Even an organization as spineless as the Democrats aren’t going to let something like this pass without delivering a little carnage.
Personally I don’t think things are looking good for Tim Kaine. I don’t if anyone here saw the Daily Show interview he did a few weeks back, but his basic selling point seemed to be “We suck less than the Republicans.” And overall the party under his leadership has done pretty shitty job of defending itself against the Tea Party infused Republicans.
So who else in the DNC will likely “be spending more time with their family” after the election.
Surely this depends on if they lose, and if the loss is “big”, and how big.
So, on the wild, crazy, and completely-unsupported-by-polling assumption that the Democrats lose in November… is there an answer to the OP’s question? Perhaps several answers, premised on general scenarios like:
A) Lose the House by a small ( <10 ) number of seats, keep Senate
B) Lose House by 35+ seats, keep Senate
C) Lost House by 35+ seats, lose Senate
If heads roll, it will just be on general principles, not in response to any widespread demand. I’m a pretty solid Dem, but I had to go to Wikipedia to find out who Tim Kaine is. The parties’ institutional leaders, as distinct from elected public officials, just don’t matter much to the rank-and-file. Nor do they have very much power over what the party as a party does.
As discussed in this thread, maybe that should change.
Likely Tim Kaine will be out of a job. But that was probably going to happen anyways.
Obviously if Reid loses the Senate leadership will be shaken up (and it might be anyways).
A lot of the party-administration positions (DNC, DSCC, etc…) change after most elections anyways, if I recall correctly.
I’m not so sure there will be a landslide “house cleaning”. I’m not sure there won’t be either. Regardless of what any polls, analysts, or wishful thinkers say, there is only one count that matters. Right up until then, it’s all up for grabs. “Dewey Wins” and all that. Now as to “spineless Dems”… I would think that sort of “hey guys let’s fight” wouldn’t be a smart way to start a general debate?
I agree with Bryan Ekers’ post. And it’s strange that Bricker did not include any scenarios under which the Democrats keep the House, although that’s about as likely as the Republicans taking the Senate, at current odds.
It’s hard to believe that anyone thinks the current dynamic is somehow the fault of political operatives like Tim Kaine, but people like to point fingers.
There’s an interesting dichotomy to these elections, in that when a party loses at the polls, it’s the most moderate members lose the most. This is not because the public is turning against moderates, but because these members tend to represent districts or states that are moderate or lean against the ideology of these moderates, and their seats are always the “swing seats”. As a result, the composition of the remaining members tends to get more polarized. OTOH, there’s a widely shared perception that in order to appeal to a broader audience, the parties need to be more moderate, and appealing to a broader audience is just what the parties are looking to do in the aftermath of an electoral drubbing. On the third hand, if there’s one available, this widely shared perception is frequently not shared by ideologues themselves, who frequently believe that the public would find more appealing a more liberal/conservative stance, and is only being turned off by the watered down version being put out by the moderates. All in all it’s an interesting dynamic.
Michael Steele will conclude that he is a genius.
Who really cares. Didn’t anyone see The Distinguished Gentleman?
TBH I haven’t trusted political polls since they all said that Labour were going to win in the UK in 1992.
The worry many liberals like myself have is that somehow the dems will assume their problem is they didn’t act conservative enough. When the real problem is more that they didn’t act liberal enough to encourage the base and they didn’t focus on jobs enough to encourage independents.
That is true in the house, but I don’t know about the senate because moderates in the senate have won with 60%+ of the vote in places like Maine and Indiana before. I believe the vast majority of dem seats that are going to be lost in the house in 2010 will be conservadem and blue dog dems, because those are the districts where the GOP and conservative voters have the most influence. I don’t think many members of the progressive caucus will lose their house seats in 2010.
Not only that, but ‘moderate’ is usually what it is called when the opposing party takes a seat. If you have an extremely conservative part of the country (the south as an example) you can either have deeply conservative republicans or moderate/conservative democrats but not many deeply liberal democrats. If you have an extremely liberal part of the country like new england you can have deeply liberal democrats or moderate/liberal republicans but few deeply conservative republicans.
Not sure what your point is with this, but I agree that it’s more of a factor in the House than the Senate, because House districts are smaller and thus more polarized than entire states. There are more “safe” House seats than Senate seats, so you get more long-term ideologues in the House. But it applies in the Senate as well.
I’m not sure if you agree or disagree with me here. But would you agree that - for example - it the Republican party brand takes a big hit nationwide, Scott Brown in MA is going to be more impacted than John Cornyn in TX?
If this is the outcome, heads will roll in the GOP. There will be a blood bath between the Old Guard and the Tea Party.
Let’s you and him fight.
I imagine there will be a lot of spinning in that scenario, but I don’t see it as a “heads roll” situation for Republicans. That’s about what is currently being prognosticated by sober analysts.
The Repubs currently have 178 seats, and if they pick up 44 seats they only end up with 222, or a majority of 9. I can’t see anyone’s head rolling because they failed to pick up more than 44 seats.
There are such high expectations for a win of landslide proportions, if anything less than a complete rout occurs, the Tea party will go ballistic and circular firing squad will commence. The mainstream GOP has thrown in with the Teapers, and will inevitably get hit by the blowback.
These are not reasonable people, and if they cannot wield absolute power in Congress with a veto-proof majority, they will not get the total overhaul of government they have been promised. Maybe not immediately after the election, but within a year, when it becomes apparent they have been sold a bill of goods, they will be demanding heads on pikes. Hell, that may happen anyway, given their temperment. I forsee complete disarray on the right in the runup to the 2012 election.
If they did lose big in the Senate, Chuck Schumer might replace Harry Reid. Of course if they lost really big, that would include Reid losing to Angle - which I don’t think is going to happen.
I thought that was an excellent and very underrated movie. For those who didn’t see it, Eddie Murphy finagles his way to a seat in Congress when the incumbent - whose name Eddie’s character shares - dies shortly before the election and Eddie gets elected on the namegame basis. Congress is portrayed as having all its members of both parties being constantly on the take for campaign contributions.
That, plus it had Victoria Rowell in it, who’s always floated my boat.
My WAG: Pelosi is done. Even if he wins reelection, there’s a better than even chance that Reid is out too. Tim Kaine? Irrelevant.
Personally, I have the opinion that the Republicans peaked about a week or two ago. Too early.