Jolly has won. What does this mean for democrats?

adaher · March 12, 2014, 3:38pm

I think we agree on something. The GOP has shown no competence at governing in a very long time at the national level. Until they prove they can govern, voters have every reason to be skeptical.

And while I’m thrilled to see Jolly win, I’m not sure electing a professional lobbyist is the direction the GOP should be moving in.

adaher · March 12, 2014, 3:40pm

If you want to take any lesson from the election in Florida, take this one. Defend the law.

Yep. Democrats own it, they might as well like owning it.

Marley23 · March 12, 2014, 3:42pm

If so, that’s a huge problem that they need to fix. The 2010 midterm losses were crippling.

BrainGlutton · March 12, 2014, 4:16pm

John Nichols in The Nation: Jolly won because he got a lot more out-of-state funding.

Evil_Captor · March 12, 2014, 5:06pm

I think Dems REALLY need to work hard on getting people to the polls if they want to maintain control of the Senate. Gonna be hard considering their half-hearted, lackluster attempts to deal with the economy, which is directly tied to their ownership by Wall Street.

dalej42 · March 12, 2014, 6:00pm

I don’t think there is too much to take away from any congressional special election. I’d wouldn’t be crowing if Sink had one and I’m not going to cry because of the loss. A special election in the middle of March is always going to favor the most reliable voters, which tend to be older and white.

I will say that I agree you can’t run a campaign waffling on the ACA. None of this John Kerry nonsense of being for the war before you were against the war. The ACA will be a 4 year old issue and it will likely lose momentum except among political junkies.

The 2014 Senate was always going to be a very difficult one for the Dems, they’re defending seats that were swept in by the 2008 Obama landslide. The Republicans will have the same problem in 2016, defending seats from the 2010 Republican beat down.

The Republicans can recapture the Senate, but they’ll need everything to go their way, similar to the Dems in 2006

Damuri_Ajashi · March 12, 2014, 6:19pm

Ayup

Democracy is haaaard.

It would have been kind of a big deal if Sink won. I would have been crowing at least a little bit. Heck people were crowing a bit just because it was so close.

Terr · March 12, 2014, 6:22pm

I like this quote, from Florida loss big blow to Dems' hopes - POLITICO

“In this environment, the only thing Democrats can do is hope for Republican opponents who come from professions even more unpopular than Washington lobbyists, and I’m not aware of any tow-truck drivers on the GOP ticket this year,” said Andy Sere, a GOP consultant.

BrainGlutton · March 12, 2014, 6:29pm

I daresay Wall Street types are even more unpopular than Washington lobbyists, and there are plenty of those in the GOP.

Terr · March 12, 2014, 6:31pm

Hope springs eternal.

BrainGlutton · March 12, 2014, 7:42pm

From Salon:

However, if conservatives are being honest, they need to first acknowledge that — all issues aside — the 2014 map is vastly friendlier to Republicans than Democrats, and argue from there. Do they really think that absent Obamacare, Democrats would be sitting pretty? Or that a better rollout would’ve changed the map? Do they think Obamacare will be the difference between zero (or a couple) Senate pickups and the six or more they need to control the Senate? It’s entirely feasible to me that Republicans will retake the Senate in 2014, and even that Obamacare might account for the margin. But I have yet to hear many reasoned arguments for any of those individual propositions on the right. All I hear are fundamentally dishonest arguments that wish the structural advantage out of existence.

<snip>

Looking at this race in isolation, you have to disentangle a bunch of connected factors to suss out how much impact Obamacare had. First, start from the fact that this historically GOP-leaning district went very narrowly for Obama in November 2012. Then correct for the fact that the special election took place in March 2014, no Obama on the ticket, and Obamacare central to the GOP campaign. But then recorrect for the fact that a talented Libertarian candidate in this elderly district probably siphoned more votes away from Sink than from Jolly (though that’s unclear as well). Add in subjective candidate quality critiques, fundraising, counterfactuals and so on and so on, and it’s suddenly extremely difficult to say how much narrower Sink’s defeat would have been were it not for Obamacare — or if Obamacare was truly decisive.

Isolating an “Obamacare effect” is pretty complex, and anyone claiming today that the Obamacare effect was huge or obviously decisive is probably peddling snake oil.

But still, I’m persuadable that such an effect exists. And even if the “Obamacare effect” was only 1 percent in FL-13 — that is, Sink would’ve lost anyhow, but by a smaller margin — that’s a fairly ominous snapshot for vulnerable Democratic senators who are defending their seats in states Obama lost by wide margins, not just states he won narrowly. A 1-percent effect in FL-13 might be amplified in more conservative parts of the country and translate into a significantly larger effect in states like Arkansas and Louisiana.

But Arkansas, Louisiana and every other contested Senate election isn’t happening in March. It’s not sufficient to note that Republicans gave their Obamacare strategy a test drive in FL-13 without noting that they did it during the rollout of Obamacare, which has been disruptive and at times downright embarrassing. I know conservatives like to believe they can play this one-note symphony for eight straight months, all the way to a resounding November crescendo, but there’s little evidence that this issue is paying off significantly for Republicans now, let alone that it will prove so durable. And even if it paid off measurably in March, it could still fall apart as frustration with the rollout and cancellations subsides, and Republicans begin grappling with what to do about constituents who are enjoying new benefits.