Bowling for Democrats

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

In a dark DC basement a Republican operative sits at his computer, cobbling together pictures for a campaign commercial this fall. Oil soaked pelicans, unemployed workers, foreclosure signs, troops still sitting in Iraq and Afghanistan, bitter party line votes in Congress, and a soaring federal deficit. He lays in the ominous music, and tacks on a black and white graphic: “Hope. Change. How’s that working out for you, America?”

I don’t know that this is actually happening, but c’mon… it’s happening.

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Every politician worth a bribe knows that when you set up pins on the Mall you better expect the opposition to go bowling. And this week, the Dems were racking them up with a slew of awful headlines: Jobs still in hard core trouble, housing still a wreck, and a market with more mood swings than Sybil. You could just see Democratic strategists who’d been hoping for something better to work with in the mid-term election, staring at those big fat targets in horror.

Granted, all the problems making headlines don’t belong to the Dems alone. Sure, the Administration could have handled the oil spill better, but BP threw the gutter ball. Likewise, the mortgage collapse was underway, the wars were fully engaged, and the political parties were at each others’ throats well before President Obama took the oath. The recession wasn’t whipped up in an afternoon either, and since the deficit is at least related to the economic downturn… well, you get my point.

But voters tend to transfer responsibility for bad news to the party on the lane after a while, no matter how much that party tries to lay it off on the folks who used to roll that alley. And I think that time is coming around for the Dems fast.

Maybe it’s just the way I see them hanging their heads, bickering over little things, and sighing like concertinas. Maybe it’s the maniacal gleam in the eyes of Republicans, even as their own party remains on the outs with voters.

Whatever the cause, I think this week mattered. I think it gave a little extra push to that guy with the commercial in the basement, working on his spin. And unless much better news shows up soon, Dems better brace for a scorching Dick Weber special coming down the alley in four months.