FWIW, there are those who have looked at the defeats in the past election and put it down to a tough electoral map. While that might play in explaining the Senate races, it doesn't necessarily wash with the House races - or what happened at the state level. There is hope the next election cycle with a Presidential race coming up will turn out the Democratic base and hand the Republicans some defeats because they'll have more Senate seats up for election.
And, there are those who consider Democrats can expect a rising tide as the aging white base of the Republican party declines while the Latino and African-American vote can only increase. An eventual Democratic resurgence is baked in, so play it safe, be patient, don't rock the boat (or the vote), seek the center....
Don't play to win, play to not lose, in other words.
Rrrrriiiigggghhhhhtttttt..................
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
The short version of all of the above is.... more of the same neoliberal mush, death by triangulation, Republican lite, corporatism. And it ignores some painful truths, chief among which is: it doesn't work.
The trouble with chasing the center is, it doesn't work when your opponents keep dragging it farther to the right. It doesn't work when it means you can't build on your victories, your accomplishments - because you keep trying to accommodate those who are trying to defeat you. It doesn't work when you self-censor yourself to keep from upsetting those out to destroy everything you stand for. It doesn't work when you moderate your positions to not offend them, or make pre concessions to win the approval of those who will despise you regardless.
The 'center' is the wrong place to be, when it's NOT where a majority of Americans want to be or where they need to be. The 'center' isn't really the center at all when one boundary is pushed to extremes. The center IS a viable place to be when opposing parties are seeking to find ways to work together - which is not the current state of affairs. What we have now is more like two opposing armies (one of them under particularly clueless generals) and the 'center' between them is more properly described as No Mans Land. (Here's what it looks like.)
In the last election, Democratic candidates who tried to sell themselves as Republican Lite ("We suck less") lost, while those who put out a progressive message held on and won. Progressive initiatives on the ballots won in a lot of places. Gaius Publius over at Digby's has some good commentary on this, suggesting that losing people who have embraced a losing strategy is a good thing in the long run IF it means we can replace the corporatist leadership of the Democratic party that is mainly interested in keeping the status quo and the Big Money donors they've built the party around. The money base of the party, as opposed to the people base in other words.
What they ignore is that all the big donors in the world will not help you if people don't turn out to vote for you. The elections just past had shamefully low turn out; the final results come down the the will of slightly more than one sixth of the potential voters prevailing over the one sixth who showed up - and the two thirds who didn't.
And why shouldn't it have turned out that way? Too many Democrats ran away from their own President and his policies. They distanced themselves from their greatest legislative achievement in generations. They failed to get any credit for policies that have gotten the U.S. through the Great Recession better than anywhere else in the world. Hell - even record low gasoline prices didn't gain them anything.
This is why demographics are not going to save the Democratic party. There are things that are seriously broken in this country; there is a party that has gone insane - and Democrats are trying to win with a message of.... what exactly? The Republicans have advantages that Democrats seem oblivious too, that they fail to respond to.
Guess who has a 50 state strategy - the G.O.P. - and it's not even of their own doing. It comes out of a realization by the super rich who are busy trying to rig the 2016 election even now. Concentrate on the states, and the national races will fall in line. Charles P. Pierce has been raising a ruckus about this for some time - here's his latest on that heading. Taking note of the New York Times piece laying out how Republican State Attorneys General are at the beck and call of their corporate owners, Pierce observes:
This is smooth and edgeless corporate fascism in its classic sense -- a marriage of government and industry that is so tightly consummated that the former is entirely indistinguishable from the latter. The interests of corporate influence and of government power are brought into such close cooperation with each other that their interests correspond to each other personally. Ever since the birth of this bright baby Blog, we've pointed out that the real action -- the real work of converting a self-governing republic into a seamless corporate oligarchy -- is being done in the states, where politicians can be purchased more cheaply, and where the infrastructure of the corruption on the national level is developed. This is where rookie politicians learn how to peddle their influence legally, and where the real power lies, and to whom they owe their allegiance and, therefore, their careers.
emphasis added
The abandonment of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy by the national Democratic party has given the oligarchs smooth sailing - and it is why the south is now solidly Republican in Senators and Governors, from the Carolinas to Texas. (You need look no further than here to see how bankrupt Democratic strategy was.)
