Disorganized For America? Does It Even Matter?

I'm of the considered opinion that Republicans and their supporters are being far too confident about their prospects in November. To listen to them, you would think that this is already done and it just ain't.

If the generic ballot polling that shows a seven to ten point spread for the GOP is accurate, it's entirely possible that they've peaked early. If I gave a shit, I would much rather see numbers like this in mid-October than in early September. The spread is more likely to contract in the next seven weeks as it is to expand.

In large part, this is because the Republicans have nominated a number of candidates who are a special form of highly-enriched crazy. Crazy candidates have a tendency to say stupid things that can wound entire parties if the statements are stupid enough. And I've never seen this many mental defectives nominated in a single cycle before.

Having said that, the odds are still slightly better than even that the GOP will win the House, although I think that they'll come just short of it. The history should tell you that this is not likely to be an election like 1994. It's the difference between a running long jump and a standing one.

'94 was something that the Republicans built up to. Despite losing the White House, the GOP actually picked up congressional seats in 1992. This year they're coming out of two consecutive humiliating defeats, and they're doing it with candidates inferior to those they had in '92 and '94.

Moreover, the Democrats were plagued with scandal after scandal that engulfed power-brokers like Dan Rostenkowski in the months leading up to election day. Things like House Banking Scandal were fresh, and the Clinton administration was dealing with the early stages of Whitewater and the Paula Jones lawsuit that would eventually combine and lead to his impeachment. That isn't happening now. Charlie Rangel's problems are bad, but they're not that bad.

So, is it possible that this could be a "wave election?" Yes, but I don't think that it's as likely as everybody else does. It will still be bad, though. A larger than average number of Democrats are going to down, but if the polling and everyone else's predictions are correct, this will be more like 1946 than '94.

Of course, stories like this one in Time don't help the White House, even though they're wholly irrelevant.

What happened to Barack Obama's once vaunted political machine? The outfit that put upwards of 8 million volunteers on the street in 2008 — known as Organizing for America — is a ghost of its former self. Its staff has shrunk from 6,000 to 300, and its donors are depressed: receipts are a fraction of what they were in 2008. Virtually no one in politics believes it will turn many contests this fall. "There's no chance that OFA is going to have the slightest impact on the midterms," says Charlie Cook, who tracks congressional races.

Neglect is to blame. After Obama was elected, his political aides ignored the army he had created until it eventually disappeared. No one was in charge; decisions were often deferred but rarely made. By the time they realized they needed more troops, says longtime consultant Joe Trippi, "their supporters had taken a vacation from politics."

Organizing for America isn't a Democratic group as much as it is an extension of the 2008 presidential campaign structure - a part of the larger Obama personality cult, back when such a thing still existed. The party has the White House and the Democratic National Committee, which are both in surprisingly good shape, given the political circumstances of both.

That's not always the case. After the 1968 Democratic Convention, the newly nominated Hubert Humphrey looked into the DNC and found that it had been gutted. Lyndon Johnson knew how power brokering worked better than anyone in American history, and he wanted the fate of individual candidates tied to his own as much as possible, especially in 1964. He also feared that the DNC could be used as an opposing power base by Robert F. Kennedy, so he transferred all but it's most menial functions to the White House.

The Nixon White House wasn't much better. Nixon's former RNC chairman, Senator Bob Dole, used tell the story of being called by either White House Chief of Staff H.R Haldeman and domestic policy advisor John Erlichman and asked if he wanted to see the president. When Dole said yes, he was told "He'll be on TV tonight at 9."

Of course, that attitude didn't help Dole's successor as chairman, George H.W Bush, when Watergate erupted and the RNC couldn't do much of anything to defend the president.

The Obama White House seems to have learned from the LBJ and Nixon experiences. They've put a trusted friend, former Virgina governor Tim Kaine - who notably isn't Michael Steele - in charge, and the DNC is raising money at an impressive rate, given the political atmosphere. The RNC is paralyzed by stunning levels of incompetence, while the DNC is fully functional.

Besides, as an extension of the Obama personality cult, Organizing For America isn't designed for 2010. It's a nascent re-election campaign, and that makes it awfully smart.

So earlier this year, when the White House gave OFA a whopping $30 million — more than half of the party's entire budget for 2010 — senior Democrats suspected a hidden agenda. Several tell Time that OFA boss David Plouffe, who ran Obama's 2008 campaign, is using the cash to rebuild an army for 2012 under the cover of boosting turnout in 2010. OFA is putting staff into such states as Virginia, North Carolina and Arizona, which have few close statewide races this fall but which are all prime targets in an Obama re-election campaign. "This is totally about 2012," Cook says.

If Obama holds on to North Carolina and Virgina, the Republican nominee (most likely Mitt Romney) has no hope of winning in 2012, even if he takes back Colorado. If Arizona is picked up - as is highly possible, since John McCain only won his own state by single digits - Obama is re-elected in another landslide.

Besides, I don't think the White House would mind losing both houses of Congress. Neutralizing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would certainly be in their electoral interest. And two months before election day, various Republicans are talking about government shutdowns and investigating everything, just like they did in 1995.

That allows Obama to do exactly what Bill Clinton did, occupy the center and run against an increasingly unpopular Republican leadership during his reelection. And anyone who thinks that John Boehner is as smart as even Newt Gingrich was just hasn't been paying attention. Romney will be crippled by Boehner even more thoroughly than Bob Dole was by Gingrich.

Comparing 2010 to 1994 is fun for everyone. I get that. But if the GOP - and Romney's people, in particular - are even halfway smart, they'll start comparing 2012 to 1996.

Barack Obama might not be the wonder child that he thinks he is, but he's at least as smart and talented as Bill Clinton was. And where exactly did underestimating Obama get the Clintons and the Republicans just two years ago?