Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said Friday that his party is in position for “an earthquake election” come November 4. Dems predicting ‘earthquake’ election

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said Friday that his party is in position for “an earthquake election” come Nov. 4.

“Nothing is going to look the same,” Greenberg said, joined by Democratic strategist James Carville at a breakfast with reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.


Carville likened the Washington political environment to pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, saying that “there will be nothing left standing” after the election. He added that Republicans stand to lose “not just an election but a generation of voters.”

“[John] McCain and [Sarah] Palin are losing the argument,” Greenberg said, pointing to favorable numbers for Obama on the campaign’s central issue, the economy.

“They are losing on their central arguments,” the pollster said of the Republican’s focus on tax cuts. “They can’t see that what they take for granted loses them independents.”

Greenberg said the GOP has not adjusted to a changed electorate and is running toward a base that no longer has the numbers it once had.

“Republicans want McCain to keep running to the right,” he said. “This is a new map.”

Carville agreed, though he suggested that Democrats also have not fully adapted to a changed electorate.

“I don’t know if we’ve seen the full sweep of what is possible,” he said, listing a number of Republican House seats that are polling competitive despite received little or no money from Democratic committees.

Both said that, despite the tough environment Republicans face in this election, the McCain campaign was running a competitive race until selecting Palin as the Arizona senator’s running mate.

Greenberg said Palin has “changed the whole criteria of the race” by moving the debate from assessing Obama’s experience to change and reform.

“Attitudes toward Palin are now more of a factor than McCain,” he said.

“The Palin thing was just pretty dumb,” Carville added. “That looked good for, what, 48 hours? Seventy-two hours?”

The Democratic strategist also mocked the McCain campaign’s attempts to use Joe the Plumber to rally middle-class voters. “The reason the Republicans found Joe the Plumber was to find someone hanging around a toilet other than [Sen.] Larry Craig,” he said.