It was not a wave. It was a slaughter. It was a turkey shoot. Actually, it was worse. While the media concentrated on the big federal races, the story was really in the state houses. A story in the Atlantic illustrated the damage from California to Maryland:
Democrats long knew that Republicans would likely muscle them out of the Senate majority and strengthen their hold on the House last night. But the party's losses on Tuesday may have been felt most deeply in state capitals, where GOP candidates captured governors' races in Democratic strongholds and turned aside challengers in a pair of key swing states.
The biggest stunner came in heavily Democratic Maryland, where Republican businessman Larry Hogan defeated Anthony Brown, the lieutenant governor, by nine points. Hogan's win stains the legacy of outgoing Governor Martin O'Malley, a presidential aspirant, and it came despite an aggressive late push by national Democratic leaders including President Obama and the Clintons.
This election was electoral malpractice. What was the message? Once again, Democrats ceded it to the Republicans. Does anyone remember back in 2000 how Al Gore took the bait and ran away from a very popular Bill Clinton? How do you lose an election with all the
policy successes one could run on?
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Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. While Al Gore won the election, he allowed it to be stolen by making what should have been an impressive win marginal.
Democrats fail to learn the lessons. The Democratic base has no reason to take the midterms off. They take it off because for all practical purposes, they are only served up an existential reason to vote every four years.
The Republican base is served up that existential reason to vote continuously. The only reason they lose generally in the presidential cycle is that in the aggregate, the Democratic base is bigger. That said, their candidates in this midterm sure resembled the façade of the Democratic coalition.
The problem that Democrats better grasp, and grasp fast, is that their reliance on the presidential cycle will become structurally ineffective. With Republicans controlling 30 states, gerrymandering is likely to be a problem for the foreseeable future. As such, voters will continue to see a minority running policy irrespective of the will of the voters. That ineffectiveness will breed further voter apathy.
So what must Democrats do between now and 2016? This will require all-out war. It will require tactics that liberals and Democrats seem always too elitist to effect. It will require carpet bombing. It will require being real Democrats as opposed to being Republican Lite. It will require always being on the attack instead of being defensive.
The reason Republicans believe the fallacies they believe in is because from Fox News to their mailboxes to their email boxes to their social media, they are exposed to information generally from loose coalitions working on a common cause. Their cause? The demonization of a Democratic president and the Democratic Party.
Has anyone ever civilly try to engage any rabid Republicans? One would be amazed at the fear they have for Democrats. One can only have that fear if the messaging is one-sided. Starting today, we must be carpet bombing their arena with messaging that makes them decide they must vote in their interest by first capturing their attention. Not condescension, but an understanding of their fears. We must stop looking at many of their voters as the enemy. Instead, we must give them the compassion we give to those who are ill. Believe it or not, that includes many in our own base who simply vote or don't vote based on fallacies. After all, many of our Democrats are no better than Republicans. We simply need their "D's" for cloture.
Lastly, we must field a presidential candidate who is a real populist. We must field a candidate who builds on hope and change yet unrealized, but the hope and change America still wants. I am doubtful that that candidate can be Hillary Clinton. My belief is that her time has passed and that she will be rather stale by 2016. I think America is waiting for a real populist who is not beholden to Wall Street. America needs a real non-triangulating populist. We lost because the things that needed to be said in this election about income inequality and the real enemy of the middle class is something Democrats would not say and Republicans do not have to say.
It is time to get ready for 2016. In the process, let us get rid of our own insanity.