Cross-posted locally.
I tried to avoid writing a blowhardy, why we lost post-election diatribe. But my hand has been forced. By me.
We lost because we suck.
Hey! Wait a second! We don’t suck! I don’t! My friends don’t, and my candidate certainly didn’t!
Right. But collectively, we do. We the Democratic Party. We the American political system.
Republicans suck more!
I agree. Unfortunately, they disagree, and there are a lot of them.
Think about the last 10 years. After the closest election in history, the American electorate gave a ringing mandate to George W. Bush in 2002. Two years later, John Kerry came within a football stadium (60,000 votes, in Ohio) of being president. Two years after that, we took the House and the Senate. Then in 2008, we won with a wildly popular candidate and gained some seats in both the House and Senate. Now the House is gone, and we hold the Senate by a smaller margin.
We oppose term limits, but the American people have imposed them. On us. Because we suck.
In Massachusetts, John Walsh pulled an unprecedented miracle. He combined the lists of all 10 Democratic members of Congress, and identified that there were a million Democratic votes available. And boy, did he call it. The results.
Patrick – 1,108,104
Baker – 962,848
Total: 2,070,952
Difference: 145,526
Hurray John Walsh! (Seriously — hurray John Walsh! And Clare Kelly, and a lot of others.)
ALL that effort, in one of the bluest states in the nation — in a field of four — and the margin was essentially 55-45. Great. Wondrous. Miraculous. Sustainable? No.
Barney Frank, Chair of the Banking Committee, one of the most powerful guys in Washington before the election, liberal hero, running against a seemingly affable and presentable young guy (but with no experience) — 54-43.
Bill Keating, white knight district attorney, famously took on Billy Bulger, running against a candidate who became a national name because of a scandal that was said to “cut across party lines” — 47-42 (with three other candidates on the ballot). These figures also from Boston.com.
We escaped with our lives from a national wave, but we still lost. Our delegation is less powerful today.
And as impressive as the effort was, I come back to that 1 million vote figure. There are six million people in Massachusetts. We can reasonably assume there are 4 million eligible voters. But only a million votes were available to the overwhelming majority party.
A lot of people are looking to figure out what happened, see what worked and didn’t, which messages took hold, which tactics paid off. I am grateful for those people and really appreciate their efforts.
But the rest of us have to focus on what we all know. We lost because we suck.
More later on why we suck, but it comes down to this. We are not focusing on the things people care about. We are not giving them a reason to vote for us instead of Republicans. I am not saying, “It’s the economy, stupid” — far from it — but, for lack of a better term, we are not focused on the American dream. Not the white picket fence of old — I want to talk about Detroit, among other things — but all aspects of it. The rent IS too damn high, and the landlord refuses to paint.
Our banks are sitting on a trillion+ dollars but demanding 18% returns and so investing overseas, not in American businesses. Great for the stockmarket – but not for workers. And WE bailed these bloodsucking Plutocratic Neobarons out. That does “suck”.
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p>Entire factories shipped over seas – equipment, expertise, and patents – so long sustainable jobs and economy – and our own government picking up part of the tab. That does “suck”.
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p>FDR got it right when he said that without freedom from want, we don’t want freedom (okay so I paraphrased a bit).
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p>Further, 42% of our children are born out of wedlock, 72% and 62% in some demographics. When I graduated high school, that figure was 5%. Why isn’t marriage seen as “paying” or “better” than single parenthood by young men and young women? For the future of THIS country having this high number of out of wedlock, single parent children truly sucks.
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p>The Census shows that the decline of marriage is a driving force in the reality that the income gap is the widest it has ever been
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p>Children with two parents, whether same or different sexes, have a poverty rate of less then 10%; with one parent, more than 40%.
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p>Sold in America and ‘entitlements’ and bank greed are all drivers of the decline of our economy, and failing to take on all three issues means our party will “suck” and throwing out incumbents will become a more and more popular sport.
I don’t disagree with much of your post, but I do disagree with this:
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p>The first part is true — there’s been a decline of marriage. The latter part is also true — the income gap and the “marriage gap” are related.
