Daily updates and analysis on national politics from James Pindell.
The response by the opposition party, more a cup of weak tea than a
double-espresso call to arms, was a vivid reminder of the power shortage
among Democrats, who currently lack leaders who can speak credibly for
the entire party and present a forceful counterweight to President
Trump. Much of this relates to their disastrous setbacks of 2016, with
Hillary Clinton losing the presidential race and the party failing to
gain control of the Senate.
The minority party cannot control the congressional agenda, lacks
subpoena power, and can’t drive the direction of House and Senate
investigative hearings. High dudgeon on “Face the Nation” or the Senate
floor only gets you so far.
“There’s no person head and shoulders
above other Democrats right now,” said Dick Harpootlian, a former
chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “If you look to
Congress . . . there’s nobody there who is really generating any
enthusiasm or excitement on opposing Trump.
“I don’t see anyone out there beating the drum in a way that resonates.”
If
anything, last week’s dismissal of Comey, Trump’s crisis of
credibility, and the tepid responses from Democrats may have given the
country more cause to wonder if either party is up to the demands and
needs of this political moment.
Certainly, GOP leaders don’t seem
about to stand up to Trump when their adversaries can’t or won’t. Even
though the president acknowledged in an NBC interview that he fired the
FBI director because he objected to the investigation into his
campaign’s possible collusion in Russia’s election, Senate majority
leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have resisted calls
for an independent commission or special counsel to investigate.
With
partisan divisions wider than ever, there are few voices in the middle
who can or will speak to the frustration of most Americans. Instead,
electoral warfare dictates the message.
Recent fund-raising
e-mails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee arrived
with the following subject lines: “NO ONE saw this coming” “this is a
disaster” and “U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E.” And these overheated messages
all arrived
before the news dropped about Trump firing Comey.
Harpootlian
noted that in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Americans picked a
president from far outside the Washington quagmire: President Jimmy
Carter, a Georgia Democrat.
“There is somebody out there who will come out of this morass in four years or sooner,” Harpootlian predicted.
Yet in 2018 in Washington, the number that matters most
is 24. That is how many seats Democrats need to gain to recapture
control of the House of Representatives (the Senate is rated out of
reach, for now). And when it comes to district-by-district campaign
tactics, the absence of a strong national Democratic leader may not
matter that much.
“One of the oldest rules in politics is when
your opponent is killing themselves, don’t get in the way,” said Tad
Devine, a Democratic strategist who helped engineer Bernie Sanders’
presidential campaign. “They are digging their own grave. Let them keep
digging.”
A Quinnipiac University poll released May 10 has Trump’s
job approval rating at 38 percent, a near-record low for the president.
Should those kinds of numbers persist, Devine and other Democrats
predict a wave election that will sweep them into the House majority.
After
Republicans voted 10 days ago to repeal President Barack Obama’s health
care plan, the political handicapper Cook Political Report shifted its
rating of likely victors in 20 House districts — all in favor of
Democrats.
“Pressure has to come from the states and outside D.C.,
and we are seeing a ton of that around the fight against the Republican
health care plan and for a special prosecutor,” said Mindy Myers, the
executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“With enough public outcry, Congress cannot ignore [it].’’
But
Democrats still have yet to fully reckon with their party’s shocking
2016 defeat. Party operatives and lawmakers still point to Clinton’s
popular vote win as evidence of the party’s underlying national appeal.
Clinton herself gave a recent interview in which she blamed Comey’s
October public statement on the e-mail investigation for the
presidential result, a view that gives short shrift to Democrats’
profound failures in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where
working-class voters turned on the party.
Republicans, after taking an electoral pounding in 2012, Obama’s reelection year, took a hard look at what led to their losses.
And
while they may not have followed the recommendations from their 97-page
campaign autopsy report — it called for greater outreach to women,
immigrants, and minorities, among other things — they at least examined
the cadaver.
