Actually, I’m not just being dickish here. The reason Democrats lost seems to me to involve factors that are much, much easier to fix than the problems that have made Republicans lose. Or at least where they are hard to fix, it’s not because the Democrats are “too liberal”.
Motivation. Gotta get those voters out. This is a tough one to fix, but it’s not Democrats’ fault that this is happening.
Obama. Governing poorly, or at least appearing to be governing poorly, is deadly to any party. That problem thankfully goes away in four years(four since he’ll still be a big issue in the 2016 campaign, as Bush was in 2008).
Defending tough seats by not standing for anything. Howard Dean was right: Democrats have to compete in all 50 states aggressively. The limp wristed campaigning of red state Democrats this cycle was even more pathetic than usual. Stand for something, even if it’s moderation.
Demographics. No, it will not ensure Democratic dominance for decades to come and this election should be setting off alarm bells. Republicans nearly won the Asian vote. The Millenial vote is still up for grabs because they have no one worth supporting yet. The Latino vote, while strongly Democratic, is winnable when Republicans do aggressive outreach. If Democrats just assume that in 2016 they’ll come out like they did in 2012 and 2008, they may end up being disastrously wrong. Was that great minority turnout because of a “general election” or because of a man called Barack Obama? If it’s the latter, 2016 won’t go much better than 2014 and 2010 did. Especially if Republicans, sensing an opening, reach out even more aggressively to court minority voters.
Celebrity candidates. Rather than seek qualified candidates, Democrats have been getting enamored with “big names” or people who made headlines for one speech(or one filibuster). Even when these candidates win, they don’t tend to do well once in office. I’m referring to politicians who carry a powerful family name as well(Nunn, Pryor, etc.) It may work for the Kennedys in deep blue states, but a well-liked name won’t get a candidate over the hump in hostile territory.
Honestly, most of conversation I’ve heard or had about the election already hit these things. Maybe someone out there is blind to it but I don’t have the same impression as the 2012 loss with “We had Rubio and Martinez on a stage at the convention – what else do these people want?”
As for “celebrity” candidates, in some races they were really the best choice. It’s not as though some other Democrat was going to win the governor’s race in Texas or a Democrat without Nunn’s name recognition was going to succeed in Georgia this cycle.
It’s actually not much to worry about if Democratic voters only come out when the Democrats nominate a celebrity candidate for President.
I see your point, but Republicans do seem to have learned a little from 2012. Their outreach to minorities was successful, in spots. Not so much nationally, so we still have a long way to go, but at the very least it looks like we can protect Texas from turning blue anytime soon, and that’s a good start.
I’d attribute that as much to Obama’s failure to act on immigration reform as any positive effort on the part of the GOP. Which is another lesson for Democrats and another one that I’ve heard discussed.
I realize little of this is new, but I just wanted a thread like this since we had one about Republicans after 2012. And I also wanted to establish that I do agree this loss doesn’t say as much about the Democrats’ failings as 2012 did about the Republicans. There’s nothing wrong with the Democratic Party, per se, that will prevent them from having success. Unlike the Republicans, they don’t need major reforms. But they did make some mistakes in this cycle and I’ll be interested in seeing if they take intelligent steps to correct those mistakes in 2016.
That’s short term thinking though. Sure, no one had a better chance than Nunn or Davis, but even if they win ,what happens while they are in office? I don’t think Nunn would impress Georgia voters with her 95% voting with the leadership anymore than Pryor did. And Wendy Davis governing a huge state like Texas? Dear lord that would have been ugly and would have set the party back years.
True, but it’s always easier to ask those questions when the answers aren’t so unpleasant. The Democrats don’t have to change their ideology or find a way to get rid of crazies, so much as make adjustments to their political and governing approach. My side has much deeper problems, although as I contended in the thread on the subject, 90% of them can go away simply by governing well.
I don’t follow. You’re saying they lost in part because they ran celebrity candidates. You also seem to agree that they had no chance of winning without the celebrity candidates. So the path to winning there is to… run no one?
Let’s see if I can be clearer: the celebrity candidates are a bad idea even if they manage to pull a race out. Usually it won’t work anyway, especially not in a tough year, but I argue that even if it does work, it doesn’t really do much good beyond that election.
The best analogy I can come up with is the way TV shows will often try to pop a big rating with a major story twist or guest appearance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it almost never does any good beyond that one show. Even if Nunn or Davis had won, it wouldn’t have helped the Democrats in those states beyond that election and might even set them back.
I disagree there. For one thing, neither candidate was making it a secret why they were running or what they believed (vs Allison “I won’t say if I voted for Obama” Grimes). For another, holding a senate seat is holding a senate seat and one less to try and regain in 2016. Barring major political shifts in Georgia, it’s not as though ceding the state for another six years was going to bear dividends.
In any event, it’s not why Democrats lost in those states. They lost because other factors were powerful enough that not even the best possible (electable) candidates were good enough.
I’ll concede that with Nunn, but Wendy Davis should never have been seriously considered as a gubernatorial candidate. She was only a step above Joe the Plumber in terms of accomplishments.
I expect some have already figure it out. After they lose the 2016 presidential election and are shut out of all three branches, it will begin to sink in further.
Luckily for them, that realization will probably come just around the same time the GOP gets arrogant, starts thinking they have some kind of “permanant majority,” and proceeds to remind the electorate that “yep, we hate these assholes, too,” and making the Dem resurgance in 2018 inevitable.
Lately it’s been that way, but it doesn’t have to be. The Democrats in 1933 took the ball from the failing Republican Party and ran with it all the way to 47 years of dominance. Even when Republicans won, and they did have two Presidents during that period(technically three, but Ford was never elected and was just finishing out Nixon’s term), they won by conceding to the Democrats’ platform. They were basically just Democrat-lite. Party control changes frequently, but voters’ ideology tends to be molded by what they see working. As soon as one or the other party takes the reins and does well, that party will probably break the 50-50 deadlock and we’ll see a generation of one party dominating the other like we saw from 1933-1980.
It’s actually been known for a while that republican voters are more hardcore and have a keener interest in politics than dem voters. Hence, the success of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. Liberal venues like those just don’t do as well.
Dem voters, for reasons barring my understanding, need to have some special motivation.
I’m sure is appearing to be governing poorly…to the people that don’t like him as a kneejerk reaction because he’s not from their party. Yes, I’m sure there’s some people that voted for him but don’t like him now for the reasons you stated, but I’d be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of the people that voted for him the first time would vote for him again…and as I write that I realize that it’s already been proven so let me say it differently. If he was up for a third term, do you really think people that voted for him twice would vote red instead?
Over here in Florida, I asked a lot of people about the election and guess what the biggest subject was? Not “That damn Rick Scott!”, but marijuana.
There were some jokes that Colorado’s Democrats were too stoned to vote, but in all seriousness I wonder if the removal of marijuana as an issue, the accomplishment of its legalization, pretty much gave a lot of younger Democrats what they wanted already.
If so, legalizing pot might be a sneaky way for Republicans to demotivate millenials and if they sponsor the legalization, maybe even get them on their side.
