It seems that President Obama's car-in-a-ditch metaphor is more clever than it is effective. Check out these results from recent message-testing by Democracy Corps, the polling firm of James Carville and Stan Greenberg:

For some, going back to four years ago does not look so uninviting right now:  “I was doing a heckavah lot better under Bush.”

“Who wouldn't want to go back to 6 or 8 years ago?  There was less unemployment back then.  I'd rather go back.  I'd go back to 8 years ago.  I would rather go backwards than forwards right now.” White non-college female.

Because a “go forward” framework implies that Democrats and Congress have made progress those voters do not feel, the message re-enforces the Republican framework for the election – a referendum on the Democrats' performance on the economy.  In the experiment described above (where voters read the two Republican messages and the two Democratic ‘go forward, not back' messages), votes shifted to the Republicans not only on which party can best handle the economy but also on the congressional vote.  The 5 percent who shifted to the Democrats was exceeded by the 7 percent of voters who moved to the Republicans – a net negative 2-point worsening of the race.

Whoops.

Updated below

Jonathan Bernstein sketches his view of the likeliest scenario for Congressional Republicans after November:

The third strategy would be to forget about their agenda, and basically pretend they're still in opposition -- that is, to continue rejectionism.  Don't think 1995, or 1997-2000, but think more of 1993-1994.  Obviously, this works best if they don't actually take control of either House of Congress, or at the very least fall short in the Senate.  Still, they certainly could try it even if they have majorities in Congress.  They could (as Democrats did this year) not bother with a budget.  They would have to pass appropriations bills, but instead of using that process to really challenge the status quo, they would win some symbolic stuff, and fight carefully chosen fights on specific issues.  So they could actually eliminate earmarks and make a big show about including a statement of Constitutional legitimacy in all the bills they pass, giving them some victories to take home, and they could stage some losing votes on Tea Party priorities, preferably Constitutional amendments that they could all vote for without risking much.  Then, they could pass most of the appropriations bills without major veto-bait, but go ahead and maybe zero out some ACA funding and have a major fight over that one before surrendering, without the threat of a government shutdown hanging over everything.  Oh, and they could schedule votes all day long on cap-and-trade, and Obama's budget, and try to get Dems to take bad votes on them -- while fighting real fights over in the Senate on judicial and exec branch nominations.

He doesn't see a government shutdown fight coming. And John Boehner, surely mindful of Newt Gingrich's example, says that's not his goal.

Meanwhile TNR's Jonathan Chait is confident that Republicans "are going to impeach President Obama" over something, perhaps TBD. But for now House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa tells our Jay Newton-Small that impeachment isn't part of his plan.

Update: Jon Cohn lists three silver linings for Democrats in a Republican sweep.

As long rumored, Jim Jones will be leaving this month as Barack Obama's national security advisor. This was never a snug fit; Jones complained that he had less access to and sway over Obama than some more junior staffers, notably NSC chief of staff Denis McDonough, one of the most quietly influential figures in the White House, and Jones was rewarded with plenty of sniping from unnamed rivals around him. While Jones seems to have outmaneuvered at least one of his alleged detractors, he never emerged as the strong figure many people expected the former top NATO commander to be.

One reason may have been his lack of a strong personal relationship with the president. Obama tapped Jones for the job after having met him only twice. He may have been more focused on the useful symbolism of bringing a military man with Republican ties onto his team. It's also possible that Obama heeded the words of foreign policy mandarins who said that Condoleezza rice was too close to George W. Bush to be the sort of neutral arbiter the job demands, and that Rice failed the president by not acting as a more independent broker of dissenting opinions. Whatever the rationale, Jones never seemed to become a true Obama confidante, and much of the heavy lifting on the NSC fell to his deputy, Tom Donilon, who will now replace him. Here's a passage on Donilon from a story I wrote last year:

While Jones oversees the national security structure from above, it is Donilon who spends the most time sitting down with lesser-known officials from across the government to flesh out policy options before they reach the Oval Office. "He's the key guy setting the parameters of national security policy discussion and decision-making," says one person familiar with the NSC system. Even more so than Jones, in fact, Donilon is foremost a process guy. A lawyer by training, Donilon made his name as a political operative under Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale--"a fierce partisan," says a friend--later playing key roles in Joe Biden's 1988 and 2008 presidential bids. When, in the Clinton administration, his law-firm colleague Warren Christopher became secretary of state, Donilon followed him to Foggy Bottom as Christopher's chief of staff. Today, Donilon leads what in government parlance are known as "deputies meetings," in which second-tier officials coordinate policies and hash out competing positions before either reaching decisions or kicking issues up the chain to "principals meetings"--which usually feature cabinet secretaries, Jones, and Biden. In a busy stretch, Donilon might lead as many as four deputies meetings in one day.

