting that they're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore.
Absent is the usual tension over the allocation of resources that erupts among party leaders when tough decisions must be made. Democrats are awash in money and expecting big gains in Congress. Four years ago, party leaders were furious at John Kerry for husbanding his resources for a legal battle that never occurred. When Kerry conceded Ohio instead of mounting a challenge to the vote count, his campaign was left with a war chest that prompted bitter recriminations among Democrats.
Today Democrats are unified, their candidates are doing well even in red states, and Barack Obama is spreading the wealth. His campaign is spending money in media markets that haven't heard from a national Democrat in decades. Obama is not going to win Mississippi, but his campaign is spending a fortune on advertising in the state, and they're doing it for one reason: to help the first Democrat seriously in contention to win an open Senate seat in Mississippi since the pre-Civil Rights era.
Obama's expenditures in Georgia, where he probably won't win, and North Carolina, where he might, are turning two once-safe Republican seats into competitive contests. Republican icon Elizabeth Dole, who has fallen behind challenger Kay Hagan, is running ads warning the voters not to give the Democrats a blank check—a message that implicitly concedes the presidency to Obama. Georgia's Saxby Chambliss won his Senate seat six years ago by attacking the patriotism of Vietnam veteran and triple amputee Max Cleland. Now that the mood has turned, Chambliss is an especially inviting target for Democrats eager for payback.
"Saturday Night Live" alumnus Al Franken's bid for a Senate seat in Minnesota seemed like a joke in early September, when Republicans gathered for their convention in St. Paul. Now he's built a small lead against GOP incumbent Norm Coleman, who is touring the state in what he calls the Hope Express, an Obama knockoff. In another nod to Obama and the core message of his campaign to end partisan rancor, Coleman pulled his negative ads, a nice gesture but one that comes so late in the campaign that it's easy to dismiss as a stunt.
Democrats are eyeing 75 "opportunity seats" in the House of Representatives. They won't win them all, but a 25-seat pickup is possible. (The current lineup is 235 Democrats; 199 Republicans; 0 Independents; 1 Vacancies.) Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, who told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that she suspects Obama harbors "anti-American views" and called on the media to investigate Democrats in the Congress who might be fellow travelers, has seen her once-safe seat become competitive. Bachman seemed unaware of the historical echoes from the McCarthy era, when charges of being a communist sympathizer destroyed lives and careers. Her baseless charges generated an immediate backlash. Overnight, her opponent raised a million dollars, and the Cook Political Report, a bipartisan ratings guide, now calls the race a toss-up.
At a breakfast with reporters Friday morning, Democratic strategist James Carville urged the assembled to look around, and remember how everything looked today. "Nothing will be the same" after Election Day, Carville suggested. "This place is going to get hit" with political change on a scale folks haven't seen before. Carville is given to hyperbole, but he and his sidekick from the Clinton era, pollster Stan Greenberg, produced numbers and charts and scenarios to back up their prediction that Washington's ruling class is about to undergo massive political upheaval. Obama is pulling away in the national polls, and the McCain-Palin ticket is cratering with independents—a group of voters John McCain used to own, back before the word "maverick" was more than a punch line.
To understand the scale of what's happening, Greenberg cited numbers that show Obama winning the tax argument over Joe the Plumber, eroding one of the last vestiges of Republican dominance—the ability to effectively paint Democrats as big tax-and-spenders. McCain's admission that he would tax employer health benefits has made a bigger impact on voters than Obama's remark that he wanted to spread the wealth.
The country seems poised for another "wave" election, where the close seats fall in one direction. "We've not had a leader elected in this kind of environment in our lifetime," said Greenberg. You have to go back to 1930 and 1932 to see two wave elections in a row. At the National Press Club, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was asked what would happen if the Democrats "only" picked up seven seats, and fell short of the nine they would need for a filibuster-proof Senate. (The Dems currently have 49 seats plus two independents that caucus with them). "Only seven seats!" Schumer exclaimed. "We haven't had that many seats since 1979!"
Surely Schumer has not forgotten the election of 1980, in which Ronald Reagan won the White House, brought his own wave of Republican senators with him—and help usher in an era of conservative reign that is only now in danger of winding down. That serves as a timely reminder that what voters give, they can just as easily take away.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
