America, Don't Let This Happen!

Democrats Have Secret Plan for November

Political analysts are predicting a huge win for Republicans in November's congressional elections, but some Democrats believe they have a secret plan to stave off a crushing Republican landslide.

That’s the analysis from Newsweek magazine’s Andrew Romano, who writes that “the Democrats in charge are actually rather confident about getting their fellow Dems elected this year. The reason? They have a plan, a plan that they believe will produce much better results on Election Day than anyone expects.”

The first element of that plan is the return of Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe, who left politics after Obama’s election win. At the president’s request, he is now communicating on a regular basis with the Democratic National Committee on campaign strategy.

Plouffe’s top priority is to get many of the 15 million people who voted for the first time in 2008, and largely supported Obama, back to the polls this year. His main weapon is the 13-million-name e-mail list from the Obama campaign now available to the DNC.

The focus on individual elections for Democrats will be “keep it local,” according to Romano. “While Republicans hammer away at national themes targeted at right-wing activists, Democrats plan to focus on bread-and-butter regional concerns like jobs.”

Democrats also believe that the emergence of tea party challengers in GOP primaries will help their candidates attract moderate voters. A tea party candidate who wins the primary will drive moderates toward the Democrat in the general election, the thinking goes, and a tea partyer who loses will likely have forced the winning Republican to move further to the right and possibly alienate moderate voters.

Back in 1994, Democrats were unprepared for the GOP onslaught that captured both the Senate and the House, but that won’t happen in 2010, observes Romano, who concludes, “This year, careful planning, internal GOP conflict, an improving economic climate, and yet-to-be-introduced technologies have the potential to limit Democratic losses to less-than-catastrophic proportions.”