No One Could Predict that the Levee Would Break

Paul Krugman asks Will the Levee Break?, about the potential toppling of the Republican control of Congress in the Novemeber election. His prediction is that:

The conventional wisdom says that the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives next month, but only by a small margin. I’ve been looking at the numbers, however, and I believe this conventional wisdom is almost all wrong.

Here’s what’s happening: a huge Democratic storm surge is heading toward a high Republican levee. It’s still possible that the surge won’t overtop the levee — that is, the Democrats could fail by a small margin to take control of Congress. But if the surge does go over the top, the flooding will almost surely reach well inland — that is, if the Democrats win, they’ll probably win big.

Let’s talk about Congressional arithmetic.

Unless the Bush administration is keeping Osama bin Laden in a freezer somewhere, a majority of Americans will vote Democratic this year. If Congressional seats were allocated in proportion to popular votes, a Democratic House would be a done deal. But they aren’t, and the way our electoral system works, combined with the way ethnic groups are distributed, still gives the Republicans some hope of holding on.

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And here’s the thing: because there are many districts that the G.O.P. carried by only moderately large margins in recent elections, a large Democratic surge — one only a bit bigger than that needed to take the House at all — would sweep away many Republicans holding seats normally considered safe. If the actual vote is anything like what the polls now suggest, we’re talking about the Democrats holding a larger majority in the House than the Republicans have held at any point since their 1994 takeover.

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Bear in mind that the G.O.P. isn’t in trouble because of a string of bad luck. The problems that have caused Americans to turn on the party, from the disaster in Iraq to the botched response to Katrina, from the failed attempt to privatize Social Security to the sudden realization by many voters that the self-proclaimed champions of moral values are hypocrites, are deeply rooted in the whole nature of Republican governance. So even if this surge doesn’t overtop the levee, there will be another surge soon.

But the best guess is that the permanent Republican majority will end in a little over three weeks.

Part of me agrees with Krugman, but the other part (the part that has a superstitious gene) doesn't want to jinx things by being too optomistic. As the Unknown Candidate says:

From Krugman's mouth to God's ears!

Wish I was as optimistic as the Krug Man. It's just those pesky black box voting machines ... so ripe for another sabotage -- that's what worries me more than anything.

And for the true contrarian view, see Andrew Greeley's opinion on the matter in Will Republicans Lose Control of Congress?

(Krugman article also available at Unknown Candidate)

Tags: Commentary, Politics, Krugman