The Hill News

With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.) raised doubts about the message his party has used to help maintain its majorities in Congress. 

Democrats have appealed to voters to keep them in power, saying that their policies helped stave off a second Great Depression. But that might ring hollow, Yarmuth said, since unemployment still remains around 10 percent and the pace of the recovery appears to have slowed. The second-term congressman explained that the Republican message that Democrats have failed to create jobs and get the economy back on track might be wrong, but it's hard to refute.

{mosads}"That's a hard message to combat, particularly when there hasn't been dramatic improvement and you're basically saying 'give us credit for preventing something awful from happening' which, in fact, we did," he told the editorial board of the Louisville Courier-Journal in an interview published Wednesday. "The bottom line is, it's hard to get credit for preventing something from happening, and I don't know that we can make that message effectively."

Yarmuth's comments are another sign that some Democrats have reservations about their party's strategy going into the November midterm elections, where they are expected to sustain large losses to their majorities.

Democrats have oft repeated the refrain about which Yarmuth raised questions, that their policies kept the nation from an even greater economic down slide, which was started in part by Republican policies under President George W. Bush.

"And, look, we know we've got a lot of work to do, but the economy is growing again," President Obama said at a campaign rally in Oregon Wednesday night. "The private sector has created jobs for nine months in a row. But we’ve got a lot of work to do. There’s still a lot of people hurting out there."

Many vulnerable Democrats running in conservative-leaning districts have already gone to lengths to distance themselves from their party's leaders, especially Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama.

But Yarmuth hails from districts that leans Democratic and is expected to win reelection, despite the fact he faces a competitive challenge from Republican candidate Todd Lally. His comments are also one of the few from a Democrat that have challenged the party's message directly, instead of the people communicating it.

In his wide-ranging interview with the Courier-Journal, Yarmuth made it clear he supports Democratic policies such as the stimulus act and praised Pelosi as a leader. He criticized Republicans for making hypocritical arguments about the government's role in job-creation.

"It's kind of ironic. Here you have! the Republicans saying 'you can't create jobs, blah, blah, blah. And then they say, 'where are the jobs? Where is the administration? They failed to create jobs," he said. 

But the Kentucky congressman, who has been critical of Obama's economic team, blamed his own party for making claims about the stimulus's ability to hold down unemployment that eventually undercut their support of the $787 billion program.

"I think -- we the Democrats and our leadership made a big mistake in setting ourselves up to be challenged rhetorically by saying things like 'if you do the stimulus bill, it was going to hold employment -- unemployment to under eight percent,'" he said. "There was no way they could actually say that with confidence. It was a rhetorical point, I think."

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