Editorials
From the Editor’s Notebook
A Victory Lifts Democrats’ Hopes for Fall
WASHINGTON--Congressional Democrats the other day seized on their special election victory in a Pennsylvania House district and other primary results as evidence that they can stem Republican political momentum, as both parties sifted through election returns last month for lessons to learn and mistakes to avoid heading to November.
After hearing for months that they were on the verge of losing control of the House of U.S. Rep.s, Democrats said the decisive victory by Mark Critz, a Democrat, in the blue-collar district formerly represented by the late John P. Murtha, showed they remain competitive in the kids of hotly contested regions Republicans need to win to have a real chance of capturing the House.
“We are going to maintain our majority,” U.S. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Dem., Md.), the majority leader, said. “Obviously, the president’s party historically loses seats, but we are going to lose a lot fewer than people think.”
Chastened Republicans conceded that they had made some missteps in the race and said they would make course corrections as they tried to capture Democratic swing districts, many of which have close parallels to the one retained by Democrats last month.
“We have got a lot of work to do,” said U.S. Rep. John A. Boehner (Rep., Ohio), the House Republican leader. “I still think the environment is there. There were just some things that we should have seen that we didn’t see. But we will learn from it.”
As Republicans regrouped, they still had some fundamental forces working in their favor, including a stubbornly high unemployment rate, growing distrust of government and the tendency of the party that controls the White House to lose congressional seats in midterm elections.
Mr. Obama has been losing support among independents and is struggling to convince voters that the benefits of his signature legislative achievements--the health care overhaul and the economic stimulus bill--will outweigh the costs and drawbacks.
Democrats say that in the Pennsylvania race, they were successful in pushing the party message that the economy is improving and that jobs are returning because of steps taken by the Democratic-controlled Congress and Mr. Obama.
They say Republicans were unable to define the race around the national issues they hope will carry them in the fall, despite an effort to tie Mr. Critz to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Obama and the Democratic health care legislation.
U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry (Dem., Mass.) carried the Murtha district in 2004 as the Democratic presidential nominee, but U.S. Sen. John McCain (Rep., Ariz.) won it for the Republicans in his presidential campaign four years later. This makes the district a good laboratory for both parties to hone their messages.
“Republicans test-drove their November strategy in Pennsylvania and it crashed,” said U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Dem., Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said.
As they assessed the outcome in the House contest, as well as in Senate races in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Arkansas, members of both parties acknowledged that they faced an angry electorate willing to take out its wrath on either party.
But each party’s officials argued that it would be their rivals who would bear the brunt of it.
Democrats said Republicans were nominating overly conservative candidates who could be beaten in November. Republicans said Democrats would pay for failing to heed voter concerns and for pushing through expansive and expensive legislation over public objections.
“From my perspective, I think what people want is checks and balances instead of single-party government,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (Rep., Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said. “I think that bodes well for our chances to pick up some seats.”
