Democrats are facing a drubbing

Clive Crook in the Financial Times:

Though the recession is doubtless the main reason for Democrats’ dismal prospects in November, it is not the only one. The party has made a habit of supporting unpopular policies, and selling them ineffectually. This yielded nothing on energy, for instance: carbon cap-and-trade had to be abandoned. But the Democrats won the day on healthcare. They assumed that by now opinion would have swung behind that ambitious reform. Not so. Most Americans remain opposed.

Two other points deserve more attention than they have received. First, most commentators see the midterms as a referendum on Mr Obama. This is wrong. The elections are a referendum on the party in power — that is, on the president’s partnership with Democrats in Congress led by Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate.

The distinction is important. All things considered, Mr Obama is not polling all that badly. Despite the economy, he is better liked than Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan at the same point in their presidencies.

But look at polls that ask voters which party they will vote for. The Democrats’ performance on this measure is awful: a recent Gallup poll gave Republicans their biggest advantage since the firm started asking the question in 1942.

That particular poll may be an outlier, but the basic point stands. Given the economy, Mr Obama’s unpopularity is within bounds. The greater unpopularity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid alliance is what threatens disaster for the Democrats in November.

Mr Obama should have kept his distance from his allies on Capitol Hill. It would have been better for him, and better for them. Centrist voters embraced Mr Obama in 2008 because they thought he would temper a polarised and dysfunctional Congress. He let them down. The reflexive opposition of Republicans is much to blame, but Mr Obama did not try very hard. Pragmatic he may be, but unlike the instinctively centrist Bill Clinton, he leans left. If Ms Pelosi and Mr Reid could deliver irreproachably liberal policies — on healthcare, energy, the stimulus, whatever — that was fine with him. As it turned out, they often had to compromise, but that was because of a sliver of conservative Democrats, not Mr Obama.