Good luck to Donilon; with multiple big foreign policy threats stacked up, he'll certainly need it. (The NYT's David Sanger notes, by the way, that Donilon is a skeptic of the Afghanistan war and a strong supporter of a non-trivial withdrawal process beginning next summer.)

Sharron Angle, the nitwit Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, is now claiming that there is a threat of a Muslim takeover of several cities--like Dearborn, Michigan, which has a large Muslim population. Actually, I was just in Dearborn a few weeks ago. Celebrating the end of Ramadan with--yikes!--Muslims. They were business owners and academics, moderate to conservatives, most of them were former members of the Republican party who had joined that august organization because they are social conservatives and anti-big government. They hadn't left their Republican values; the Republican Party had left them because it sanctioned the kind of smear attacks leveled by people like this Angle.

I have no idea what impact Angle's idiocy will have on the legions of the mindless and witlessly convinced. It is a form of terrorism, though. It may result, at the margins, in dirty looks and shunning directed at women in hejab; it may result in one of those whitebread militia psychopaths, whom Bart Gellman wrote about on our cover last week, to take matters into his own hands. I'm waiting to hear whether any member of the Republican leadership has anything to say about this.

Norwalk, Conn.

In politics as in business, Linda McMahon grasps the art of the sale. During Thursday morning's debate between Connecticut's Senate candidates, the Republican cast herself as the antidote to the bankrupt politics of Washington, a product few voters are pleased with in this turbulent cycle. “The choice in this election is absolutely clear,” said McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. “We have a career politician versus a businesswoman who knows how to create jobs.”

Her opponent embraced the dichotomy. “She is different from me,” replied Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic nominee. “She has spent her life building a fortune. I have spent my life helping people build their futures.”

It was a testy exchange in a debate peppered with them, but both contenders were right; they could scarcely be more different. In a season when candidates are contorting their records to claim outsider status, McMahon is the authentic article, a pro-wrestling tycoon who has never held elected office yet committed $50 million to bankrolling her first campaign. Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general since 1991, is a well-respected fixture in the Nutmeg State, a jut-jawed 64-year-old (picture a preppier Eliot Spitzer) who was expected to coast into the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Chris Dodd. As recently as last spring, polls showed him with a cushion of more than 30 points. But a presumptive cakewalk has become a dogfight, with McMahon closing to within three points in one recent poll. A CNN/Time/Opinion Research survey released this week, which tracks with the results from several others, gave Blumenthal a 54%-41% edge.

Read More…

In the first decision of its kind, a federal judge in Michigan has ruled that the individual mandate included in the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Ben Smith at Politico posted a crucial piece of the judge's ruling, which states that the federal government has power - via the Commerce Clause - to require Americans to maintain insurance:

The health care market is unlike other markets. No one can guarantee his or her health, or ensure that he or she will never participate in the health care market. Indeed, the opposite is nearly always true. The question is how participants in the health care market pay for medical expenses - through insurance, or through an attempt to pay out of pocket with a backstop of uncompensated care funded by third parties.

This phenomenon of cost- shifting is what makes the health care market unique. Far from “inactivity,” by choosing to forgo insurance plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance,collectively shifting billions of dollars, $43 billion in 2008, onto other market participants....

The plaintiffs have not opted out of the health care services market because, as living, breathing beings, who do not oppose medical services on religious grounds, they cannot opt out of this market. As inseparable and integral members of the health care services market, plaintiffs have made a choice regarding the method of payment for the services they expect to receive. The government makes the apropos analogy of paying by credit card rather than by check. How participants in the health care services market pay for such services has a documented impact on interstate commerce. Obviously, this market reality forms the rational basis for Congressional action designed to reduce the number of uninsureds.

Lawsuits elsewhere are ongoing, but this is a significant win for the Obama Administration.

I have a piece in this week's newsstand and iPad editions about Fred Davis, the man behind many of the best ads of this political season, including Christine O'Donnell's "I am not a witch spot." (Subscribe. For $5 we will send 15 issues to your house.) I asked Davis about that ad. His answer:

...here. The definition of hypocrisy, here.