Midterm Exam

Larry Beinhart’s Body Politic

by Larry Beinhart and photographs by Dion Ogust, September 28, 2010

I really wanted to light an optimistic candle in the gloomy darkness of the midterm election predictions. In case you haven’t been watching TV, listening to radio, or reading a newspaper, they are that the Democrats will lose the House—30 seats will do the trick—and barely hang on to a two-seat majority in the Senate.

I wanted to tell you that the Democrats still have a chance to turn it around.

The Republicans have been busy attacking for a year and a half. Flummoxed during the presidential campaign about how to deal with Obama’s color, they’ve finally come up with new code words to embody their rage at having a black president.

Now that the primaries are over and it’s campaign season for real, the Democrats who have been struggling to govern can enter the fray and make their case.

Besides, congressional and senatorial elections are not national. House seats, in particular, are local, and Senate campaigns are, often, about the specific candidates defying party affiliation. Many of the Republican senatorial candidates are loons. They are against social security, unemployment insurance, direct election of senators, and abortion. They are for more tax cuts, less regulation, and more power, more rights, and less accountability for corporations.