A "Venti" election for the GOP

Here are two more of the professional crystal-ball gazers chiming in with their assessments of the state of the midterm elections. Stuart Rothenberg and Charlie Cook weighed in with their opinions this morning in an appearance on Morning Joe.

 This is a great clip for a few reasons. First, it opens with George W. Bush's fantastic opening pitch in last night's World Series game and his phenomenal reception from the crowd. Second, Cook describes the wave about to hit the House Dems in Starbucks terms; this is a "venti" as big as they get.

Finally, there is an interesting discussion on when things really started to turn sour for Dems. Rothenberg places the pivotal moment for the Dems on the health care town hall meetings in August 2009. Cook believes it came around the time of the cap and trade vote. Coincidentally, the cap and trade vote wasn't the only major event at that time. I have said several times (see here and here) the first appreciable decline in support for Obama and Congress came at the time Al Franken was sworn in as Senator, giving Democrats carte blanche to pass their agenda at will.  It could well be the case that seating Franken while the House passed cap and trade was enough to send a shiver down the spines of American voters who had to see there were no checks and balances in place to stop the train wreck we know as the 111th Congress.  Ironically, the far left has often lamented they didn't use their super majority to pass single-payer health care or the rest of their destructive agenda.  Thank heaven for small favors I guess, though I can't imagine what the wave would like if they had.  PJ O'Rourke was dead-on in his assessment of this election:

This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order. Power has been trapped, abused and exploited by Democrats. Go to the ballot box and put an end to this abusive relationship. And let’s not hear any nonsense about letting the Democrats off if they promise to get counseling. 

There's no hope in counseling for the clueless Andrea Mitchell.  Mitchell's sole contribution to the discussion is   her suggestion the problem came for Democrats when they handed health care to Max Baucus who then spent 6 weeks of Summer 2009 trying to write a bipartisan bill.  NO ANDREA, it was the whole agenda, the lousy health care bill, cap and trade and the self-aggrandizing Democrats who foolishly believed they had already saved the economy so there was no need to worry about an economy that was bleeding jobs.  Obviously Mitchell needs something larger than a Venti to wake her up from her Beltway beauty sleep:


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