Well, sure. There's no question about worry being the kick in the butt Democrats need to at least maintain their hold on both houses in November. And there's been a lot of butt-kicking lately. The polls say sour things about Democrats' chances.
We are braced for Supreme Court, Inc. and a brutal, ignorant oligarchy running our lives after January 2011. The economy will react accordingly (markets don't like Republicans) so we'll be too poor to pull ourselves together every again, dying like flies in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk outside Goldman Sachs.
So, goddamn it, give your last $20 to MoveOn or Alan Grayson. Or make a more effective move... to, like, Fiji or Perugia.
Kevin Drum thinks things will calm down in a couple of weeks.
...It turns out that pretty much the same thing happened both last year and this. During the three months of summer in 2009, Republicans went from -2 to +1, a change of three points. This year they went from +1 to +5, a change of four points.
So what does the recent change mean? I don't know, but if I had to guess I'd say it shows that conservative hysteria during a slow news season is a pretty effective attention getter, at least in the short term. Last year it was death panels and frenzied town hall meetings. This year it's the Ground Zero mosque and a Glenn Beck rally on the Mall.
So will they lose some of this lead as summer winds down and there's a little more real news to report, as they did last year? Beats me. But I wouldn't be surprised. This is shaping up to be a bad year for Democrats, but once August is over, everyone goes back to work, and the real campaigning begins, things might tighten back up a bit.
We bop back and forth between desperation and optimism like addicts.