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p>BUT is the decline in marriage part of the causality, as you claim? That’s not obvious to me at all. Perhaps you’ve got it backwards — perhaps when folks don’t have good job prospects, don’t live in a stable environment, have learned to trust two people in life (one’s self and one’s mama), marriage just isn’t a reasonable decision. Perhaps the decline in marriage is a result of what life’s like on that part of the income gap. We know that marriage helps people on the wealthy side of the income gap stay wealthy, but do we really know that marriage even helps people on the poor side of the income gap improve their prospects? Or is it the other things — a good job, safe housing, decent schools, a safe community — which foster climbing up the income ladder and getting married?
Studies of happiness and well-being show that being married does correlate with being happier.
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p>I agree with your main point, though. We don’t know which way the causal arrow points — if at all. Economic pressure is often cited as a cause for divorce.
OK, I realize you’re going to go more into why we “suck” later, but let’s not lose sight of the real reasons we lost: (1) the economy, (2) because the President’s party almost always loses seats during the midterm election, and (3) Democrats had a lot of members in Republican-leaning seats (in fact, this is where the losses were concentrated).
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p>It really is that simple.
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p>Now, those three factors don’t necessarily explain why Democrats lost as badly as they did. Perhaps there is more Democrats could have done to get down to, say a 40- to 45-seat loss. But you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do to convince me that the general “suckage” factor contributed more than the three explanations I noted above.
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p>Also, I’m not sure about the relevance of the numbers you posted. A 54-43 victory, for example, is a blowout. MA-10 is the least Democratic district in MA (D+5), and the Democrat won by (no surprise) 5 points. Over a million votes for the Democrat in a midterm is pretty good — the turnout was pretty impressive for a midterm election, and it really doesn’t make sense to compare it to the number of registered or eligible voters, many of whom don’t even turn out in presidential elections.
http://www.eschatonblog.com/20…
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p>For two of these years, we had a monopoly on political power — the White House and both houses of Congress.
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p>What did we do about it?
You link to a bunch of unemployment numbers, indicating that after the financial crisis reached a head in Sept. of 2008, unemployment gradually increased as businesses reacted to the new business environment, and cut jobs.
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p>What is your point (or Atrios’, whose point, as usual, is obscure)? That the economy at the end of the Bush Administration was rosy? That the Democrats should have miraculously turned around the greatest financial disaster the country has seen in two years? Make your point clear, please. Especially since you ask “what did they do about it?”, apparently forgetting about the massive stimulus bill and financial reform enacted over the last two years.
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p>I’d also remind you that the Democrats did not have a “monopoly” on political power. Republicans controlled many state governments during this time, and states laid off tens of thousands of government workers and slashed spending, contributing to the lasting economic problem. Not to mention that anyone who understands how the dysfunctional modern-day Senate works would acknowledge that the majority never has a “monopoly” on power in that house.
Millions of people, unable to work. Further from the aforementioned American dream.
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p>And you say, “Yeah, so?”
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p>You made my point, sir.
It’s interesting that you thought my “yeah, so” was my reaction to high unemployment numbers. Um, no.
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p>I said “yeah, so” because you are arguing that somehow Democrats lost on Election Day because they “suck”. I pressed you for more details, and you gave me a link to a bunch of unemployment numbers without explaining what it’s supposed to mean in the context of your argument. Do you blame Democrats for high unemployment? Do you think the stimulus was worthless? Etc.
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p>That’s why I said “yeah, so”? Now, if you’d like to explain why you linked to those figures, and what relevance it has to your argument, then perhaps we can go from there.
I have a vague sense that you do understand what I’m saying, and are being deliberately obtuse … but I don’t know you that well, so I have to give you the benefit of the doubt.
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p>Unemployment rose, quite steadily, on our watch, and we did almost nothing to stop it. We extended unemployment benefits, and we had one “jobs bill” that Scott Brown famously voted for. One of its provisions, if memory serves, was a three-month exemption for Social Security payments for new hires. How exciting.
