牛牛的靠山。。。。Republican Wins May Make Democrats Cautious on Obama Agenda

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Republican Wins May Make Democrats Cautious on Obama Agenda

By Jonathan D. Salant

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races may make some congressional Democrats more leery of backing key elements of President Barack Obama’s agenda because of the political price they could pay, analysts said.

Democrats in competitive House districts, many of them already cautious about Obama’s push to overhaul the U.S. health- care system and curb emissions blamed for global warming, might be more resistant to move ahead on the measures and face attacks from a newly energized Republican Party, the analysts said.

The Nov. 3 election results are “a real warning bell for moderate Democrats,” said Tobe Berkovitz, associate professor of communications at Boston University. “They are not going to think twice about their vote on health care. They’re going to think five times.”

David Primo, a political science professor at the University of Rochester in New York, said Democrats in competitive districts may demand more concessions in exchange for their votes on contentious legislation.

The election “may make it harder to swing moderates on the fence in favor of Obama’s proposals, for fear of being made examples in the midterm elections,” Primo said. “The results may increase the price those on the fence charge for their support.”

Market Reaction

A rally in health-care stocks followed the Republican victories. Those equities in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 1.3 percent yesterday, highest among 10 industries.

Deutsche Bank AG analysts told clients that some moderate Democrats “may start to push back harder against some of the most progressive elements” of the House’s health-care bill or risk being defeated next year.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, citing Democratic wins in races for open congressional seats in New York and California, said yesterday she would move forward on the health-care measure, with a vote possible before week’s end.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, said that “from my perspective, we won” with the election of Bill Owens in an upstate New York district Republicans had controlled for a century and California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi in a Democratic-leaning district in the San Francisco Bay area. The two victories increased the Democrats’ House majority to 258-177.

The House measure would offer subsidies to help people buy insurance, require that all Americans have coverage and establish a public plan to compete with private insurers.

Democratic consultant Peter Fenn said that rather than balk at Obama’s agenda, his party’s lawmakers should worry about losing their offices if they don’t pass legislation.

‘Party of No’

“The biggest problem the Democrats will have next year is if they don’t deliver,” Fenn said. If the 2010 campaign becomes “a referendum on what the Democrats have accomplished and you have paralysis, I wouldn’t want to be the Democrats who joined the Party of No,” he said.

“There is an overreaction to the results,” said James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies in Washington. He predicted the Nov. 3 election would “mean very little or nothing to health care, climate change or the rest of Obama’s agenda.”

The Senate is drafting legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The House in June voted to curb such emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

Independent Voters

Exit polling of voters by CNN in the New Jersey and Virginia races showed that self-described independents, who supported the Democrats in 2008, swung by large margins to the Republicans this year. Some analysts focused on this as a concern for Democrats.

“What you’re seeing now is a severe peeling away of independents and even more critical suburban voters,” Berkovitz said. “You have to pay attention to it.”

Most analysts and spokesmen for both parties said they didn’t view the election results as a verdict on Obama.

“I don’t think it’s so much a referendum on the president,” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele said at a press conference yesterday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said New Jersey and Virginia voters were motivated by “very local issues that didn’t involve the president.”

The CNN polls found that 60 percent of New Jersey voters and 56 percent of those in Virginia said Obama didn’t figure into their ballot decisions.

Asked about poll findings that the economy was the top issue in both states, Gibbs said, “I don’t think the president needed an election or an exit poll to come to that conclusion.”

Candidate Recruitment

The election could have an immediate impact on Republican recruitment of candidates for next year’s races. “Republicans who are on the fence, good quality guys and women, might jump in now,” party consultant Eddie Mahe said.

More than half of the 54 Republicans first elected to the House in 1994, which ended 40 years of Democratic control of the chamber, didn’t decide to run until after the party swept the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in 1993, according to Republican officials.

“There has been a bit of a rehabilitation of the Republican brand,” Democratic consultant Glenn Totten said. Even so, he said, Republicans in 2010 “are still going against what I think is a fairly uphill battle in most of these cases.”

-- Editors: Don Frederick, Dave McCombs.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at [email protected].

Last Updated: November 4, 2009 23:00 EST

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