Democrats will lose by running away from stronger economy,If they lose Senate, it’ll be because they lost in blue states

I don’t want to say Democrats’ campaign to keep control of the Senate has been a joke. But you can really only do it justice by reaching back to Henny Youngman. Take my seat, please.

 

Thursday’s announcement that the economy grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter — making for six months of blistering 4% growth since the polar vortex — reminds us how foolish Democrats have been to avoid talking about the economy or the president this fall. Poor Barack Obama. Who ever solved an historic crisis and still had this many electoral cooties?

Everyone gets that Democrats in West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana had to run away from Obama to win seats held by retiring Democrats in states that Obama lost by a mile. Incumbent Dems in Louisiana and Arkansas had similar problems.

 

But that narrative of 2014’s election has proven exaggerated. If Democrats lose the Senate, and most forecasts make that about a two-out-of-three chance, it will be because they blew states Obama won twice. To get to 51 seats, in most scenarios Republicans need to win Iowa, Colorado or both.

 

Dems are giving those purple-to-blue states away, if late polls hold up. And it’s because they have run away, especially in Colorado, from records that should have them coasting.

 

It’s simple, fellas.

 

 

The unemployment rate has fallen from 10% in 2009 to 5.9%.

 

Unemployment hit 10% months after President George W. Bush left, and is now in the fives — 5.9% in September, and likely to be about 5.5% when new senators are sworn in. The Standard & Poor’s 500 SPX, +1.17%  lost half of its value to hit 666 in March 2009 — devilish indeed — and reached 2,000 last month. The federal deficit has been cut by two-thirds. Even the Affordable Care Act, hobbyhorse of right-wingers everywhere, had insured 10 million new Americans and produced the lowest health-care inflation in decades.

In other words, you say: “My opponent doubled unemployment, my allies and I cut it in half. Housing and stocks — your retirement — collapsed under them, and stocks surged with us in charge. Bonus: We got health-insurance companies off your back about pre-existing conditions and (hello, seniors!) saved Medicare from bankruptcy.” All true. And you can say it without even mentioning Obama.

 

Yet, not a single Democratic Senate candidate willingly takes credit. Success, in Dem-land, is an orphan. “On the No. 1 issue, the economy, Republicans have more than doubled their April lead over Democrats, to 11 percentage points,” Gallup reported Oct. 13.

Take Colorado. Or “Take Colorado, please” as incumbent-who-deserves-to-lose Mark Udall seems to say.

 

Udall took office in 2009. Colorado unemployment hit 9% in early 2010, three times its level under President Bill Clinton. Now it’s 4.7% and falling fast. Denver has the second-lowest unemployment of any major U.S. metro. Plus, 300,000 Coloradans got coverage under ACA, slashing the state’s uninsured rate 45%.

 

One needn’t be a genius to write this ad:

“I’m Sen. Mark Udall. When I took office, Colorado was in trouble. Unemployment had doubled. Wages were falling. I helped cut Colorado unemployment by nearly half, and wages came back. I helped write laws that made our state a leader in wind and solar, and cut the deficit by two-thirds. I made health-insurance companies stop discriminating against pre-existing conditions and got 300,000 Coloradans good insurance that covers contraception and protects choice. I’ll move forward on women’s rights, the environment, and the economy. Cory Gardner would turn the clock back.”

It’s all true, at least by politician standards, and mostly stems from 2009’s stimulus and the ACA. It even mentions his opponent’s past opposition to birth control, Udall’s pet issue. And it omits “Obama” and “Obamacare.”

 

Instead, Udall is spending the campaign’s last week harping on social issues as if he were Pat Buchanan. Asked by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow what separates him from Gardner, Udall mentioned climate, immigration, birth control and gay rights. He didn’t bring up the economy — the #1 issue in Gallup’s polling — or health care.

 

This wasn’t unusual: the Denver Post endorsed Gardner, saying Udall’s “obnoxious one-issue campaign is an insult to those he seeks to convince.”

 

In the summertime, Democratic strategists told me the improving economy would simply let Udall and other Democrats stop talking about jobs; Udall’s campaign said it would let him focus on social issues and turnout. That strategy produced a 15-point swing in polls in Gardner’s favor between July and September.

 

If Democrats lose, this will be why. By 2016, when they run for president with unemployment likely to be in the fours, maybe they’ll figure it out.