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p>Unemployment went from being too high to being a full-blown crisis, and we did virtually nothing about it. Now you say we haven’t had enough time to recover, but we controlled both Houses for four full years. We could have passed an extremely aggressive jobs bill at any point. We didn’t.
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That’s more of what I was looking for. Here’s my problem:
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p>That’s a pretty incredible statement, given that Congress enacted a nearly $800 billion dollar stimulus package. Whether or not that was “enough,” one must admit that this is far from “virtually nothing.” Congress also enacted financial reform legislation that, while certainly not perfect, was a very important piece of legislation pertaining to our economic situation.
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p>My larger problem with your argument is two-fold. The first is the implication that the Democrats are somehow responsible for rising unemployment because it occurred over the past couple years. We all know, and should remember, that the financial crisis that brought on this Great Recession occurred in the waning months of the Bush Administration, brought on by years of conservative policies. Simply listing the unemployment numbers and suggesting that this was brought on by the Democrats, which is what Atrios does, is an argument I’d expect from a disingenuous Republican, not a progressive.
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p>The second problem is related to a more common phenomenon among progressives, really all throughout history. There’s a suggestion that because not everything went progressives’ way, we failed. That’s a pretty bleak way of going about things, but unfortunately one that seems pretty common among those on the left. The suggestion that this past Congress was something of a “do-nothing” Congress is quite eye-popping, considering that this was probably the most active Congress since the 89th Congress.
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p>Do I wish more was done on the economic front? Yes — and I think the so-called “moderates” in the Democratic caucus shot themselves in the foot but watering down several pieces of legislation (they certainly didn’t save their seats in the process). But the last two years saw several pieces of historic legislation enacted, and ignoring that is fair neither to this Administration, Congress, or indeed the entire progressive movement that help to enable the accomplishments of the past couple years.
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p>- I didn’t say Democrats are responsible for it. I said Democrats didn’t do enough about it.
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p>- To your point in your earlier comment, we did not lose the seats we always lose. We lost a historically outlandish number of seats. Of course we lost them mostly in swing districts, but we had to batten down the hatches to keep the ones we kept, even here. (One loser, by the way — Ike Skelton of Missouri. At one time Ike was the biggest recipient of NRA money in the country. But he held that seat, as a Dem, for a LONG time. No more.)
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p>- I’m glad you made that point about the progressive view of history. I’m trying to look broader that that, though I’m a proud liberal. I can live with the big tent, but I want a vibrant party that does things. That reacts when the house is on fire. Compromise, sure, but act.
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p>The electorate is not cutting us any slack.
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p>Because with a bicameral legislature where the GOP could stop anything from coming out of the Senate, sometimes doing things in pieces is the way to go — get some job stimulation written up and passed, then go up for more.
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p>I don’t disagree, but I think the only thing the Dems could have done to do substantially more about it would have been to abolish the filibuster.
The Senate could have held weeks of testimony in Portland, Little Rock and Lincoln putting a laser like focus on the jobs issue. They could have reached out to unions, environmentalists, the netroots and other progressives to make sure that every news broadcast was talking about the issue of jobs, Obama’s visit, the compelling testimony being offered.
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p>The people of Nebraska, Maine and Arkansas would have been pushed and pushed hard to truly understand what was at stake and understand that a vote against the (mythical) jobs bill was a vote for the crazy right wing. We might still have lost, but the people of the swing state’s would have been given a real opportunity to override the lobbyist/corporate influence on their senator.
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p>Obama’s failure (and it was a failure) was that he thought he could govern from the White House – He had a mandate and he squandered it on compromise with lobbyists – Jim’s right, we suck.
but what sometimes gets lost is why you won (in 2008). Some of the Democratic leaders took the 2008 (and 2006) win as a signal that country wanted change, change to the “new” agenda including healthcare, government takeovers (Student loans…)… but just as Hoyapaul tried to simply summarize why you lost, I’ll summarize why you won in 2008… (1) the economy, (2) the war (in Iraq at the time) and (3) Republicans had spent too much money and ran up the deficit. SO President Obama takes over and… the economy still sucks (or sucks even more), the War continues (in Afghanistan) and the deficit increased more in 20 months than any time in our history. You won because a bunch of independents lost their patience with Bush , You lost because a bunch of independents lost their patience with Obama.
