Sour Mood Threatens Both Sides' Incumbents - Throw-the-Bums-Out Mood Usually Costs Only One Party, but Voter Anger Could Run the Gamut

From The Wall Street Journal:

An unprecedented fourth consecutive "change'' election could be brewing for 2012, with President Barack Obama's approval numbers tumbling and Republican disapproval ratings rising.

Voters in a throw-the-bums-out mood almost never punish both parties equally. That is why partisans on both sides are angling for an advantage by pressing to drive down their opponents' popularity even further.

Democrats have launched a campaign to link all Republicans with the tea party, whose popularity is in decline in the aftermath of the debt-ceiling fight. Mr. Obama took up the cudgel in Holland, Mich., Thursday by denouncing "the refusal of some folks in Congress to put country over their party."

Republicans are linking Mr. Obama with Democrats in Congress, convinced that next year's election will be a referendum on only one incumbent—the president. "The fish rots at the head," said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

But political analysts who have never believed voters take out their wrath on incumbents in both parties are starting to wonder if 2012 will be different.

"This may be the exception," said former Rep. Martin Frost, who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after the 1994 Republican wave. "I don't recall any environment that has been as toxic as this for both parties."

A CNN poll this week found that 59% view the Republican Party unfavorably, the highest number in the poll's history, surpassing the 54% the GOP hit in February 1999, as House Republicans were impeaching President Bill Clinton. Also this week, the Gallup tracking poll put Mr. Obama's approval rating at 40%, the lowest of his presidency.

In a Fox News poll released Thursday, 51% said they had an unfavorable view of the tea-party movement, compared to 35% in September. Some 31% viewed the movement favorably in the new survey.

George H.W. Bush lost the presidency while 16 Democrats and eight Republicans in the House lost. "That was the first time that happened in 100 years," said Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), who was the NRCC executive director at the time.

Stu Rothenberg, the nonpartisan editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, is skeptical that even 1992 was truly an anti-incumbent year. Almost always, wave elections slosh to the left or the right, he said—2006 and 2008 were Democratic waves, despite a generally sour view of Washington; 2010 sloshed back to the Republicans.

If the economy remains weak, he said, Republicans will have the easier pitch: Do you want to give Mr. Obama and his enablers in Congress four more years?

But with public views of the tea party and GOP slumping, he said, he could imagine the Democrats winning 15 seats in the House and Mr. Obama losing re-election.