Or to save money, or for one of a million other reasons. The Democratic party is well aware that, today, nothing is “out of sight” of anyone once it’s out there on any media or the internet.
No message can appeal to everyone. Not sure what you mean by “the last couple of cycles” since, in 08 and 12, the Democrats won big. But they actually paired solid negative advertising with a positive message and a defense of Democratic accomplishments and priorities.
I don’t know if they would have won had they actually praised and defended the ACA and the progress in the economy, but I think turnout would have been higher. Further, we now know that Obama’s ‘punt immigration until after the midterms’ was a political failure that may have cost Hispanic voter turnout.
Eye wanted to know what your opinion of astorian’s opinion of black candidates would be. You had been so helpful up to that point that I thought you would continue to provide his opinion.
Yes, any personal reason you wish to give is still known as your personal reason.
Outright? As in “directly and plainly”? No, but astorian has already clarified his position on the issue and I have already agreed with his clarified possition.
At least this time your excuse is plausible. But to get back at what I was talking about when I first brought it up, how do you think the NY Times report affected white voters who heard about it? And is it wise for Democrats to engage in such tactics?
“Everyone” is a strong word, but there is a lot of messaging that appeals to the masses regardless of background. That messaging was completely absent from the Democratic campaign in 2014.
2008 was big, 2012 not so much, but that’s because the Democrats didn’t actually have a positive message in 2012. They relied primarily on “Mitt Romney’s a rich guy who outsources and won’t look out for people like you.”, the “War on Women”.
ACA, not so much, as proven by Republicans actually wanting to bring it up a lot(even though it wasn’t the singular focus it was in 2010), and all Republican candidates who won in the Senate running on its repeal. The economy is where the Democrats could have had a winning message, but you can’t just come up with that message in the fall. The White House should have been touting progress loudly for the last two years.
The immigration issue was just stupid and so transparent. He couldn’t win either way. If he wanted to wait until after the midterms he shouldn’t have said anything at all, just surprise us. Once he said he was going to do it he should have just done it. Did he actually think there were any voters who weren’t taking his pending immigration action into account?
And speaking of immigration, once again a failure to reach white voters. There are many good ways to sell immigration reform, but he’s not doing it. His messaging seems solely directed at Latinos. you can’t expect voters to support you if you don’t ask them for your support. He has to persuade white voters, “Hey, this issue is important for you too, and here’s why.” Bill Clinton was great at that, he could even go into unions halls and explain why free trade was good.
But that goes back to my original critique of Obama. He’s a partisan and he sees the world through the eyes of a Democratic partisan. The failures of the party to thrive under his watch are entirely due to his leadership. Not just his performance in office, but the way he sees politics. Congressional Democrats have mostly followed his lead and focused on all these interest-group specific messaging campaigns.
How could I post on astorian’s opinion of something he hadn’t written about?
The way you worded your post about black candidates made it seems like you were asking about something that was already in the conversation. This was compounded by your subsequent denial that you had posted anything about “black candidates”.
I doubt it had much affect at all. Most people are already pretty cynical.
When it’s well crafted, yes. Poorly crafted negative ads don’t help.
Yep.
2012 was pretty negative, but there was plenty of positive messaging – Obama successfully conveyed to the voters that he cared more about people like them than Romney (and, IIRC, a signficant majority of voters believed something like “Obama cares more about people like me”).
I didn’t hear much of anything about the ACA from Gillespie in my market, and I don’t recall seeing “repeal Obamacare” in the other ads I saw. I only saw that stuff when the candidate was speaking directly to the base – at rallies and the like.
Yep.
Yep. Hindsight.
In his first term, he made major efforts to reach out, just as he did during his first campaign. But there was nothing he could do – McConnell and co had decided that he must be opposed at all cost – even if they agreed with some of the ideas. And it took him years to fully accept that the Republicans in Congress opposed him – they opposed Obama – not Obama’s policies. Anything major that he supported had to be opposed.
He’s made plenty of mistakes, but the party hasn’t “failed to thrive” – it did very well in 2008, poorly in 2010, well in 2012, and poorly in 2014. If his successor is a Democrat, then his party leadership will be considered to have been significantly more positive than negative.
I won’t rehash our old arguments about whether he reaches out or not, but I would note that reaching out to the other side doesn’t mean you don’t see the world as a partisan does. McConnell is also an excellent dealmaker, as is Biden, and both are pretty partisan. But Obama’s background, he was brought up in his political education in Chicago as a community organizer. It’s just not the kind of political upbringing you get, say, governing Arkansas or being a Republican governor of California. He was deeply immersed in Chicago’s unique brand of politics, as well as community activism. So he sees his purpose as President to be getting legislation passed. Things like “presiding over a good economy” are nice but not his purpose. He said he wanted to be a transformational President like Reagan. And his inability to do that frustrates him, even though by objective standards his Presidency has seen good things happen. He’s just less interested in those things, which is why they’ve never been part of his messaging. And it could also be why Democrats outside the White HOuse think his team is too insular and dominated by loyalists.