There was still a reasonable chance that independents could have broken for McCain, who was after all the darling of independent voters in 2000. McCain erred by moving right, and Obama is sui generis.
During that election McCain was actually leading in some polls, but he was clearly linked tot he Republican party which was clearly linked to George Bush who was radioactive. Combine that with Sarah Palin, ongoing war casualties and that explains the shift left from many in the middle.
… what you say doesn’t jive with what JimC says. He went right and nominated Palin to appease the base. This, combined with the general association of any GOP nominee with Bush caused a flight of independents.
Here’s a stat I heard the other day: Detroit is large enough to hold 2 million people, but its population is 400,000. The thing that shocked me most about that when I heard it is that I had never heard it before.
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p>The mayor of Detroit is actually proposing to bulldoze parts of the city. I’m pressed for time today, or I’d scout up some links about this.
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p>Here’s one question, among many that could be asked. We talk about green jobs. Everybody knows where those jobs will be concentrated — the high tech hubs, namely here, California, Seattle and a few other places. Why can’t the federal government offer large incentives to put those jobs in Detroit?
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p>Would it work? I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot. Better than the nothing we’re doing now.
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Bulldozing neighborhoods, that were in fact former farm land to turn Detroit into the largest development of urban farming
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p>Total collapse of the housing market leads to a boom in out of state investors in Detroit’s housing
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p>The half million acre Fisher Body plant looks to be recycled soon.
not half million acre which would be more than 666 square miles. Your point is still valid.
In 2006, there was a very clear theme to the Democratic Congressional campaigns: opposition to the Iraq War. Then the Congress continued to fund it. I well remember the hearings, held on September 11, 2007, and the famous “General Betray-us” ad taken out by MoveOn (I’m not defending that ad — it was a bad idea), and the line of denouncements by Republicans. I remember Joe Lieberman asking his fellow Democrats in his best “Come let us reason together” tone to heed the general.
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p>What I don’t remember is what a single Democrat said that day (except Hillary Clinton … who said something unmemorable), or any sort of real Democratic stand against the war. In December of that year, there were hearings on Blackwater, and our own John Tierney asked some good questions. But that was about the end of that.
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p>In 2008, every Democratic presidential candidate had “universal healthcare” on their issues list. Every Democratic Congressional candidate did the same. The GOP attacked us for it, but we can be reasonably said to have staked part of the election on doing something about healthcare.
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p>It would be pointless to rehash the whole bill process, but consider the Stupak-Pitts moment. Regardless of any member’s personal feelings, the right to choose is a core plank of the Democratic platform. Yet, for the sake of a small group of Congressmen, we allowed this bill that the entire party had campaigned on becpme an abortion football for something like a week. Last Monday, NPR (Mara Liasson, I think) reported that there was no gender gap — which there always is, and it always favors us — in the electorate. I’m not saying that was the only thing that erased it, but it doesn’t help matters when you tell a core constituency that you can’t be trusted on a core issue.
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One note on the gender gap — if Mara Liasson said that, she was wrong. There was still a large gender gap present in the 2010 elections, with women splitting near evenly at 49% Republican and 48% Democratic, and men going heavily for the Republicans 56%-42%.
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p>Independents and women moved towards the Republicans this year, to be sure. But so did most demographic groups. And, in fact, a good portion of the shift actually had to do with who showed up to vote, which has nothing to do with individual voters shifting their votes from 2008 to 2010. Very predictably, core Democratic constituencies, including young people, minorities, and (to a lesser degree) women in general made up a smaller percentage of the electorate than in 2008 (or any other presidential year).
You’re confirming what she said. We didn’t have the historical advantage we usually enjoy among women voters.
