There is no doubt that Democrats will lose some Congressional seats in next month’s off-year elections. That has been the pattern over the past 50 years. If a Democrat is president, Republicans gain seats in off-year elections. If a Republican is president, Democrats gain in both chambers.

For example, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, was elected president in 1976. In the 1978 mid-term elections, Republicans gained 14 seats in the House and three in the Senate. George Herbert Walker Bush, a Republican, was elected president in 1988. However, in 1990, Democrats gained 25 House seats and 10 in the Senate. And in 1994, Republicans gained control of both chambers for the first time in 55 years.

Some Obama critics are trying to advance the argument that the president’s low polling numbers will make Democrats more vulnerable in November. The most recent Gallup poll showed Obama’s September approval rating increased by one percentage point over August, from 44 percent to 45 percent. In September of their second year in the White House, Jimmy Carter had an identical 45 percent approval rating and both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had a 42 percent approval rating. Reagan and Clinton were easily re-elected.

African-Americans remain Obama’s most loyal supporters, with a 91 percent approval rating. Hispanics provide a 55 percentage point approval rating and Whites only 36 percent.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that when respondents were asked the generic questions of which party should control Congress, the Republican lead fell from nine percentage points to three over the last month. Other polls, including Gallup, show Democrats and Republicans running even in their generic polls.

There is good and bad news for Democrats in the latest Gallup poll. The bad news is that Latinos, possibly upset by the failure of Congress to pass immigration reform, are shifting their support from Democrats to Republicans. In September, Hispanics favored Democrats by a 13-point margin (51 percent to 38 percent). That’s down from the 32-point margin Democrats enjoyed in June and July.

The good news is that registered voters aged 18 to 29 were more likely to favor Democratic congressional candidates in September than in August. According to the latest Gallup survey, young registered voters favor Democrats over Republicans 55 percent to 36 percent, a 19 percentage point margin. That’s up from 9 points from August.

Inasmuch as Republicans hold a 12-point advantage among seniors, the key will be whether the youth vote turns out in sizable numbers on Nov. 2.

If Democrats are to be successful in November, they must let the public know what “the Party of No” is saying yes to.

President Obama favors extending the Bush tax cuts to middle-class families but eliminating them for high-income people, defined as individuals making more than $200,000 annually and couples making more than $250,000. The Party of No, predictably, says no, leave the tax cuts in place for everyone.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, observed, “If Congress extends the tax cuts for married filers with incomes above $250,000 and single filers with incomes above $200,000 – the top 2 percent of U.S. households – then deficits and debt will be about $1 trillion higher over the next ten years than if it lets them largely expire, as the President has proposed.” 

The Congressional Budget Office says extending the tax cuts to the wealthy is one of the least effective options available to stimulate the economy. The CBO said reducing the payroll taxes for firms that hire more workers, for example, would create four to eight times as many jobs per dollar as extending tax cuts for the wealthy.

President Obama has talked about the mess that George W. Bush has left behind, but he needs to be more specific.

 The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan think thank in Washington, puts it this way: “Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration – tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs…These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues.”

In other words, the center says, “Together with the economic downturn, the Bush era tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.” 

House Minority Leader John Boehner has also proposed cutting non-security discretionary programs while extending the Bush tax cuts.  The Congressional Budget Office said that would require cutting $101 billion or 21 percent, amounting to the deepest cut in funding for these programs in modern U.S. history. That would take a deep toll on education, unemployment benefits and other programs designed to help people in a struggling economy.

Boehner and other Republican leaders also want to repeal health care reform that, by all accounts, will reduce the deficit in the future while providing basic coverage for most Americans.

As Democrats zero in on mid-term elections in less than three weeks, they should remember the words painted on a sign at the One Nation rally: “Hell yes, we can!”

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.