The Democrats’ risky messaging strategy?

I heard Robert Gibbs on NPR this morning, repeating the now-familiar Democratic talking point that the Republicans are advocating policies that would take us backward to the conditions that created this financial & economic crisis in the first place, whereas the Democrats are moving the country forward and digging us out from the hole that those GOP policies created (and will continue to do so after they hold onto their majorities in November, per Gibbs). There’s nothing surprising about this — I mean, what else can the Dems say, really? — but it occurred to me that there’s a risk to this rhetorical strategy, inevitable though the strategy may be.

The risk comes from the fact that the Democrats’ absolute best-case scenario for this November’s elections is to lose, but not lose too badly. Even in the wildest dreams of Gibbs, Obama, Pelosi and Reid, we’ll be looking at diminished Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress come next January. Granted, that’s a pretty typical result historically — the incumbent party almost always loses seats in the midterms — and it’s a damn near inevitable result when you couple a bad economy with single-party rule in Washington. Whatever you think of the Dems’ actual policies, the reality is that voters react first and foremost to superficial stimuli, with “economy bad, party in power bad” being the most powerful by far. In reality, therefore, a moderate-to-somewhat-but-not-too-severe setback at the polls for the Democrats wouldn’t really say much other than, “Voters behaved in exactly the way political scientists (and armchair blog-pundits) would expect them to behave.”

But reality is one thing, and perception is another. Spin as they might, nobody outside of the pundit class is going to see a 20+ seat loss in the House, and a 3-5 seat loss in the Senate (again, I’m talking best-case scenario here), as a “victory” for Obama and the Dems. So, if they’re creating a narrative whereby a vote for the GOP is a vote for the past, and a vote for the Dems is a vote for the future, aren’t they creating a near-100% certainty that the “past” will be perceived to have won? Don’t they risk constructing an artificial “mandate” for what they would view as reactionary policies, or at least for “no more change” for a while?

Again, maybe this is all inevitable: I don’t know what the alternative messaging strategy would be, other than the tried-and-true Democratic “curl up in a ball and die” strategy. Moreover, whatever their message, maybe Obama & the Dems recognize that there isn’t going to be much in the way of major “change” in the second half of Obama’s term anyway, given the state of the economy and the budget and the political climate. Still, this thought crossed my mind, and I thought it was worth sharing, to see what others think.

P.S. Side note: I continue to believe that the best thing that can happen to Obama’s 2012 re-election chances is for the Republicans to take back at least one, and ideally both, houses of Congress. Just as the GOP victory in ’94 set the stage for Clinton’s ’96 re-election, so would the Republicans once again “peaking too soon” take a good deal of heat off Obama going forward, since he’ll then be able to more plausibly blame the Republicans for stalling his agenda. (The average voter doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care, about filibusters and Blue Dogs and whatnot — as far as they’re concerned, Democrats have 100% power right now, and so everything that goes wrong is 100% their fault. Not so if they share power with the GOP.)

Conversely, the worst-case scenario is for Obama is if the Dems cling to very, very slim majorities in both houses, thus crippling their ability to govern, but maintaining the “one-party rule” perception. And while normally, Obama would still have an incentive to fight for every seat in order to have a chance at enacting at least some of his agenda, I am skeptical, as I indicated above, that there’s going to be much room — politically or fiscally — for an “agenda” in 2011 and 2012 beyond treading water, starting to address the deficit, and hoping like hell the economy starts to improve. So really, what does Obama gain from a Democratic “win” (i.e., “not-so-bad loss”) in November? Not much, as far as I can tell. As such, maybe the “alternative messaging strategy” is for Gibbs to shut his yapper, and let the chips fall as they may? “Curl up in a ball and die” FTW!