We would have kept the Stupak seat had we not kicked him out of the party, and Barack Obama won a majority of the Catholic vote, including the pro-life Catholic vote. These voters will not vote for a party that remains dogmatically in favor of abortion on demand, and the conversation about Obama ‘not sharing our values’ is part of that. Seriously we win so many more voters than we lose if we take that issue out of the platform. Where are the feminists gonna go to the Republicans? To the Greens? Nope. But you win a ton of union households, white working class voters, and turn MI, OH, PA, WI, MN, IA into solid blue states instead of swing states. You make the South competitive again. We used to be the party that won over religious voters, now we are the party that openly derides them. And we have seen the great FDR majority slowly atrophy, safe Democratic states slowly moving into the GOP column. The only thing saving the Democratic party in the long run are Hispanic voters and young voters, and polls show they are overwhelmingly pro-life, and in the case of young voters barely pro-life and the ones that are pro-choice do so with hesitation. If you want to build a party, one that appeals to working people, you gotta treat this issue seriously and be more flexible on it. Hell I know Roe v Wade won’t be overturned, and I really don’t want it overturned. But I won’t have my ethical views on the sanctity of life belittled, insulted, or somehow construed into bigotry towards women when if anything, my passion for social justice leads me to want a more compassionate government on this issue, instead of one that coldly treats women and unborn children as disposable. My generation wants to make it easier for women to have children, but the extreme pro-choice movement prevents any conversation about moving the party towards the center where most Americans are.
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p>I think we usually see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but I think you’re quite off base here. Abortion is without a doubt a winning issue for the Democrats, since more people in this country are at least somewhat pro-choice (accepting abortion under most circumstances) than pro-life. If Roe v. Wade was overturned and Republicans tried to limit abortion (beyond late-term abortions), it would be a disaster for them.
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p>Members of all of the groups you name (union members, Hispanics, young voters, working class voters) are all part of the core Democratic constituency, and abortion has not dissuaded them. And abortion is certainly not the reason why much of the South has shifted towards the Republicans!
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p>This does not address the validity of your points about pro-life views being belittled, etc. But I do think you’re vastly overestimating the (political) downsides of the Democrats’ taking the position on abortion that they take.
Yet the latest Gallup poll on this question shows only 47% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves “pro-life.” How is that overwhelming or barely pro-life? Looks like young people are pro-choice to me.
Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly pro-life, and as you just pointed out young people are far more pro-life than their older peers. The numbers are moving in the pro-life direction, not away from it.
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p>As to Hoyapaul I am not advocating we take up the draconian NRLC mantra of banning abortion, I am saying we lose no votes moving to the middle and gain the votes of so many who want to vote D but vote R because of the life question. So many white ethnics out here in the Midwest, and when the GOP gets over its short-term love affair with immigrant bashing and puts Marco Rubio on the ticket, they will desert us in droves. We gotta meet abortion opponents in the middle.
(Warning: uncharacteristic rant follows.)
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p>I agree with Hoyapaul above: a midterm election in a bad economy with lots of vulnerable members means one expects losses.
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p>I’m reminded of one of the stupid surveys I got from the DNC, you know the kind, the ones that end with a request for donations at the end. So it asked me questions like this:
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p>How did Pres. Obama do on the economy?If you think about it, it was good that his Administration prevented a complete meltdown, but then it (1) settled for too small a stimulus, (2) didn’t do enough to push financial reform, (3) allowed and continues to allow banks to overstate their balance sheets, and (4) has done blessed little to stop foreclosures and even fraudulent ones. I checked off poor.
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p>How did the Democrats do on energy? Uh, poor.
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p>How did Pres. Obama do on Afghanistan? Poor.
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p>How did the Democrats do on health care? Well, they did “as good as can be expected”. Still not very good. Why should I have low expectations?
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p>Finally, it presents me with a list of issues to rank on importance. Guess what’s missing. Fricking global warming is missing. The DNC clearly has no clue even how to talk to its base. They must be run by idiots or wimps or both.
