Looking forward

Just as markets price-in expectations about corporate profits, terrorist outrages, hiked taxes, etc., political parties adjust to the events they see looming on the horizon.

Both main parties are pricing-in a win on Nov. 4 for Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and the Democrats, and defeat for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and the Republicans.

Tokens of this assumption (or calculation) are everywhere, and a few recently stand out. One was the prediction last week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in an interview with Charlie Rose, that she would have a caucus of about 250 Democrats in the 111th Congress.

Pelosi carefully avoided such predictions in the previous election cycle, having seen her predecessor, then-Rep. Richard Gephardt, humiliated by a wildly wrong forecast in 2002. But now Pelosi clearly believes victory is certain — few would disagree with her — and has cast constraint aside.

Democrats’ assumption of a big win is clear, too, in the way they are lining up favorite old policy ideas that were once stymied by less lopsided Congresses or by the Republican president.

Card check, which would end secret ballots for union organization at workplaces, seems certain to move forward. Older chestnuts, such as the Fairness Doctrine mandating equal time for opposing views in the media, are also jostling for attention.

On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are acting on the reciprocal assumption that they are going down to defeat. The expectation of GOP losses has stoked debate about the future of the Republican Party not merely for weeks or months, but for more than a year. Questions about what it means to be a conservative, and what center-right policies should be in the post-Reagan age of reduced taxation, are roiling Republican ranks.

Gen. Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama on Sunday can be seen in the same light. He did not merely back the Democrat but took several swipes at his own party, suggesting implausibly that McCain’s candidacy shifted his party to the right. (In truth, the nominee has long been regarded with suspicion by the right wing.)

Powell’s deliberately protracted assault on the party’s direction was pricing-in defeat on Nov. 4 and should be seen as a salvo in the already hot war over the soul of the GOP. Powell, a centrist, does not want McCain’s defeat, if or when it comes, to trigger a rightward shift by Republicans.

Internecine squabbles break out after defeat. Fingers are pointed and the people ask, Who lost this for us? Powell and other Republicans are looking past election defeat and are now fighting mainly over the direction of the GOP.

Likewise, Democrats are already looking past victory and undertaking the enjoyable task of deciding which items from their long agenda will be on the first congressional train leaving the station in February 2009.