The mid terms will finally come to a close today. In history this is usually a difficult day for an incumbent president's party. Given the amount of controversy and criticism President Bush has received surrounding the Iraq war it would be an election or Rovian miracle for the Republicans to stave of election day disaster.
Disaster should be defined however. The Democrats need 16 house seats and 6 senate seats to take over both houses of congress. On the surface it would seem quite plausible for them to do this.
Digging a little deeper however exposes some things that make it a bit more difficult, particularly in the senate. The Democrats need a net gain of 6 seats but that also means they need to run the table on the 18 seats that they are currently defending.
Two weeks ago it would have seemed to be a slam dunk for a tidal wave striking the Republicans in both houses but that all seemed to change over the past week. The face of that changed seems to have been the national attention given to John Kerry's remarks regarding soldiers end up in Iraq. A joke it may have meant to be but an insult is was it was interpreted as.
This may have only been the straw that broke the camel's back of the Democratic momentum. Their are a number of more important underlying issues that may make voters think twice in the voting booth.
In no particular order of importance are the following reasons for the Republicans to feel somewhat heartened; Oil prices have been dropping like a stone and this has very positive impact on pocketbooks at home. With the rise in the Dow to historic levels, the average voter can see tangible results in his 401k. The unemployment rate is near 4.4% which by any measure is a very positive number. Corporate profits have continued strong and the merger and acquisitions business has picked up substantially. The bond market has remained steady with the 30 year treasury still well below five percent. By these indicators alone the Democrats have an uphill battle.
In another item not given much media attention. The government had posted a large number of Iraqi documents captured during the war. In those documents were allegedly very sensitive plans for nuclear devices. The Democrats were placed in the tenuous position of continuing to argue against the idea that Iraq had WMD's yet were forced to call for the removal of Iraq's nuclear plans from the net.
In foreign policy issues, the major news was the North Koreans announcing their intention to return to the six party talks. The significant reaction here was the stiff response announced by the Japanese. They said don't bother to come back unless you renounce nuclear weapons.
The main issue for the Democrats remains the Iraq War and try as they might to exploit anti war feelings they have been stoked but are not the raging issue that the Democrats could exploit in a strong return to power. This was apparent early on when the party dumped Joe Lieberman in Connecticut. The hard left in that state will be unable to fend off an independent run by Lieberman and the question is only how badly Lamont will be defeated.
All in all it should be a good day for the Democrats as they probably will win enough seats to take the house. It will be a disaster for them if they don't.
