AFTER months of near-euphoria among Democrats and a growing certainty among pollsters that the party will win control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November’s midterm elections, doubts are beginning to creep in.

“Democrats vow not to give up hopelessness” ran a spoof headline in The Onion, the US online equivalent to Private Eye, recently. The story below suggested that despite having their best chance in more than a decade to regain control of Congress, the party that has never triumphed over the Bush White House will once again contrive to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The story listed the elements in the Democrats’ favour: voter anger over the Iraq war, President Bush’s plummeting poll numbers, the Republican Party beset by scandal and a US electorate hungry for change.

Then it lampooned Harry Reid, the Democrat leader in the Senate, with a spoof quote: “We can lose this. All it takes is a little lack of backbone.”

The Onion’s parody began to look eerily prescient to many Democrats this week. It also skewered Democrats on the issue that presents them with their greatest opportunity this November, but also their greatest dilemma: the war in Iraq, on which they are deeply divided.

After a politically miserable year for President Bush, in which his approval rating dropped to 33 per cent in May, polls released yesterday suggest that his muscular effort in the past fortnight to turn the debate about Iraq into one about terrorism — and to paint the Democrats as weak on both issues — is producing results.

In a series of speeches culminating in a prime-time address on the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Mr Bush repeated the same message: Iraq was the central front in the War on Terror.

Retreat in Iraq would give succour to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Republicans can be trusted to keep America safe — and Democrats cannot.

To the dismay of Democrats, still scarred by the way that Mr Bush used the spectre of terrorism — and their perceived weakness on the issue — to win re-election in 2004 and gain seats for Republicans on Capitol Hill in 2002, the President’s approval rating has jumped to 44 per cent, according to the latest survey by Gallup.

More troubling for Democrats, terrorism has shot up the list of voters’ concerns, with Americans more likely to vote for candidates who support Mr Bush on terrorism, 45 per cent to 28 per cent.

For the first time since last December, a majority of Americans did not believe that the Iraq war was a mistake. In an ABC News poll, a majority of Americans — 53 per cent — say they believe Iraq is part of the broader War on Terror.

Although 60 per cent surveyed by Gallup said that Mr Bush did not have a clear plan for Iraq, two thirds of Americans do not believe that Democrats have a plan, a political reality that is one of the party’s greatest vulnerabilities.

Democrats need a net gain of fifteen seats to take control of the House, and six for the Senate. Bruce Jentleson, a former official in the Clinton Administration and a professor of public policy at Duke University in North Carolina, said that just criticising Mr Bush on Iraq without offering an alternative could cost Democrats their chance of winning the House. While nearly all Democrat candidates criticise the President’s handling of Iraq, few present their own alternative and the national party has presented no plan to end the war.

“It’s not enough to be just against something. On national security you’ve also got to be for something,” Professor Jentleson told The Times. “If they want to win the House, they have to say what they are for in Iraq. Many voters don’t trust the Democrats because they can’t tell you what their strategy is.”

Democrats have also failed to emulate the Republicans’ Contract with America, their 1994 midterm manifesto. Building on deep public disaffection with Democrats 12 years ago, the document offered voters a clear alternative. Republicans gained fifty-four seats in the House and eight in the Senate, a landslide in which the Democrats lost control of the House for the first time since 1953.

This week, by contrast, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ leader in the House, unveiled their own manifesto — A New Direction for America — their seventh slogan this year.

Strategists on both sides agree that all the factors needed for a Democrat takeover exist — an unpopular war, an unpopular president, dislike of Congress, nervousness about the economy and a belief that the country is on the wrong track. Everybody expects significant Democrat gains.

But there is a growing nervousness among Democrats.

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