Don't measure the drapes yet, GOP

President Harry Truman started his 1948 re-election campaign low on public support and even lower in cash. So the story goes, at one point Truman's whistle-stop train tour ran out of money.

Truman phoned supporters and next found himself standing on a chair in someone's living room, begging for funds. We know what happened. "Give 'em hell" Harry defied all the pundits and pollsters, all the journalists, his staff - even his wife, Bess - and won.

Listen up! Democrats have a positive narrative that can, and will, win. Before any pollster convinces voters otherwise, it's important to understand what that message is.

Today's pundits are sagely pointing out that Nov. 2 is not going to be a great night for Democrats. They say the conventional wisdom is that, in an off-year election, the party in power (the Democrats) would be expected to lose about 15 to 20 seats.

Last week, the professionals expectation was, and likely remains, that the Republicans would take over the House of Representatives. If they don't, they will be seen as a failure. I hope the Grand Old Partiers have their life jackets ready, because they've just sailed into political waters on the Titanic.

Let's get real. There is a huge voter backlash over gridlock in Washington. What political professionals are overlooking is that the Republican Party, what's left of it, has been torn in half by the massive defection of their base to tea party candidates.

As the polls show, the average tea party supporter was a Republican. They view Republican leaders as betrayers of conservative principles. Elephants remember, and these rogue elephants recall quite well that TARP was George W. Bush's idea, and that the Republicans supported a bank bailout long before they wanted banks to sink or swim on their own.

They are bitter beyond rage that, after working for Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts to become the 41st GOP senator, he turned around and poked them in the eye by voting for a jobs bill and later by supporting Obama's Wall Street reform bill.

It's great for a party to have a little dissension going into a primary, but it's disastrous to have such continuousness in a general election. Right now, the momentum remains with the tea party movement. They smell victory all on their own, and they're going for it.

Democrats, however, in this volatile political season, have nothing to lose. Even if they hold on by one seat, the media will give them the postelection spin. So you see, the Republicans in Congress need to be a little careful on measuring the drapes in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office.

Yes, the end-of-August poll numbers were not good for the Democrats. The Republicans were up by 10 points in many of the generic national polls. But wait until mid-October before we conclude just which way the wind might blow.

The choice can't be clearer. The Democrats must continue to remind voters that they are working to fix the mess the Republicans made. Democrats must also explain how much money it has cost to get things back on track.

Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress are the least-liked group in Washington, D.C. Voters are showing some hesitancy to put them back in power after they took the country to such spectacular failures. Just remember what they inherited from former President Clinton - a budget surplus.

Independents are fed up with all of the above and will continue moving away from the Democrats right now. But they are not necessarily moving toward the Republicans. They must be persuaded to vote for Democrats or Republicans, and no major party can win without them.

For now, let this suffice: The Republicans are claiming the Democrats have bankrupted the country. It was they who caused the Great Recession. Where have their polices changed? Voters need time to debate and judge plans from a party that failed our nation.

Finally, President Obama, despite a sharp turn in his poll numbers, remains personally popular, though his job performance has suffered badly since last summer. What can Obama do? For starters, he can rally the base and help the party raise money. Obama can do what he's doing now - putting up solid pro-growth and pro-jobs proposals, and dare the "party of no" to obstruct them. Ideally, he can also stay on message (but that's a stretch).

Obama remains well-liked. But like Truman back in 1948, his job performance numbers are down. Yet, he is the Democrat's surefire best asset. Let Obama be Obama. And watch things change.

© 2010, United Feature Syndicate Inc.