Terence Samuel on the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races: Current political weather reports forecast gloom and doom for Democrats come election time. The predictions are of severe changes in the climate from the triumphs of 2006 and 2008, when they took control of the Congress and won back the White House, to something considerably less favorable in 2009 and 2010. The anticipated result could be anything from a few lost Senate seats to a huge Republican comeback built on the decline in President Barack Obama's popularity. The president is now less likable than Hillary Clinton, we're told. Some even suggest that it is in anticipation of this defeat that the White House is moving so urgently on so many fronts, from health-care to financial-services reform. According to this line of thinking, the reconfigured Congress, with shrunken or erased Democratic majorities, will severely restrict the president's ability to advance his agenda. This week, conservative columnist George Will ran down a list of Senate races where Democrats could come up short next year and concluded, "The possibility of Republican gains, especially in the Senate, helps explain why Obama is in such a rush to remake the nation and save the planet. His window of opportunity could be closing." KEEP READING ...
