Post-Mortem Long Reads
Lots of interesting ink has been spilled about the National election and it seems to be converging on the idea that Democratic Congressional candidates simply could not provide voters with a real reason to get out and vote for them. They couldn’t beat a GOP candidate in Staten Island who is under indictment, threatened to throw a reporter off of a balcony in the Capitol building and was otherwise just clueless. I’m going to provide some links to the better pieces I’ve read so far, but we’ll start with Bill Maher’s assessment (from his Facebook page):
I feel bad for the people Democrats are supposed to represent, not the Democratic candidates. They remind me of the Iraqi Army – running when they should fight.
Republicans didn’t win as big as you think they did. And Obama didn’t lose — from an observer from across the pond, a much cooler look at the election and, frankly, the best one so far. The GOP won on a map hugely favorable to them, emerging with a very small majority in a “You Broke It, You Bought It” scenario. Liberal policies won all over the place in referenda and yet the Democratic party still can’t read polls well enough to know that this is the kind of thing voters want.
The GOP takeover: Doubling down on dysfunction? Their teajhadis think they have a mandate. And for teajhadis, dysfunction is all they care about. So even if this new Congress has any interest in governing (and that’s a pretty big if, they’ve been actively sabotaging government for 6 years), they still have to get past their base.
The Democrats’ Goldwater moment — from Will Bunch, who also notes that Democratic ideas won all over the country, but mainly without Democrats attached to them. He also notes that they won’t change course in 2016, either. They’ll just put their confidence in a better map and a Presidential year to get them by.
How the Lame Democrats Blew It from Goldie Taylor at The Daily Beast. ‘Nuff said, I think. But this is interesting:
Lastly, despite the boatloads of cash pumped into otherwise winnable races, voter targeting was a ninth inning, full-count strike three that Democrats could not overcome. Campaign operatives, no doubt, studied the 2010 midterm voter rolls and decided to cast their lot with sectors of the electorate deemed most likely to turn out. After all, that’s what they teach in political science lecture halls, right? Conventional wisdom always appears reasonable until it isn’t.
In doing so, they dismissed throngs of would-be voters who once wrapped themselves around polling places in 2008 and 2012—the Obama Coalition. For instance, I personally received dozens of direct mailers, while my grown children—all of whom are in their 20s and all of whom voted in the last presidential elections—received none. No e-mails, no text messages, not a single point of contact, unless you count last-minute ads on black radio that feature aging civil rights leaders with no real connection to young voters. Did I mention that my children, like most millennials, no longer listen to the radio and rarely watch television?
For a GOTV effort that seemed to rely on getting the Obama coalition out, there was little about these campaigns that would fire up this group of people. Even locally, there was little to no real outreach to the transitional Obama coalition.
Charlie Pierce tells the President to Go Big or Go Home — there is so much right with this, just go read it.
Harry Reid’s actual contribution to the dysfunction was to keep those same Democratic senators from having to take tough votes that might hurt them on the campaign trail. It didn’t work. They all got hung with the votes they didn’t take. Alison Lundergan Grimes wouldn’t even say whether she’d ever voted for the president. (Kudos to whoever thought to plant that question.) Nobody was fooled. The president’s party proved itself utterly unwilling to stand behind the president’s policies and, therefore, the president’s very real achievements. This was not clever. It was suicidal.
What are you reading that’s a good post-mortem?
Matt Bai this morning . . .
http://news.yahoo.com/what-happened-to-that-democratic-turnout-machine-102657466.html
The party’s predictive dialing machine worked. We talked to bunches of “likely” voters on Election Day. Unfortunately, they still didn’t go vote.
The good news? It’s never over. Time to start on 2016.
….seems to be converging on the idea that Democratic Congressional candidates simply could not provide voters with a real reason to get out and vote for them.
With 60% (granted vs a nut bag) that message will never penetrate the skull of John Carney, or the DC based consultants that run Democratic campaigns.
“Unfortunately, they still didn’t go vote.”
And why should they?? auntiedem knows I’ve been trying to ring this bell for ten years, but the Democrat Party seems impervious to common sense.
One of the talking heads on CNN mentioned that the “Obama Coalition” is just that, an Obama base, not a DNC base. If the Democrats want to pull the numbers that they did in 2008 and 2012, the are going to need to give that “coalition” something to support as much as they did Obama – without them (many who are now apathetic), the DNC is going to have a hard time competing with the momentum the GOP seems to be picking up.
Jason,
I admire your commitment and passion so much. Believe me, I have the utmost respect for what you say. But . . .
One could argue that you run the candidate who will get the votes and John Carney got the votes — God help him. It is ALWAYS better to send a D to Washington than an R. If the voters in Delaware like Representative Carney’s style then that’s who we should go with as a party. And, what if John woke up tomorrow morning having undergone some sort of miraculous transformation during the night and moved dramatically to the left? Well his future in Delaware might not look too bright. Not to mention that he might have trouble living in that liberal skin. Let’s give him credit for having his own set of values, even if we don’t always share them. Right now, if the various planets align, we might be looking at Governor Carney in 2016. The voters below the canal love him.
We’ve had this discussion many times before and I expect we’ll have it again.
Onward, and keep on keeping on Jason!
From Salon:
And, what if John woke up tomorrow morning having undergone some sort of miraculous transformation during the night and moved dramatically to the left?
You know what? He doesn’t need to move dramatically to the left. He can represent his party’s platform. He can actually *deliver* on the middle class pandering he does. Instead of saying that he is trying to make college more affordable, he could sign on the Elizabeth Warren’s colleges kids get the same interest rate as banks do. There is incredibly popular stuff that is Democratic position that Carney isn’t anywhere near. And if he embraced a few of them, I’d bet that the only people who would think he moved to the left would be the GOP.
I’m wondering about this now. Because I think that this position makes me into one of those poor white red-staters who keep voting for their candidates at the expense of their own economic interests. And those folks basically get to celebrate a win for their team, but they are still struggling. They are blaming black and brown people for their struggles, but they are struggling. I’m not exactly struggling, but I’m not sure I can do the Team thing any more. The players here have to deliver more.
auntiedem,
So he is the Mike Castle of Democrats. That’s fine, the world needs someone to pass out novelty checks at fire-halls.
What I’m saying, what I’ve said for the past ten years, is that “chasing” moderate votes is a losing strategy in the long run. Better to “attract” the passionate base and the wishy-washy center will come along for the ride.
Why can’t the Democrat Party learn that from the GOP?
Obama = narcissistic sociopath
Just when you were thinking things couldn’t possibly get worse for Democrats:
Chris Coons, Jon Tester eye DSCC chairmanship
“as Coons and Tester emerged as early DSCC aspirants, two more Democrats joined New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and took their names out of consideration: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of the party’s progressive wing, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, a red-state winner in 2012.”
“