The 2014 midterm just got a lot more interesting.
The twin dramas of the government shutdown and botched rollout of Obamacare have snapped a sleepy 2014 election season out of its slumber, sharpening the battle lines for each party and setting the stage for a consequential midterm that few expected even two months ago.
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The spring and summer months were filled with charges and countercharges about the Internal Revenue Service, wiretapping, Syria and immigration. Politicians recycled old attack lines and operatives confidently predicted control of Congress would remain status quo after next November.
No more. The parties’ competing political narratives — the dangers of a tea party-controlled party versus the perils of President Barack Obama’s far-reaching health care law — have been thrown into sharp relief the past several weeks. Now each party has something tangible to point to — that touch voters’ lives in concrete ways — to argue that the other should be booted from office.
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Republican lawmakers who seemed safe are suddenly looking over their shoulders, and Democrats whose election hopes were buoyed by the shutdown have been brought back to earth by the Obamacare mess.
Democrats still intend to run against what they call Republican extremism, as they did in 2012. But Republicans’ willingness to shut down the government and bring the nation to the cusp of default, they say, has shown the public what the tea party’s agenda means in real life — government workers paid to sit home for weeks, shuttered national parks, 401(k) accounts at risk.
It’s a similar story with Republicans and Obamacare.
The GOP still plans to make Obamacare a centerpiece of its midterm strategy — tying Democratic candidates in close Senate and House races to the sweeping law — as it did in 2012. But the glitch-riddled unveiling of the Obamacare website, they say, has handed them a powerful piece of evidence to make the case that the federal government should never have thrown itself into the health care business in the first place. And they expect the next year to bring more stories of the law sticking people and businesses with bigger health care bills.
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“That’s going to be the battleground,” said Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster. “Which message is going to be the most salient to voters in the middle? Is it that Republicans are too extreme or that we need to protect the public on Obamacare?”
Democrats believe their anti-tea party message will resonate throughout the country, in every state and congressional district. With the tea party’s brand deep in decline, they argue that post-shutdown anger extends to even the most conservative corners of the country.
Kelly Ward, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview that the focus on the tea party’s agenda would work “everywhere,” including in districts in Arkansas, where House Democrats are trying to snatch two seats from Republicans.
“I think the message is the same,” she said. “This is all about the economy, and how their agenda is impacting people’s lives.”
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There’s little doubt the fiscal fights have helped Democratic prospects, especially in the battle for the House, where the party faces an uphill push to erase the GOP’s 17-seat majority. After the 16-day shutdown came to an end, the Cook Political Report upgraded Democratic prospects in 14 House races. Whether that momentum dissipates over the next year is an open question.
But with deadlines early next year to fund the government and to raise the debt ceiling, Democrats say another showdown — or even talk of one from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his conservative allies — would reignite anger at Republicans and give another boost to their 2014 hopes.
“I think what’s happened in the last month is obviously pretty important in the battle for control of the House,” said Ali Lapp, executive director of the House Majority PAC, a group that boosts House Democrats. “This is the gift that keeps on giving for Democrats.”
Democrats plan to affix the tea party shutdown label even to moderate Republicans who are at odds with that wing of the party. Republican Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego city councilman, is being called too conservative for the urban congressional district he’s running in.
