A Political Aesop's Fable

Victor Davis Hanson compares the 2006 mid-term campaign to the famous fable about the tortoise and the hare. Guess which party is which?

Despite their dreams of recapturing one or both houses of Congress this November, the Democrats seem determined to reprise their poor showings in 2002 and 2004. Now, as then, they are dozing in the campaign's homestretch, like Aesop's hare, lulled by rosy predictions and the premature applause of Hollywood and the mainstream press. Soon, however, they may awake to discover that while they snoozed before the finish line, George W. Bush hunkered down in his tough shell, kept his slow legs moving, and inched them out.

The president has had a rough year since his reelection. But the furor is now subsiding, and once again, turtle-like, his poll numbers are creeping forward. The economy continues to grow. Interest rates, unemployment and inflation remain manageable. Gas may fall to $2 a gallon. It matters little whether the president is as responsible for the price decline as he was for its rise - the public feels better all the same.

I think he's right. As they've done in previous election years, the Dems peaked way too early and listened too hard to all those pundits who said "if the election was held today, the Dems would win big". Well, sadly for them, the election isn't held in July, it's held in November, and the trends are definitely moving toward the GOP.

The GOP also has a significant advantage in their get-out-the-vote machine. They've got the money and the organization to get their voters to the polls (even if the Dems try to flatten the tires on all their vans, as they did in Wisconsin in 2004).

The Dems, meanwhile, make a big deal about voter registration, and have all kinds of celebrity-studded voter drives. While they may register a lot of people, the people they register are often duds who won't show up on election day. Just today a major Spanish language newspaper in LA is distributing voter registration forms in their paper in the hopes of adding 150,000 voters to the polls. They'll be lucky if 10% of the people they register actually show up (and how many of them will be legal voters?).

Like the wily tortoise, the GOP just keeps plodding along toward another majority.