It may seem a tad early to begin pontificating about the 2014 Congressional elections as 2013 has only just concluded, but election season – like Christmas – seems to come earlier and earlier every year. So with that unfortunate fact in mind, what are the issues that are set to make news in November?
First, and it may seem like going out on a limb here, but the dreaded Obamacare – also known as the Affordable Care Act – will not be a major drag on most Democrats, nor will it appreciably hurt President Obama’s approval ratings by the time the election takes place. Indeed, it could turn out that the president’s signature domestic achievement may in fact help both him and his party. Given that in 2013 Obamacare was the GOP’s biggest issue, how is this possible?
Fortunately for Democrats, it would seem that expanding Medicaid and offering millions of individuals the opportunity to buy affordable health insurance is in fact much more popular than conservatives would allow. Indeed, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas – the conservative Svengali behind the 2013 government shutdown – admitted as much when he noted on Fox News in July that once the “exchanges and subsidies kick in,” people are going to like it.
We just might be seeing glimmers of this as Obama’s approval ratings recently jumped five points the week after the deadline for signing up for health coverage being offered on the AHA’s various exchanges. This only marginally improves the president’s overall approval rating, of course – which is still well south of 50-percent – but it is a sign that as people actually sign up for and begin to use Obamacare – which polling overwhelmingly indicates that people actually like – that opinion on it will shift in the Democrats’ favor.
As on healthcare, it would seem that reality will also trump rhetoric when it comes to the economy. Admittedly, 2013 was not great, especially in terms of job creation, but it is clear that the crippling effects of the 2007-08 financial collapse are, if not well behind us, then at least receding. Job creation continues to plod along by adding a few hundred thousand here and there, but the overall trajectory is upward, albeit at a steady, if slow, pace.
Normally this would be grist for Republicans, but the way in which the economy has played out as an issue does not work to their advantage. Austerity, in the form of spending cuts, has not produced much growth while tax cuts – which were chiseled out of the administration by GOP extortionists in the House – have seemingly done little to improve things either. Moreover, the dreaded deficit was reduced by 38-percent in 2013, in half since 2009, and is falling at the fastest rate in sixty years. In other words, the policy solutions on offer from Republicans have already been tried and have largely failed to jumpstart job creation – giving Democrats the opportunity to offer the public a populist alternative.
Populism as such may also be turning away from tea-party Republicanism, which has grown increasingly unpopular as its ties to the GOP mainstream and big-business elite have become more clear. Economic inequality, stagnant wages, student debt, and the continued hard situation in the labor market – especially for young people – are now far more openly discussed in mainstream circles than they have been for years. While the Occupy movement may not have had much in the way of policy success after its marches and sit-ins in September 2011, it has arguably done something almost as important – shaped discourse and broadened public understanding of this crucial topic.
With the economy and Obamacare likely doing little to aid Republican prospects at the polls, what about the old standby culture war issues? Here again, however, conservative activists are likely to find the public less amenable than ever to ‘God,’ ‘guns,’ and ‘gays’ tactics that drive social conservatives to the polls. Support for gay marriage and public acceptance of homosexuality, for instance, is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association has taken tremendous heat over America’s mass-shooting epidemics after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., and as for God, American’s are more secular than ever before; the Pope is sounding like Marx at Matins, and even Evangelical Christians are declining in number.
Then there is national security and foreign affairs. Of late, it seems that Americans are now more concerned with threats to civil liberties than the prospect of terrorism while even the so-called ‘good war’ in Afghanistan is now seen as a huge mistake and is less popular with Americans than even the Vietnam War. Couple that with the country’s decidedly sour stance on intervening in Syria – which public opinion categorically rejected in the fall of last year – and its strong support for negotiating with Iran on that country’s nuclear program, and it seems that the U.S. public is swinging, for the time being, to support diplomacy and negotiation over unilateral interventionism.
So taken as a whole, the issues likely to be of importance in 2014 do not appear to give Republicans a systematic advantage over Democrats. Throw in the slow demographic death of the GOP’s core base of older, whiter, more religious voters, and things – at a general level – do not look good for Republicans even if most experts predict they will retain the House and could possibly take over the Senate in 2014.
This prospect should not be seen as a sign that the GOP is in fact in fine health – far from it. It is due almost entirely to the vagaries of the Senate election schedule – which happens to have more vulnerable Democratic Senators up for reelection than Republican – and a thoroughly gerrymandered House. Without these two institutional factors favoring Republicans, the GOP’s 2014 prospects would be much grimmer.
What’s more, the GOP leadership has fractured to the point where it is hard to say who or what, exactly, constitutes its leaders. There is quite simply no ‘there,’ there – just an anchor to a kaleidoscopic base of far-right activists, donors, and media personalities that have weighted down the party with unpopular, right-wing positions and a toxic public image. This means that whatever the degree of unpopularity of far-right tea party nuttiness among the larger public, within the small group of voters that turn on out on primary day, they remain an important and potentially deciding factor.
This is important, because in the last several election cycles it can arguably be said that it was this penchant for electing far-right extremists in primaries that cost Republicans the chance to take back several Senate seats and many governorships that they should have won. With no leadership powerful enough to winnow out the ultra-conservative crazy, it is quite possible that the same could happen again this year, too. Republicans have shown themselves to be quite capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and it remains to be seen whether the same will happen again in 2014.
Finally, it should be noted that the Democrats may have learned from past mistakes. Recent rumblings out of the White House, the Senate, and liberal media outlets have hinted that an increase in the federal minimum wage could be in the works this year. This is a sure vote-getter come Election Day and a needed pay hike for America’s struggling low-wage earners, but more to the point it suggests that Obama and his Democratic opposites in the House and Senate have at last learned the benefits of working together and not at cross purposes. Meanwhile, immigration reform – which failed to happen in 2013 – could, thanks to Democrats, raise its head in time to once again highlight the GOP’s growing problem with Hispanics.
So what does all this mean for the coming 2014 elections? On the issues the Democrats hold the advantage while on the ground the mechanics of electoral politics still give the Republicans an institutional advantage as the Dems will be playing mostly defense. In terms of leadership and recruitment, the potential remains for the GOP to continue to elevate unelectable radicals from primaries to general election contests while the Dems look much more coordinated than they have in years.
How this all translates into votes in November remains to be seen, but the best guess at the moment is that the presently polarized Congress will still be there after the election, too. Sure, there may be changes at the margin, but a safe bet is that the House will remain in GOP hands, the Senate will remain controlled by the Democrats, and partisan gridlock will remain the order of the day. So sit back, relax, and let the electoral hunger games begin!
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News’ editorial policy.