How?
How, would summarize my thoughts after seeing the results and the terrible performance by the democrats. Yes, these were midterms during an incumbent President's last half of his second term. The congressional map has been gerrymandered by republicans for at least the next 10 years, but how does one explain the loss of the Senate and the loss of even more gubernatorial seats and state legislatures?
How does a party that reelected an unpopular president, a party that has presided over 56 consecutive months of private business job growth, lose? How does a party that took over during the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and managed to strengthen the United State's economy, to the point that it is the strongest world economy, even outpacing China, lose so badly? How does the party that managed to halve the unemployment rate, a holdover from the previous disastrous administration, lose the midterms?
How does a party that was mainly blamed for the government shutdown, a party that lacked a central message other than primal hatred of its base for the President win? How does a party that opposes gay marriage, reproductive rights win? How does a party that is lead by white, old men win elections in the diverse America of 2014?
How indeed?
The incompetence of the DNC was staggering this election cycle. There was no unified message, no national coordination between the DNC and local Democratic parties. The DNC leadership, looking at you Debbie Wasselman-Schultz, decided to imitate the Republicans and forego a unified message and instead run fragmented individual campaigns. Did they forget that they were an incumbent party 8 years in the President's term?
The DNC will say that the president was unpopular, anyone wonder why? The DNC,with the White House, did nothing to promote all the good achievements of the administration. There was not one commercial that compared how good things are now compared to when the president took office. Not even one peep about how the deficit actually shrunk rather than grew during his term. And the biggest fumble of all is how could not one person in the entire democratic party leadership see to it that the big drop in gas prices was capitalized on? In many red states that the democrats needed to keep senate seats, the price has gone under 3 dollars, how could not one candidate mention it? The president himself, realized the error and decided to tout it, but it was just two weeks before the election.
The democratic leadership and candidates in their folly decided that it was better to ignore the President, and run very individually. Under any circumstance it would be a wise choice, but this is 2014 and they should have known that no matter what the GOP was always going to tie him to all democratic candidates. Ads ran in Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and all around tying the senatorial and gubernatorial candidates to the President. Rather than attempting to raise his image by praising his good achievements, examples mentioned above, the DNC and the candidates tried to distance themselves even more from him. How could they not realize that that strategy, made them look evasive and cowardly in the eyes of independents and dampened the enthusiasm of the base, insuring a low turnout?
Turnout of course was a big problem this cycle and it ended with a major GOP victory. Two thirds of voters, many of them young did not turnout to vote, those who did where the elderly, who tend to go with the conservatives. How could the DNC not see that candidates strategies of adopting conservative leaning policies and greater distance with the president would sour the mood of the youth, that tends to be more progressive on issues? Is anybody surprised when Alison Lundergan Grimes and Mary Landrieu failed to win? What young, minority person would waste their time voting for Democrats In Name Only?Trying to attain conservative voters as a democrat in 2014 is utterly ridiculous in the sense that due the GOP deep rightward shift, why would a conservative person settle for a GOP-lite democratic candidate when the real deal is on the ballot?
Could the democratic field been any weaker this election cycle? The candidates that were fielded lacked any sparkle and charisma. The President had enough charisma to carry the party for most of his tenure but where are big democratic stars in the vein of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or Chris Christie? Why didn't Julio Castro do any campaigning? Why was Hillary's not on the trail for democratic candidates even more? Who in the world thought that Wendy Davis could even stand a chance of winning the state of Texas?
The entire democratic leadership needs to be changed, from the DNC to the local level. How can the Chair in Wisconsin remain the same after fudging the recall in 2012? How could the party expect better result this time around? How about the local parties in Colorado, or Illinois? Where are the changes? You can't keep a failing leadership and expect different results.
It does not make sense that democrats lost as badly as they did. The tools for success, if success is defined as keeping the Senate and more governors, were there. A good record on the economy, low gas prices, the stablest country in the western world. But the DNC did the worst it could do and played up the negatives, the unpopularity of the president.
Had the DNC possessed a coherent message that was positive and highlighted its own achievements rather than play defensive to the GOP, there is a chance that the Senate could still be in democratic hands and we would not be looking a two years of even worse gridlock that we already had.
#freeDNC
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