Bob Dole could not have been the first one to ponder the question, but he was on to something when he asked of his fellow Americans: “Where's the outrage?”
Back then, during the 1996 presidential campaign, the country was at peace, the economy was roaring along, President Clinton was talking about building a bridge to the 21st century -- whatever the hell that meant -- and he was thinking about how to improve race relations in America.
So what if there were skeletons in his closet waiting to come out. There was a feeling that the guy was trying to move the country somewhere, even if he only wanted to take baby steps. So the answer to Dole's question was a shrug, he lost the election, and Clinton's approval ratings stayed high, even when revelations tumbled out of the White House and he got impeached.
President Bush's approval ratings have begun to resemble his waist size, so we know people are tired of him and his way of doing things. But weary voters are not the same as angry voters. These two types of voters don't behave the same way, and Democrats who are counting on the deepening disenchantment with Bush to take them over the top in November need to pay close attention.
Even as the case grows stronger that Bush led us into an expensive, pointless war that was undertaken under a veil of deception, miscalculation and hubris, Americans remain disengaged. Immigration is generating more heat than a bad war and the almost 2,500 body bags that have come home from it.
And while it's increasingly clear that the Republican revolution has devolved into a carnival of self-dealing and self-interest with utter disregard for the public good, Americans are not on edge, polls say. Almost 70 percent of the public believes the country is on the wrong track, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. And even more of those polled, nearly 90 percent, say political corruption is a serious problem. But despair is not driving any action. Americans might be sick and tired, but are they pissed off? Not so much. We're leaving that to the French.
Gas prices continue to rise, and here is where the monster might begin to stir, because when it takes $46 to fill up a Camry, outrage is overdue. The only thing we know for sure is that immigrants and their boosters are a little more miffed than everyone else, and the GOP keeps feeding their anger with one dumb move after another. But everyone else, it seems, has decided to take the bad with the worse. And those who are angry are mad at both sides. Half of independents think the Democratic and Republican parties are equally corrupt, according to the AP-Ipsos poll. This is the textbook definition of cynicism, and Democrats need to be careful that it does not define a fall campaign in which everyone decides to stay home.
After the 2005 elections, when Democrats won governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher described a very anxious, “on the cusp of being an angry,” electorate. The last thing Democrats need is an electorate on the fence. These people could go either way, if they show up at all.
Of course, there are those who say there is anger in spades out there and that April 2006 is different from November 2005. “I think we are about to reach the tipping point,” says Democratic pollster and strategist Anna Greenberg. “The war in Iraq combined with the scandal, combined with the wiretapping, have left people incredibly frustrated, and they don't see any way out of it, and I think that is the kind of environment that can produce a 1994 kind of result.” The Republicans took control of Congress that year, overturning a 40-year Democratic majority.
Greenberg is careful to say that she is not predicting how the election is going to turn out, because so much can change. “This is just a snapshot in time, but if you look at the polls, there may be 40 house seats in play -- second-tier seats that you would never think of as being in play are in play.”
Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said this week he is looking to generate a wave that can allow Democrats to take back the House. To that end, Dean thinks Democrats need to nationalize the 2006 election and tie Republican candidates to the distemper the White House has engendered in Americans. “We have to have a national message that will play in every district,” Dean said.
In general, Greenberg agrees: “Having a nationalized context for this campaign is very important, and it has to have an economic framework and a national security framework.” She believes other Democratic advantages are obvious. Using immigration as the example, she said: “No one agrees with [the Republicans] on their approach to any of the issues.”
Voters are with Democrats -- all that's left is to make them mad enough to vote against the other side in November.
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C.