The party has most definitely failed to thrive. At the state level they haven’t been this deep in the wilderness since the Civil War. At the national level, they have the fewest House seats since Hoover was President. In the Senate it’s not as bad, things were worse in 1996 when the GOP had 55 seats, but he dropped from 60 seats to the current 46-47. Sure, they won in 2012, but that win didn’t move the needle much for them. They lost all their 2012 progress and then some last week.
It’s true though that 2016 will help if a Democrat succeeds him. But if the Democrats still don’t control at least the Senate and still are as far behind in state governments, it’s not that much of a step up. All it will mean is that the Democrats are a minority party whose only accomplishment is keeping a Republican out of the White HOuse. All other levers of power will be dominated by the GOP. And I mean dominated, not just slim majorities like they had during the Bush years. And the amusing part about that is that the bulk of Democratic voters will probably think that they are actually the majority because their guy is in the White House. Ignorance about how our system works is not your side’s ally.
If the Democrats win in 2016 only to lose even more ground everywhere else in 2018, that will not be good for them. And as a conservative, and knowing that government will always be closely divided, I kinda prefer controlling everything else and letting the Democrat be basically just a figurehead who blocks unwise actions by the Republican majority.
This is the Gingrich/D’Souza analysis, and I think it’s completely bunk. Utter crap analysis – we can judge him by what he does and what he says, not by his “political upbringing”. And by what he does and what he says, he’s a pretty mainstream Democrat – different stylistically than Bill Clinton, but not on the issues and not on the priorities. Clinton would have been ecstatic to have something like the ACA.
I also see this as bunk analysis. Wrong in nearly every way.
No it hasn’t. It’s been up and down. Having the House for 2 years, the Senate for 6, and the Presidency for 8 is not failing to thrive – it’s success mixed with some failure, politically speaking.
It’s very unlikely the Democrats would win the Presidency without winning the Senate in 2016, so I see most of this as highly unlikely. If they lose the Presidency, they probably won’t win back the Senate, but it’s even more unlikely that they’d win the Presidency without the Senate.
I’m going by his own words and actions. Why wouldn’t he own the recovery? It’s good politics. He just isn’t interested in it. He wanted big legislative accomplishments. The blocking of said accomplishments has been the focus of nearly all of the White House’s messaging since 2011. Right or wrong?
That’s one way to spin it, but a pretty bad spin. They went from 60 in the Senate to 52, to 55, to 46-47. I’m sure you know what a downward trend looks like. In 2016, they’ll have a nice map and a bigger electorate to gain some back, but if they only gain a few seats back, then in 2018 they’ll be set up for an unholy beatdown. Because that 2018 Senate map is a bitch. They could very well be down to 43-45 four years from now.
And that’s where they are doing BEST next to the White House. In the HOuse they went from a big majority to the worst in 80 years. In the states, the Democratic party hasn’t had it this bad since 1860. That’s not up, down, up down, that’s two steps back, one step forward, three steps back. It’s no longer good enough for Democrats to just win half the elections. They need to come back big in 2016 to undo the damage Obama has done.
I would have agreed when it was assumed the GOP would have 51-52 seats. At 53-54, the Democrats will have to knock off incumbents in an election that is not going to involve major levels of dissatisfaction with Republicans as in 2006 and 2008. Beating incumbents is hard even in wave elections. In 2008, the Democrats defeated 5, which if the GOP ends up with 54 seats, is just enough. But they’d need a 2008-level landslide to do it. Is that likely? Also, two of those wins were in deep blue states(Minnesota and Oregon).
So it got a lot harder for Democrats to win back the Senate, even if they win the Presidential election. And they need to do really well actually to avoid another midterm debacle in 2018 that will set them back even further.
He’s tried. Not as hard or not in the way that I’d have liked, but he’s definitely tried.
Wrong.
In 2012 it seemed like the Republicans were in a tailspin – they lost big against a pretty weak incumbent. Now it seems like the Democrats are – and this was just a midterm. Things can change pretty fast. Democrats haven’t had a terrible presidential election (by which I mean a loss by a large electoral margin) since '88; Republicans have had terrible presidential elections in '92, '96, '08, and '12. In the long run, I think the Democrats are in fine shape. They won the House in '06 and '08 with good party management – things could be turned around again with the right message.
The 2016 Senate map is as favorable, or more so, for the Democrats as 2014 was for the Republicans. So yes, assuming a strong Presidential candidate, I think this is likely.
Sure, they could be. The Republicans certainly have no right to all the gains they’ve made. But if you’re losing half the elections, and the half you are losing set you back further than the wins gain you, then overall you’re losing. And under Obama, the Democrats have really been sent off packing into the wilderness. If they lose in 2016, then obviously his effect on the party would have to be viewed very negatively, but even a win isn’t worth much if it’s only a 2012-level or less win.
