The new ‘taint of incumbency’

In the wake of Scott Brown’s astonishing Senate win in Massachusetts last week, GOP leaders took no time to spin the outcome as an indictment of Democratic leadership that can only help Republicans in November’s mid-term elections.

“There’s not a seat in America held by a Democrat that can’t be won,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told “Fox and Friends” Monday. “Massachusetts proves that. When Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, any seat’s in play.”

But while Republicans are hoping Brown’s victory foreshadows a GOP landslide, a number of political experts are warning that the country’s restless anxiety — as evidenced not only in Massachusetts, but in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Florida as well — is less a backlash against Democrats in particular than a rebuke of the business-as-usual politics of Capitol Hill in general. Even as unemployment soared and housing markets tanked, voters have watched lawmakers bicker endlessly over a stimulus bill that proved too small and a health reform proposal that remains unfinished. Meanwhile, the banks have bounced back on the wings of a taxpayer bailout, paying out billions of dollars in employee bonuses this month while the jobs crisis outside Wall Street only worsens. In such an environment, some experts caution, incumbents on both sides of the aisle could find themselves surprisingly vulnerable in November.

“The public is mad, and they’re prepared to take it out on the establishment,” said Tony Coelho, the former California congressman who served as campaign chairman for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential run. “That doesn’t just mean the party in power. That means everyone.”

David P. Redlawsk, a political scientist at Rutgers University and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, agreed. “The stock market has gone up, but that’s Wall Street, and many voters do not see how that benefits them,” Redlawsk wrote in an email. “There is real risk to incumbents on both sides of the aisle.”

Read more at Michigan Messenger’s sister site the Washington Independent