Washed It!

Democrats went back to work on Tuesday, fresh from what was supposed to be the summer of economic recovery, only to find themselves facing the fall of their political pummeling.

With the general election eight weeks away, Democrats finished the Labor Day holidays, the traditional end of summer, to wage autumn campaigns amid what polls and prognosticators predicted would be an ever-worsening political climate. The malaise is so deep that it threatens Democratic control of Congress and is likely cast a pall even on the presidential election two years away.

In the House, where Republicans need to gain a net 39 seats to win control, the Cook Political Report’s current outlook is for a Republican net gain of at least 40 seats. At this point, only 209 House seats are “solid,” “likely or “lean Democratic,” while 181 seats are “solid,” “likely” or “lean Republican,” and 45 seats are in the “toss-up” column, the report said Tuesday.

Earlier, the Rothenberg Political Report moved 20 House races toward the GOP, citing “national and local polls [that] continue to show further deterioration in Democratic prospects.”

“Given that, we are increasing our target of likely Republican gains from 28-33 seats to 37-42 seats, with the caveat that substantially larger GOP gains in the 45-55 seat range are quite possible,” Rothenberg said.

On the Senate side, Republicans face a tougher job, having to win a net 10 seats from the 19 Democratic seats at stake. The GOP is defending 18 seats of its own. No one expects Democrats to lose control of the Senate, but their grasp is expected to sharply loosen.

But the elections are just the surface manifestation of the deeper wave of discontent washing through the country, which is trying to deal with a stuttering economic recovery. Stubbornly high unemployment and an unhappiness with Democrats’ performance in Congress and the White House are among factors threatening to squeeze incumbents.

And those factors spell special trouble for the Democrats as they seek to mount a counterattack this year. President Obama already has called for Congress to help small businesses with new tax cuts and has offered another round of spending on infrastructure — both designed to foster job creation. This week, the president will travel to Ohio to outline his proposals, first made on Monday in Milwaukee.

Even as Obama pushes economic proposals, polls show there is a general lack of enthusiasm for Democrats who rode President Obama’s tide of euphoria and change into the White House in 2008.
According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Monday, Republicans hold a two-point lead over Democrats in the generic ballot, but that becomes a 13-point lead among those most likely to vote in November.

That finding is similar to the Wall Street Journal- NBC News poll also released on Monday. That poll found an even split at 43% on the question of whether Republicans or Democrats should run Congress. But likely voters put the GOP ahead 49% to 40%.

Even more worrisome for Democrats, the Washington Post/ABC poll found voters said they trusted Republicans about the same as they trusted Democrats to handle the nation’s problems. About 40% said they had more confidence in Democrats and 38% said the GOP. Three months ago, Democrats had a 12-point advantage.

On the economy, 43% of voters said they agreed with Republicans when it came to dealing with financial problems, while 39% favored Democrats, the poll found.

The WSJ/NBC News poll found only 26% of voters said they believed the economy would get better in the next year, down from 47% a year ago. About three of every five voters surveyed said they believed the country was on the wrong track, up from 48% a year ago. Only two of every five voters said they approved of how President Obama was handling the economy.

michael.muskal@latimes.com
A gathering end-of-summer storm of negative political sentiment

The meandering network of pipes, wells and tankers belonging to the gigantic state oil company Pemex have long been an easy target of crooks and drug traffickers who siphon off natural gas, gasoline and even crude, robbing the Mexican treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Now the cartels have taken sabotage to a new level: They’ve hobbled key operations in parts of the Burgos Basin, home to Mexico’s biggest natural gas fields.

Forced to defer production and curtail drilling and maintenance in a region that spreads through some of Mexico’s most dangerous badlands, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer has become another casualty of the drug war.

In May, gunmen wearing camouflage and tennis shoes kidnapped five Pemex workers as they rode to the front gate of the Gigante No. 1 natural gas plant in the Burgos Basin. One man was a mechanic, another specialized in pumps. All were dressed in their crisp khaki uniforms with the Pemex logo, ready for long shifts. They have not been heard from since.

The kidnappings, plus the reported disappearance of at least 30 other employees of subcontractors in the same region, have terrorized a community where jobs on the oil rigs and at the gas wells are handed down, father to son, for generations.

“The traffickers are establishing it clearly,” said Sen. Graco Ramirez, a member of the congressional energy committee. “You collaborate, or you die.”

The capacity of the traffickers to exert influence over a company as mighty as Pemex only solidifies the widely held perception that the cartels are growing in size and strength despite the government’s crackdown.

“How is it,” asked a relative of a kidnapped worker, “that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?”

The Burgos Basin stretches across the northern border state of Tamaulipas, where the Gigante No. 1 plant is located, and spills into the states of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The three states are awash in violence, theater of a ferocious battle between the once-dominant Gulf cartel and its brutal former henchmen, the Zeta paramilitaries.

Pemex, which is Mexico’s largest income earner, pulling in nearly a third of the national budget, once staked great hopes on the area and its prospects for yielding gas, abundant thanks to the sandy soil and porous rock that make for ideal production and exploration conditions.

After dedicating nearly half a century to testing and exploration in the basin, Pemex in 2002 took the unusual step of opening it up to foreign investment, in contrast to Mexico’s historic protectionist attitude toward natural resources. Pemex officials anticipated an injection upward of $8 billion.

Employees of Pemex and a handful of foreign-owned firms were earning well in the basin, living good lives and working in relative safety.

Then convoys of mysterious gunmen started plying the roadways, followed by shows of force, intimidation, beatings and, finally, the abductions. Pleas for help and better protection, union leaders and workers say, went unheeded. The exact motives behind the May kidnappings remain unclear.

Ramirez, the senator, said the cartel responsible, probably the Zetas, may be after technical information to elude the measures Pemex is taking to guard against the rampant thefts of gas and oil.

Whatever the motive, the effect has been to cripple operations in some areas of the basin.

“In the Burgos project, there are areas we cannot access,” Carlos Morales Gil, director of exploration and production for Pemex, said during a news conference in the Tabasco city of Villahermosa in July. It was a startling admission.

“We are not going to enter any area where security is at risk,” he added, calling for increased army and navy protection for oil and gas installations.

Pemex would not comment to The Times or make an official available for this story.

However, a confidential report submitted to Congress in July and made available to The Times acknowledged that stolen natural gas and delayed gas production have cost the company nearly $50 million in just the first five months of this year.

Mexican drug cartels cripple Pemex operations in basin

All hail inexperience — the less familiarity with politics the better, no matter the party or state.

“The support of the voters of Connecticut isn’t bestowed by the establishment or the pundits or the media. It isn’t a birthright,” former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon said after winning the GOP senatorial nomination in her first run for office.

Two mountain ranges away, appointed Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado, tried to express the same sentiment after dispatching his rival, a former state house speaker. “This election is the first time my name has ever been on the ballot,” said Bennett, who enjoyed President Barrack Obama’s support in the bitter Democratic primary.