And those state legislatures, governorships, and Congress are where you get your future contenders from. The Democrats were already short on young blood before 2010 started this downward trend. Now they face a near future of having a very shallow bench indeed. Liz Warren is a star, but she’s not exactly young herself.
It’s not, actually. First, there are unlikely to be key retirements. The GOP caucus is young. The GOP got three gimmes from retirements. The Democrats will have zero freebies in 2016 barring death or dishonor of an incumbent. They will actually have to beat five incumbents, none of whom are in trouble enough at this time to go down easily. The best comparison isn’t to the Democrats’ 2014 Senate map, but to the GOP’s 2014 governors’ map. A map where they actually made gains despite defending a lot of blue and swing states, and where they actually won some blue states.
I agree that a strong Presidential candidate makes it very possible, but they need a 2016 landslide comparable to 2008 to pull it off. BTW, who is running in Nevada? That’s going to be the Democrats’ Georgia in 2016. They can hold it, but they’ll have to spend, spend, spend.
This isn’t happening. For the losses to set us back further, we’d actually have to lose the Presidency.
2012 win was pretty big – bigger than any Republican win since '88.
This is weak Mark Halperinesque hackery. Complete nonsense. Plenty of “young blood” – the thing about young blood is that we don’t meet them until they get national prominence.
I don’t buy this without cites (for ages, retirements, etc.).
The Presidency is one third of the federal part of a federalist system.
Sure, for Barack Obama. Not so much for the Democratic Party as a whole, which made only minor gains that were erased and then some only two years later. And in 2012, the Democrats hadn’t even come close to gaining back what they lost in 2010.
Outside of the White House, the Democrats have never been in worse shape.
We know who the GOP young guns are. They’ve governed states, they’ve won elections to the Senate in tough states. The Democrats at this point consist of old fogies and “stars” who have never had to win outside of friendly territory, and your successful governors basically consist of two blue staters, one of whom is now damaged goods.
Of course there will be new contenders and new stars, but having fewer officeholders nationwide means the pool is rather tiny, while the GOP pool is substantially larger. And at least right now, the party has only two stars: Hillary Clinton and Liz Warren, both senior citizens(Liz just turned 65).
What specifically do you want? I referred to the Wikipedia page for the 2008 Senate elections, which showed which seats the Democrats won, and whether it was an incumbent retirement or an incumbent defeated for reelection:
Now I could end up being wrong, but when I survey the 2016 map, I see no likely retirements on the GOP side, and a couple possible on the Democratic side simply due to people like Harry Reid being too damn old.
Yep – in 2008, Democrats won 3 of 3 (house, Senate, and Prez). In 2010, Democrats won 1 of 2 (kept Senate, lost house). In 2012, Democrats won 2 of 3. In 2014, Democrats won 0 of 2. That’s 6 of 10 for the Democrats. And the Presidency is politically the most important one.
“What they lost” after huge gains in '06 and '08. Republicans had one decent election in 2010 and one good one in 2014. Democrats had a great one in '08, a not great one in '10, a very good one in '12, and a bad one in '14.
Outside of the most important political office in the country by far, the Democrats are not doing very well at this snapshot moment in time.
Completely bogus. Obama went from nearly nothing (nationally) in '04 to President in '08. We have plenty of decent candidates for '16, and plenty of time for others to step up for '20 (if necessary) or '24.
Republicans have zero stars, by this measure (Warren isn’t really a “star”). I just don’t buy this Halperinesque bullshit about a poor “pool”. It’s meaningless garbage. There are plenty of young Democrats, and many will step up. It might be a surprise to you when it happens, but it will happen. Maybe they’ll win, maybe they won’t, but it has nothing to do with some ‘pool is rather tiny’ crap.
Iiandyii can’t get out of this one. The Democrats aren’t just worse off compared to their 2008 high water mark. House? WWII. States? Civil War. Senate? 1996. Maybe if they lose the Presidency in 2016 he’ll finally see the damage Obama has done.
Normally I’d cheer this, except my guys aren’t ready to govern yet. I’d almost accuse the Democrats of sabotaging us by making us take the reins back so soon.
If we lose the Presidency in 2016 I’ll certainly re-evaluate my beliefs. Right now, the ACA is the biggest Democratic accomplishment in decades, and one of the best pieces of domestic policy in decades. Add getting out of wars that greatly weakened America (and preventing us from becoming embroiled in further ground wars – fingers crossed that this will continue to be the case) and getting the economy back on track (with room for improvement), and killing OBL, and Obama has been a very successful President.
The Democrats who did this were exercising poor political strategy, and Democrats at large have done a poor job of explaining how the ACA has considerably improved and strengthened the health care system. In time, assuming the Republicans don’t take the presidency in 2016, the ACA will gradually get more and more popular until it rivals Medicare and Social Security in popularity.
