“The Enemy is Coming”

[wyldwolf]

Afterword: “The Enemy is Coming”

John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

If the November 2002 elections had been held on September 10, 2001, the Democrats would have made impressive gains, increasing their one-seat edge in the Senate and probably winning back the House of Representatives. At the time, George W. Bush was seen as a weak and ineffective leader, who was most comfortable reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to schoolchildren. His approval rating was at 51 percent, dangerously low for a president in his first nine months. In addition, the Clinton boom had given way to a pronounced economic slowdown. Combine these factors with popular support for Democratic positions on social security, health care costs, the environment, and the economy, and you had a recipe for a Republican disaster. But nothing of the kind occurred. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Bush and the Republicans boosted their popularity and actually gained seats in both houses, narrowly winning back the Senate.

The GOP successes in November 2002 gave rise to new theories about a long-term Republican realignment. In the conservative Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes described an emerging 9/11 majority. “We are no longer an equally divided, 50-50 nation,” Barnes wrote. “America is now at least 51-49 Republican and right of center, more likely 52-48, maybe even 53-47. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, created a new political era, and the midterm election on November 5 confirmed it.” Barnes was certainly right about the Republican tilt of the election, but not about the “new political era.” The November 2002 elections represented the temporary revival of the older conservative realignment of the 1980s. September 11 brought to the forefront national security issues on which Republicans have enjoyed an advantage since the election of 1980; and Bush’s sure-handed performance in the months that followed ensured that this advantage would accrue to him and the Republicans in November 2002. But this advantage will persist only as long as Americans feel under attack and also feel that the Republicans are best able to protect them from attack. The 2002 election did not begin a new era, but unexpectedly prolonged an older one.

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/000360.shtml