Election 2009 (I): Thumpin’ 4 years on

Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.

--Vince Lombardi, Green Bay Packers Coach

The 2005 off-year Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia helped Rahm Emanuel recruit the candidates needed to take back the House in 2006. The double win showed potential challengers Democrats had a bright future (Emanuel’s efforts are covered in the book The Thumpin’). The year 2005 was a tough one for Republicans—an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, and disastrous White House handling of Hurricane Katrina, the largest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Emanuel’s successful recruiting led to a Democratic take-over of the House—indeed Washington—in 2006 (the Senate also went Democratic that year).

After 2006, it was on to the White House. Emanuel and Democrats viewed their 2006 victory as a stepping-stone to winning the presidency in 2008. Though Emanuel was a staffer in Clinton’s White House, he used his Chicago ties to get close to Hillary Clinton’s chief rival, Barack Obama. The 2008 campaign ended in the Democrats’ sweeping victory.

By year 4, Emanuel had become Obama’s chief of staff, committed to a permanent campaign to keep Obama in power. Both know the White House is the best place from which to run for president in 2012. But first, the president has to do what Clinton failed to do in 1994 and Bush failed to do in 2006—win the upcoming mid-term election. You gain power by winning. You keep power by winning. Win, win, win. Obama will be the source of Democratic victories in 2010 or Emanuel will fail.

The need to win in 2010 brings us to the 2009 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, two states Obama carried in 2008. If either state went Republican, no big deal. But if both went Republican, Democrats in Congress facing mid-terms less than a year later would become nervous. So for Emanuel, it became vital that Democrats hold at least one of the two governorships.

With New Jersey's Jon Corzine confronting terrible favorability ratings, stuck with a bad economy, with personal ties to a highly unpopular Wall Street, having failed on a promise to fix high property taxes, and with Democratic corruption too much for even highly-tolerant New Jerseyites, Emanuel viewed Virginia as the state Democrats must hold. He went to work holding Virginia by:

➢ making incumbent Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (Obama’s almost-vice president and ineligible to run for re-election) head of the Democratic National Committee with one major job—keep Virginia Democratic;

➢ attempting to wrap up the contentious Congressional health care debate by November, so it wouldn’t become an issue that told wobbly Democrats they risked re-election in 2010 if they backed Obama’s bill;

But Virginia went very wrong for Virginia Governor Kaine and the Democrats. The GOP had the better candidate and in polls he surged to a big lead. And Congress ignored Emanuel’s timetable; health care was becoming a big issue. Emanuel made the best of the situation by:

➢ shifting the 2009 focus from Virginia to New Jersey, throwing everything into an effort to pull Corzine through;

➢ delaying until after the election the White House decision on sending troops to Afghanistan, so that troop increases wouldn’t drive liberal votes away from Corzine.

But as we saw yesterday, nothing worked. After two big wins, Congress in 2006, Congress and the White House in 2008, Emanuel suffered his first defeat. Virginia and New Jersey both went Republican—the one unacceptable outcome. Emanuel is therefore no longer a winner. House members worried about 2010 won’t have to listen to him. In hardball, everything depends on winning the last one. And Emanuel’s big four years ended in defeat.

Of course, the White House has a different four-year cycle, one that has three years yet to run. Still, a significant 1/4th of that precious time is gone, a year that went badly. The next election, next year's mid-terms less than a year away, look a little harder today than they did Tuesday.