Voters Appear Set to Hand Control of Congress to the Party They Like Least

House Speaker Boehner, left, and prospective Senate Majority Leader McConnell
House Speaker Boehner, left, has a 28% favorable rating; prospective Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s is 25%, according to GOP-leaning Rasmussen

With the midterm elections less than a month away, polling suggests that voters will give the Republican Party majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 2006, when they booted GOP out of power after its disastrous six year run as George W. Bush’s “Rubberstamp Congress.”

The NBC poll found that while 59 percent of Republicans say they’re engaged in the election, just 47 percent of Democrats are paying attention

FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans a 60 percent chance of taking the Senate, and, largely because of Republican gerrymandering in 2011, there is little chance Democrats will take back the House. To keep their majority in the Senate, Democrats need to hold and/or win six seats, including five current seats in red and purple states — Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina and New Hampshire — and one blue state that looks wobbly, Colorado. They are likely to hold the open seat in Michigan, the race for the open seat in Georgia is considered winnable, and — if they’re having a good night — upsets are possible in Kansas and South Dakota.

How likely is that Democrats will have a good night on Nov. 4? An NBC poll this week found that likely voters favor a Republican-led Congress by two points, 46/44 percent, while the larger cohort of registered voters prefer to put Dems in charge by the same margin, 46/42 percent. The preference for Democratic-control by registered voters ought to be encouraging — the Dems have put time and money into getting out the vote in critical states — but NBC also found that while 59 percent of Republicans say they’re engaged in the election, just 47 percent of Democrats are paying attention.

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Boehner, Limbaugh Try to Rewrite History of GOP Push to Impeach Obama

Republicans have been beating the drum for the impeachment of Pres. Obama since the first year of his first term. Now that it appears voters will remove the GOP’s main obstacle — Democratic control of the Senate — in the November midterms, the reality is sinking in among Democrats and independents that if Republicans keep the House and take the Senate, as appears likely, they will spend the last two years of Obama’s term impeaching him.

Last week, the House laid the groundwork for impeachment when Republicans voted to give Speaker Boehner the authority to sue the president on grounds that he delayed Obamacare’s employer mandate by executive order. House Republicans hope voters have forgotten that they voted to delay the employer mandate one year earlier.

The Democrat Party has base has taken notice. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has raised $7.6 million online since Boehner announced he was suing the president. This includes 74,000 donations averaging just $19 each from 74,000 new donors. On the last Monday in July, the DCCC reported that it had raised $1 million online in 24 hours. The uptick in new donors is cause for alarm in Republican establishment circles, and by the end of last week Boehner, Rush Limbaugh and other Republican leaders were backpedaling away from impeachment as fast as they could.

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