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p>So yeah, in midterms where the goal is to get your base out to vote is it any surprise that what the White House derisively called the “Professional Left” didn’t show up? The amateur left, the moderate left, the somewhat left, the blue collar left, and whatever kind of other left there is didn’t show up either. The DNC leadership doesn’t know who its allies are, never mind how to talk to people who aren’t yet its base.
but I’ll have to see some proof that the “professional left” did not show up in this election. I’d be willing to bet that the people most engaged in politics (the most ideological voters) still turned out and voted for their respective party, while those less engaged in politics (young voters in generally, lower-income voters) stayed home.
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p>One might respond that even if this is true, Democrats should have given these groups reason to vote. OK, but it’s worth nothing that these demographic groups ALWAYS see a significant drop-off from presidential to mid-term elections, so it’s hard to pin that on Obama and this Congress, as opposed to some predictable demographic voting patterns.
You are both right and both wrong. You are wrong Hoyapaul to blame this purely on demographics, we really screwed the pooch and the message and had a disorganized campaign, one that did not do enough to deliver a cohesive message of jobs creation and economic recovery. Instead of running against Republicans we should have been running for Democrats, especially since they are not the ones in charge anymore. No one should’ve run against George Bush, its just childish and with nearly every Republican repudiating him not something that sounds credible to a swing voter.
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p>We stood to lose some seats in both Houses, but it was NOT clear last year that we would lose the majority in one and lose so badly in the Senate. Had this election been three weeks earlier we’d have lost in WA, CA, NV and WV and there goes the Senate. So it didn’t have to get this bad.
that the Democrats could have done some things on the margins to help themselves. But we were facing a minimum of a 40 to 45-seat loss no matter what we did (and the losses in the Senate, all things considered, weren’t too bad). There were simply too many seats in deep-red territory that we just could not hold anymore.
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p>I disagree with you on the strategic points. First off, running against somebody is a much better motivator than just about anything else, which is part of the reason why negative ads are so much more effective than positive ads (people react stronger against something bad than for something good). In fact, the Democrats’ strategy of highlighting the extremism of some of the Tea Party movement probably saved them a few seats, if anything.
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p>Second, I think it’s entirely fair that the Dems went after Bush. Far from being “childish,” it highlighted two very salient points: (1) that the current economic crisis began under Bush’s watch, and that (2) the Republicans running in this cycle wanted to go back to exactly the same sorts of Bush policies that got us in this financial mess in the first place.
Consistently, leading up to this election, poll after poll indicated that Democrat voters were less enthusiastic than Republican voters and were less willing to vote. There’s evidence too that a smaller percentage of Obama voters showed up than McCain voters. So being more nuanced and post-rant and all, I’m pretty sure party activists voted, but I’m also sure that their less activist friends didn’t so much.
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p>Let’s look again at the economy. If you don’t grade on the curve, the government’s response to the economic meltdown has been dangerously inadequate. Full stop. We’re threatened with deflation and with a higher level of structural employment. Those things are frankly bad.
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p>Now if we start grading on the curve, then a politically non-stupid Administration would have said we need such-and-such a sized stimulus, we need these bank reforms, we need these changes — and Republicans are preventing it. It would have acknowledged the inadequacy of the stimulus and campaigned on it aggressively. Instead, they botched the politics, too. The Obama White House has been claiming the stimulus was just the right size. They’ve tried to make happy sounds about the economy at every opportunity. The result has been a message that is false and phony. That doesn’t convince the base: we, in the base, want a fighter. It doesn’t convince independents: they experience the crappy economy and happy talk unmoored from reality is unpersuasive.
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p>Frank Rich’s column today is on this issue. I recommend it:
We need Obama to adjust to the reality of the GOP and fight.
Part of it was overreach, it should’ve only been job creation. The model was the FDR presidency but the irony is he only focused on stabilizing the banking system and jobs his first term. Social Security and all that lasting legacy didn’t come until later. Healthcare would have been a lot easier to sell if we had a balanced budget or a surplus, people would have been a lot less protective of their wallets. Also we hammered the GOP on social issues, frankly issues where they are more popular than Democrats are, instead of on jobs, Every Republican voted against COBRA, unemployment, and job creation. Illegal immigration is at its lowest, Obama passed the largest middle class tax cut, Iraq is stable and will soon be free of our troops, banking reform will stop another crisis. Instead we heard none of these positive reasons to vote Democrat, only negative reasons not to vote for those crazy Republicans. The Democratic campaign insulted the intelligence of the voters and made them resent the President.
