Joel Benenson, the White House's pollster, spins the numbers in the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Here's the optimistic Democratic case, via Ben Smith:
Today's NBC/Wall St. Journal poll underscores the fact that with fewer than 90 days until the midterm elections, the Republican Party's standing is at one of its lowest points ever and its competitive position vs. the Democrats looks much as it did in the summers of 1998 and 2002, neither of which were "wave" elections...
...73 percent say they are not confident in Republicans in Congress while 26 percent say they are, for a net negative confidence rating of -47 points.
o Democrats in Congress are at 32 percent confident (6 points higher than the GOP) and 67 percent who say they are not confident (6 points lower than the GOP), for a net confidence rating of -35, which is 12 points better than the congressional Republicans.When asked in the NBC/WSJ poll whether they prefer Democratic or Republican control of Congress after the November elections, 43 percent said Democrats and 42 percent said Republicans.
Okay. Then there's this:
While Democrats had a 10-point margin in 2006 when they gained 31 seats, the previous two midterms also showed a deadlocked preference in the summers of 1998 and 2002 in the NBC/WSJ polls. In both of those elections, the gains were only in single digits: 5 seats for the Democrats in 1998 and 8 seats for the Republicans in 2002.
That last thing could actually be a plausible argument that the damage might not be as bad as everyone assumes, assuming consistent methodology and so forth over those different elections.
But even so, the Democrats have to make a case against the Republicans. And they haven't yet. So for the record, I expect that they never will manage to make a very good case against them, and they'll probably get walloped in these elections. But what these numbers show is that it might not be that terrible if if if if if they go on the attack.
In the media and the Beltway worlds the conservative movement makes a lot of noise, and it's very skilled at making Democrats afraid of taking them on. Democrats just need to remember for starters that the Republicans are even less popular than they are, settle on the reason why, and reflect that back to voters. They'll hold off the worst of it if they do. But they must start soon.
