Nearly 15.3 million people are still out of work in the U.S. despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the Democratic government to “restart” the economy.

From Politico:

The nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 10 percent in December, presenting a continuing political difficulty for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats heading into the 2010 midterm elections.

The work force lost an additional 85,000 jobs in December, government figures released Friday showed — a hit to the national economy, but not as bad as during several months at the height of the financial collapse last year.

This has stark, negative political implications for a party that has enjoyed two cycles of successes.  Now, you would be hard-pressed to find a pundit on either side that believes that the Democrats will lose less than a dozen races in the mid-term election.

I wrote in late August that the changing political environment meant good news for Republicans, but not necessarily good news for Republican incumbents.  In fact, last Tuesday’s election indicates that incumbents of both parties should be fearful of losing their jobs.

A recent article in the Politico highlights my concern:

Of all the numbers swirling around this week Capitol Hill this week – health care whip counts, CBO estimates, winning and losing margins in Virginia, New York and New Jersey – one stands out from the rest: 10.2 percent.

That’s the national unemployment rate. And lawmakers from both parties know that, if it doesn’t go down dramatically before next November, they could be adding to it themselves.

“I think anytime unemployment is high and people are concerned about their jobs, the economy, incumbents on both sides of the aisle need to be concerned,â€� Republican Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker said Friday. “What people care most about is food, clothing and shelter. Period. …. When food, clothing and shelter are sort of impacted, their base lives are impacted, it definitely sours the public as it should. Usually the party in power takes the brunt of that, but it affects all incumbents.”

In August, I predicted that growing angst regarding government spending, and the ever growing unemployment number would put many incumbents at risk.  I agree with Senator Corker - when a voter is facing unemployment yielding an inability to afford the essentials, then they are angry at whomever is in power for not “fixing” the problem.  In fact, the loses that Democrats face in 2010 are largely their fault for pushing the stimulus as the be-all-fix-all solution.  Clearly it was not.

Democrats aren’t the only ones at risk.  There are several dozen Republicans that voted for the Bush stimulus.  This makes it difficult to take a stand against government intervention.

A new survey indicates that laid off workers are spending more time engaging in their communities by volunteering (8%) and becoming more involved in their local church (6%).  This newly minted free time could significantly change political environments now that 9% of the US is unemployed.

As the unemployed search for jobs, they are also afforded an opportunity to become more informed on the issues as down time is likely spent in-front of a television or computer.  This could spark higher political engagement, as fatigued and angry people are the forefront of any revolution.

As you could imagine, the growing legion of unemployed are most concerned with providing for themselves (see below); however, attention could soon be turned to the failure of Obama’s “stimulus” to save their jobs.  This could spell trouble for Democrats in 2010.