Doom and gloom in November? Don't think so.

I wish I would've wrote this before the May 18 elections but I was a little bit of a coward. I was worried that by small chance the elections would point the wrong way and make me look like a fool. Over the last few months we've witnessed tea party hysteria, polls all pointing towards a November doomsday for Democrats and a million pundits essentially saying the same thing.

Yesterday, we witnessed some interesting results in primaries and in one congressional election. In the election to replace Rep. Murtha in Pennsylvania, the GOP had an even chance at taking the seat but despite throwing a ton of cash around they still lost to a Dem. In several primaries , incumbants were beat on both sides of the aisle. This shows that the GOP doesn't necessarily have a winning formula in November.

Current conventional wisdom goes something like this, people are upset due to the economy, fight over bailouts and health care reform, fear of big govmint (yes I spelled it wrong), anti-incumbency feelings, unemployment, wars, oil spills, energy, deficits, (insert your current gripe here) and traditionally, mid term elections don't go well for the party in power. So, based upon these issues and a seemingly large tea party uprising and Fox News morons scaring the hell out of people (yes, FN we know he's black, please get over it) a landslide victory for the GOP is guaranteed.

I simply don't see it happening.

While the tea party movement made a lot of "top of the hour" newscasts I really don't think they're going to be very influential. Let's be honest, by in large they are nothing more than discontents in the GOP. They aren't new voters. It's not as if the GOP woke up and found they had persuaded millions of Dems to switch sides or that all undecideds had listened to Rush and lined up in the Red column. Worse, they are a bit schizophrenic about what they want (take a look the CBS/NY Times poll, sorry I'm having a hard time adding links to this damned thing). Tea partiers will have an impact. Mostly in districts and states in which they get their candidates on the ballot, voters will have to decide between and Dem and a radical GOPer. If they choose the radical, Dems didn't have a chance anyway.

Concerns over bailouts are valid. They represent real differences in philosophy between Dems and the GOP. To the majority of the public though, they are only meaningful depending on what the economy does. If the economy does not grow, middle America will look at the money spent on bailouts as a waste and blame the Dems even though it was G Dub's admin that started the process. If however the economy continues to grow (it should) and a sense of optimism returns then middle America will at worst forget about the bailouts or at best give credit to Dems for doing something positive.

With the GOP propaganda machine throwing everything it could at health care reform it's no wonder that people are unhappy about it. However, if the Dems do a better job of showing the people what they got out of it and if Grandma isn't put in front of a "Death Panel" (thank Sarah Palin for that lie), then public opinion will swing to them. I'm pretty sure, Grandma isn't in danger of having the plug pulled on her and I'm certain the Dems can't do a worse job of explaining their position, so I'm confident the numbers will creep back in favor for them.

Of course the big one is the economy. Almost everything I've written about in this article has to do with the economy. President Obama had the unenviable task of taking over an economy which was mired in a recession and teetering towards disaster. He inherited two treasure sucking wars and bleak job growth prospects. Nothing makes Americans more angry than poor economic conditions. I mean, if Jethro and Bobbi Sue Nascar can't have matching 3 ton pick ups, two 10,000 ft homes and zero percent financing, somebody's going to pay. The good news (if you are an American) is that the economy is improving. Unemployment is holding steady, a sign of stabilizing and our GDP is positive. Unless we experience another economic catastrophe (Europe?) the economic picture should be even better by November. This of course will spell bad news for the GOP.

So, is it going to be doom and gloom for Dems in November? Nah, I just don't see it. They will lose some seats in both the house and the Senate. They'll lose because the mood in the country will still be a little sour, they'll lose some because of the anti-incumbency feeling which is real and they'll some some over policy differences, but it will not be the crushing defeat predicted just a few weeks ago.

The only real hope the GOP has of regaining power is if Obama fails miserably. This of course what they want. I'm not just saying this, they've actually said it themselves. They want our country to suffer, for you to suffer. They don't want a robust economy because they want to be in power. It doesn't matter if you lost your home because you couldn't afford cancer treatment or because you lost your job 18 months ago. The only thing that matters is that they regain their place at the foot of the throne. They want to collect all the trinkets and crumbs that fall to them by being in power. This is real trickle down economics.

Fear not, it aint gonna happen. They may get closer but they'll have to wait a little while longer to run the truck into the ditch again.