I agree with much of Peter Beinart’s argument in this column, but he glides over a fairly significant point

In policy terms, to be sure, Republican critiques of the stimulus are important: We’re engaged in an extraordinary experiment in whether Keynesian economics works, and whether it works more effectively through spending or tax cuts. But politically, the critiques are irrelevant. The Obama stimulus will pass. For a while, the economy will almost certainly remain bad. If by 2011 and 2012, it starts to markedly recover—as the American economy did in 1983 and 1984—Obama will get the credit, no matter how many Republicans voted with him. Blue states and districts will grow bluer, and many of the Republicans who represent them will lose, or else retire before they can. (See Gregg, Judd). Republicans in safe conservative states and districts will keep their jobs, and watch Obama’s triumph in brooding insignificance.

Notice that Beinart’s economic turnaround scenario begins the year after the 2010 midterm elections. If the economy is really going through a brutal patch–anybody disagree?–and if it continues between now and November 2010, the mood in the country is going to be ugly and anti-incumbent. Sure, the Democrats will make the argument that Bush is to blame, and that they’ve done the best they could. But the American people handed Democrats the White House and sizable majorities in the House and Senate with the expectation that they would be generating results, not excuses. Even if the public cuts Obama some slack, congressional Democrats will have been calling the shots since January 2007, a time that might look like the Good Old Days compared to where things are 18 months from now.

Does this mean the Republicans get another 1994? Way too early to tell. But under the things-still-stink-on-Election Day 2010 scenario, Obama and congressional Democrats will want to spread the blame around–”hey, look, don’t blame us, everyone, including Republicans, thought the stimulus was the best option available.” If the stimulus passes on a party-line or near-party-line vote, it immediately becomes Obama’s economy.