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p>What “social issues” did Democrats hammer the GOP on? If I remember correctly, the Democrats hammered the GOP on things like (1) Social Security privatization, (2) going back to Bush-like economic policies, and (3) being too cozy with the Chamber of Commerce and other outside interests that poured in money after the Citizens United decision.
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p>And as I also implied in a comment above, I don’t think the notion that the Democrats’ positions on “social issues” are a net loser for the Democrats is accurate.
With the Fed charging rock bottom prices for credit, the only real levers to create more jobs was more stimulus spending. And yes, as mentioned elsewhere, the President could have done a lot more but that would have required exerting political pressure.
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p>Whatever the President did, though, there was going to be no balanced budget for a while.
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p>Either you are buying or accept the Republican frame that healthcare reform will exacerbate the deficit or cost us jobs. Our healthcare system consumes too much of our income as it is. It chokes small businesses. It produces relatively poor results. Getting it under control is an absolute prerequisite for our long-term fiscal health.
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p>It’s ironic that Republicans oppose this — and even oppose rational cost controls (“Death panels!”) — while claiming to care deeply about deficits and taxes. It’s tragic, though, that a Democratic Administration hasn’t made its case though.
The federal funds rate is not the only monetary policy lever, which was the entire point of the quantitative easing policy announced last week.
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p>I generally agree with the thrust of your post, except that I accept the “frame” that the bill will cost more money.
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p>Indeed, I view the “bend the curve” sales pitch to have been absurdly, almost cartoonishly, counter-productive. The primary sales pitch wasn’t “Health coverage for all”; it was “bend the cost curve.” To the extent that there was a messaging failure, this was it in my view.
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p>Wonks can yammer all day long about how the US system pays more and gets less, but even on its best day, this is a benefit that might accrue some decades hence, if at all. Today, buying health coverage for 100% of the people is rightly assumed to be more expensive than buying health insurance for less than 100% of the people. But we needed to make it sound like an rapid money saver, and were therefore required to play with existing Medicare –that was the kernel behind the “death panel” nonsense.
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p>They could have enacted a program that would relieve business, especially small business, from the burden of health insurance cost. Goodness knows, small business is painfully aware of these costs. Instead, they worked on “bending the curve” by altering the requirements for usage of IRS Form 1099, which will saddle all businesses, large and small, with a MASSIVE paperwork burden. So business will be hit with (i) increased premiums to cover the cost of all of this new coverage; and (ii) a truckload of extra paperwork. Great deal! No wonder the Chamber went so strongly GOP.
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p>That said, I still say that the outgoing Democratic Congress achieved something that had proven elusive for many decades, and should be proud of that.
is the also the concern with Social Security, i.e., long-term fiscal health.
Because it is based entirely on the view of a political party. Who care about the political party?
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p>Democrats lost their majority because they spent it. In return, they obtained health care reform, which is something that liberals have been striving for since before liberals were called “liberal.” Since President Roosevelt. No, the other President Roosevelt.
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p>Democrats lost because they were successful.
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p>Will Republicans have the courage to do what they think is right, even if it means a likely reversal of this election in 2012?
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p>If Democratic politicians main interest is winning the next election, then what is the point?
The best comment within this thread, in my opinion.
I am a Democrat, and I do care about the party. Not for the sake of winning elections, but for the sake of the things the Democratic Party stands for.
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p>I have trouble with your premise that we spent our political capital. When you run on something, you’re supposed to do it. The doing of it builds political capital. If we spent it, it was in our failure to sell the bill to the public.
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p>Liberals did not dream of the current healthcare bill. I supported it, in the end, and Charley did (before I did, I think). But either way, liberals had bigger dreams than this bill.
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p>Um, no? I think … I’m not sure what you’re thinking of that they will/would do.
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p>But my premise is different. I say, if the Democratic Party had followed its best instincts, we would have expanded our majority.
