As we wrap up another Student Government election cycle, we need to start mentally preparing ourselves for the looming horrors of the midterm elections. Expect attack ads, Obamacare and convicted felons to be in the mix.
The Republicans have also stumbled upon, or more accurately, zeroed in on the specific buzz word to get out the vote in November, and it’s not Obamacare. It’s Pelosi. People have a real fear of San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi returning to power, as they remember that it was her supermajority Congress that rammed through the Affordable Care Act without a single bipartisan vote.
The message is simple: vote for the candidate with an (R) next to his or her name, or watch in horror as comrade Pelosivich of the People’s Republic of California comes one step closer to returning as Speaker of the House.
This fear, in tandem with disappointment and anger over both President Barack Obama’s outright lie, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period,” and an ineffectual Senate led by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will make it a good year to be a Republican. In fact, the GOP may just secure both houses of Congress.
If early votes in swing states can indicate national trends, then the Dems are in trouble. On March 11, Republican David Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a special election for Florida’s 13th District. Sink’s ultimate undoing was, as expected, her unwavering support of Obamacare. Although the seat will come up for re-election again in November, I highly doubt that it will change hands, short of nationwide amnesia regarding the ACA.
More locally, early polling by Real Clear Politics indicates that Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy has a slight edge over incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, leading her 44.7 percent to 42.3 percent. While this race will come close to the bitter end, it will be shocking if a Democrat who to this day supports Obamacare edges out Cassidy in a state so red it’s practically maroon.
In addition, Democratic dreams of taking Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District are just that — dreams. Who do they send to run against the likes of Paul Dietzel II? None other than everyone’s favorite former governor and convicted felon, Edwin Edwards.
While the Republican vote may be split between several candidates at the moment, it will not help Edwards in the slightest. Anyone who doesn’t vote for Edwards in the general election will most certainly not vote for him in the runoff.
To give some perspective on how conservative this district is, in 2010, Cassidy defeated Democratic challenger Merritt McDonald Sr. 65.6 percent to 34.4 percent, and he wasn’t even a convict. Edwards might as well drop out now and save the state some embarrassment.
This is all part of a growing national distrust of the Obama administration. Be it the Obamacare disaster, NSA spying, Operation Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS targeting scandal or in Sen. John McCain’s words, a “feckless” foreign policy (see Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Libya and Iraq), Americans are fed up with the president, despite his personal likeability with some.
By extension, his friends in Congress are going to feel the heat come November. Maybe he is beginning to regret not following former President Bill Clinton’s example of moving to the center and cooperating after a shellacking in the midterms. Even the leadership at LSU knows that it is not a winning strategy to anger most of the people and then rub their noses in it.