Charlie Cook: Democrats Have Plenty of Reasons to Dread November

The National Journal reports:

As Congress returns to Washington this week for the few remaining legislative days before the midterm elections, lawmakers will compare notes on what they heard and saw back home. They will also share impressions they gleaned about what will happen on Nov. 4. Democrats' assessments will be particularly enlightening, and my guess is that those reports will be about as discouraging as they can get.

Historically, midterm elections are generally referenda on the incumbent president. President Obama's latest overall approval ratings are not far above his lowest yet. Public attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act have not noticeably improved. The extent to which the ACA is no longer Topic A for Republicans is not a sign that the legislation has become more popular. Rather, GOP strategists began telling their candidates and campaigns six months ago that they had milked that cow for all they were going to get, and that they needed to broaden and diversify their attacks on Obama and congressional Democrats. It seems the strategists finally got through to their candidates. Sure, there are still plenty of ads taking swipes at Democrats over the health care law, but it is no longer the dominant issue of the campaign season. It's already baked into this cake.

The economy is improving but stuck in a very low gear. Real incomes are not going up, the benefits of this recession have not been equally distributed, and while consumer confidence may be at the highest level since the recession began, it is not even close to the norm for the preceding two decades. Any time really good economic news comes out, you can pretty much count on some discouraging data to surface shortly thereafter—two steps forward, one step back. It's little wonder that half of Americans in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken in midsummer felt that we were still in a recession, even though we have technically been in a recovery since July 2009.

A November to remember.