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You cite stats from several close races and say “we suck”? In 1932, at the height of the great depression, 39.7% of the country still voted for Hoover. We are not facing a new phenomenon, we are facing the same struggle we’ve always faced – we need to educate the other side and make it clear that we have their (and our) best interests at heart. Get a grip…
Maybe the problem isn’t that the parties, including our party, aren’t giving the people the policies they want. Maybe the problem is that the people are not well educated enough to want the policies they should, or to reward the party that delivers on them. President Obama got into trouble recently for saying something like this, but there’s a lot of truth to it, I think.
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p>So I partially agree with the thrust of CMD’s comment. It’s about enacting the policies you think are important, not staying in office forever.
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p>TedF
is that it points the way forward, and gives us the power to turn things back around.
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p>By not sucking.
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p>As opposed to various cop-out analyses, e.g. economy stupid, electoral cycle, Ralph Nader, whatever.
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p>The hard part? We have to not suck.
I think.
I’m sorry if I was obscure, or if my tone was somehow off-putting.
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p>I thought it was a great post, and prefer that my party take responsibility for failing, and for not failing in the future, rather than seeing itself the tragic victim of things it couldn’t possibly do anything about.
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p>Which I took to be the central message of your diary.
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p>Bingo! And no apology necessary. The truth is, I’m rather dense.
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appear to be in order.
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p>- I began to assemble this in my head as a much longer post. It would be three parts: this, why I said this, and how we go forward. But time was tight, and I thought it was important to get the point out there. Even in our great success in Massachusetts, there were danger signs. (Here’s a theory I can’t possibly prove, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it: If the governor is not on the ballot along with with two hotly contested statewide races, a few Congressmen lose. If the Congressmen aren’t on the ballot in contested races, the governor loses. Like I said, can’t prove it — couldn’t prove it even if I had every last piece of data in front of me.)
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p>- The point about the races I cited is that they should not have been close, and yet they were. Hoyapaul is right that 54-43 is not particularly close, but I’ll bet it’s the tightest margin Barney Frank has had since he ran against Margaret Heckler after redistricting in … whatever hell year that was.
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p>- This was always intended as a tough love exercise. The “we” was deliberately chosen. I am bound by blood, sweat, tears, and railroad ties to the Democratic Party. Not all of you are, and I should have factored that into my cross-post and adjusted slightly.
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p>Here was my naive belief. After we took the House in 2006, we would slow down the war. After we took the White House, we would stop it. And by then we would have restored sanity to Washington, and the American public would see what a difference Democratic rule makes.
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p>Well, we didn’t, and the public didn’t, and of course some people want to blame the voters. We do that at our peril.
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p>I look back on the promises we made, and what we delivered, how we allowed ACORN to be destroyed, how we had an abortion debate in the middle of landmark legislation, how we bailed out the banks but failed to be there for unions.
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p>Each of those represents a Democratic constituency.
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p>- ACORN organizes low-income people and registers them to vote. Or it did.
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p>= Support of a woman’s right to choose is one of our core positions. There was no debate on the public option in the Senate, but we allowed an abortion discussion in the House to stop the healthcare bill in its tracks. No one did it deliberately, but those two facts amount to s serious EFF YOU to the Democratic base.
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p>- Employee Free Choice Act? Sorry, labor.
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p>If we don’t represent poor people, pro-choice voters, and labor, who do we represent? Why should anyone trust us?
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p>As activists, we shut up. We err on the side of pragmatism. Take what we can get, and move on. There will be another time.
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p>Except when there isn’t.
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p>I have to add more one point: This isn’t about Barack Obama. Obama, in my opinion, gets it. He knows people don’t care who does things. They care about what gets done.
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p>We didn’t get it done — when we had every tool and a popular president. That sucks (excuse me, “sucks”).
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I want the independents served by our pragmatic approach to government, and I want our core constituencies to be served. I want them to say, “Well, the Dems may not be perfect, but when it really comes down to it, I trust them to have my back. And yours.”
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p>Yes. Guilty. I want it both ways.
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p>That’s what big tent means to me.
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