WASHINGTON - As the 2006 US mid-term
election campaign officially got under way over
the three-day Labor Day weekend, Republican hopes
of retaining control of both houses of Congress
looked increasingly fragile.
Most
political analysts believe Democrats are poised to
gain a majority - albeit a narrow one - in the
House of Representatives for the first time since
1994 after the polls close on November 7.
Recapturing control of the Senate - where
the Democrats would have to make a net gain of six
seats - will be significantly more
difficult, although most
observers do not rule it out completely.
The stakes for President George W Bush are
high: even if only the lower house falls to the
Democrats, they will have the ability not only to
stymie his legislative agenda, but they are
virtually certain to launch high-profile and
potentially very damaging investigations of the
administration's performance, including
allegations of corruption and gross incompetence,
from Iraq to Hurricane Katrina.
Until now,
the Republican leadership in both houses has
protected the administration from that kind of
scrutiny.
A series of public opinion
surveys from last spring has suggested that voters
are more inclined to vote for Democratic
candidates than at any time since the aftermath of
the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon to
resign his presidency in 1974.
According
to polls conducted in the past month, voters
prefer a generic Democratic candidate over a
Republican rival in the House of Representatives
by an average margin of about 12%. That is close
to the margin of the voters' preference for
Republicans before the 1994 mid-term elections
when they won control of both houses of Congress
for the first time in 40 years.
The
public's loss of confidence in Bush's management
of the war in Iraq is viewed by the political pros
as the Republicans' biggest liability going into
the election. According to the latest polls,
nearly two-thirds of voters say they disapprove of
his handling of Iraq.
In recognition of
the damage inflicted on his party by the situation
in Iraq, Bush and his top aides launched a major
new campaign last week, in anticipation of the
fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks by
al-Qaeda on New York and the Pentagon, to
highlight the risks that a quick withdrawal from
that country would pose to the larger "global war
on terror".
But more bad news from Iraq,
such as a gloomy Pentagon report released in
Washington on Friday and fierce new fighting by US
and other Western soldiers against resurgent
Taliban forces in Afghanistan pose serious risks
to the White House's strategy. This is in addition
to the fact that the death toll for US troops and
military contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan
over the past five years has just surpassed the
2,973 people killed in the September 11 attacks
themselves.
Indeed, a New York Times/CBS
(Columbia Broadcasting System) poll conducted two
weeks ago found that, for the first time, a
majority of US voters see the war in Iraq as
distinct, if not a distraction, from the broader
anti-terror effort, a key Democratic theme in this
year's campaign and one that contradicts the
thrust of the administration's new offensive.
But it is not only Iraq that is hurting
Republicans, according to the analysts, who say
that concerns about the economy - particularly the
stagnation in real wages and the sharp rise in
gasoline prices - have contributed to a strong
anti-incumbent wave in public sentiment.
"I'm not saying this is another 1994," Tim
Hibbits, a West Coast-based independent pollster,
told the media this weekend. "But voters are not
happy. It's not just Iraq. It's also that most
people don't feel better off economically."
According to several major surveys taken
over the past month, the belief that the US is "on
the wrong track" is shared by an average of about
two-thirds of the public, at or near the highest
levels of the Bush presidency. Bush's overall
approval ratings have hovered between a dismal 35%
and 40% for most of 2006 - about 5 percentage
points lower on average than for the same time
last year.
All of these considerations
have put many Republican incumbents, particularly
those considered "moderate" in a party that has
moved ever more to the right under Bush, in a
difficult position. To survive Democratic
challenges, many of them have been trying to
distance themselves from the president -
particularly on Iraq.
To date, the most
significant defectors have been Connecticut
Congressman Chris Shays, formerly an enthusiastic
supporter of the Iraq war, who last week came out
in favor of what is increasingly the Democrats'
consensus position - setting a timetable for
withdrawal that would begin before the end of this
year. Another is Minnesota Congressman Gil
Gutknecht, who as recently as July had accused
Democrats during a fiery debate on the House floor
of "go[ing] wobbly" on Iraq.
All 435 House
seats are up for election on November 7. Democrats
will have to make a net gain of 15 seats to win
control. The vast majority - normally more than
90% - of the seats are considered "safe" for the
incumbent or the incumbent's party as a result of
"gerrymandering", the carving out, usually by
state governments, of legislative districts
designed to assure strong majorities by one party
or the other.
Of the 435 seats, an
unusually high 50 - of which 40 are currently held
by Republicans - are considered up for grabs. Over
the past several months, most political analysts
have increased their estimates of the number of
seats Democrats are likely to pick up.
Democrats face a much tougher challenge in
the Senate, where only a third of the 100 seats
will be on the ballot. Democrats, several of whom
are in trouble, currently hold 18 of those seats;
Republicans hold the remaining 15, at least seven
of which are considered "safe".
Despite
the unpopularity of their president and the
prevailing anti-incumbent sentiment, Republicans
still enjoy several advantages that Democrats lack
- including significantly more campaign money and
the ability of the White House to influence or
even control events.