Concentrating on the states has other consequences as well. States are where district maps are drawn up for state and national races. Republican control of statehouses means that even though there are more Democratic voters - more Republicans end up in Congress.
To give a simple example, imagine four neighboring congressional districts, two of which are 60 percent Democratic and two of which are 60 percent Republican. One would expect that each party would win two seats in the House. But if the Republican state legislature re-draws the district lines so as to make one district 100 percent Democratic, and the other three districts each 67 percent Republican, then instead of each party winning two representatives, the Republicans will win in three of the four districts.
And then, of course, the DCCC and the DSCC look at the map, shake their heads, and walk away from electoral contests in those states, except the few where they have a lock. And they never wonder why their margins keep shrinking....
Control of statehouses also means the ability to enact a conservative agenda (with the help of ALEC) where such policies could not get through Congress. It means the power to appoint conservative judges who interpret those laws. It means a power base to launch attacks on national policies coming from Democratic administrations. It means making it harder for the 'wrong' people to vote or organize to protect their interests.
The Republican demonization of the very idea of government has been genius, evil genius. They have nothing to offer ordinary people in the way of policies that will do them good, but quite a lot that will do them harm. By making government the problem, they provide a ready scapegoat for the damage they and their beliefs do. They can obstruct government as much as they like, and - helped by a compliant press - they can get away with sabotage because they've conditioned people to expect nothing. They teach people to distrust anything from the government, and reject it as a means of making their life better.
And so Republicans can pretty much turn government into their own personal property, to sell to the highest bidder. In fact, the process has gone so far, they are now competing to sell themselves. (The Republican party is becoming irrelevant in this regard; Big Money has gotten so good at buying and selling candidates, and has so few restrictions on spending, it can run rings around the GOP if it wants to do so.)
Speaking of buying and selling, Republicans have become masters of marketing. They've created their own messaging machine and it runs 24/7. They've become so adept at it, Democrats repeat their talking points, reinforcing their message and the view of the world they want to create in people's minds. It's hard to run on the idea of using government to make life better for people IF you're constantly framing it in ways that counter the whole idea - and yet too many Democrats don't get this.
Republicans have not only built up a messaging machine, they all stick to the same script; Democrats trying to sell themselves as someone who can 'find common ground and work together' with Republicans, really don't have a lot of options to differentiate themselves from the GOP. And even if Democrats could come up with a counter message of their own, message discipline would be a lot harder. Democrats make herding cats look simple.
The problem is, Republicans have got the country by the Lizard Brain, which is why America seems to be getting dumber all the time. Democrats have not figured out how to deal with it effectively, while Republicans have been playing it like a violin. The politics of resentment, the politics of race, above all the politics of fear - all of this has been used by the GOP to divide and conquer; they've made it into a science. (It's the dynamics of authoritarianism at work, and it plays to our worst impulses by amplifying them.) Conservatives experience fear and emotion differently from Liberals; it energizes them while it paralyzes everyone else. So, they've learned how to make it work for them.
Talking about racism becomes racist - look at those angry black looters trashing their own people's stores and killing each other - they deserve what happens to them. That's why we need the police - to protect us from them and protect them from themselves. (Animals!)
Talking about inequality is class warfare. Government programs to lift people out of poverty, create jobs, and progressive taxation - this will destroy the economy and take money out of MY pocket for 'those people' (see above). Occupy Wall Street protestors - just a bunch of dirty hippy privileged white kids who don't understand how the world works, and why don't they just go out and get jobs? They're all drug-using dirty sex fiends anyway. (Animals!) Good thing the police put them in their place.
We live in a dangerous world! Terrorists are coming to kill us in our beds. (It used to be Communists under the bed!) Ebola! Immigrants! Criminals are going to rob us, kill us - and the liberals want to make us defenseless by taking away our guns. (The solution to gun violence is... more guns!) Liberals with their racism and their class war are going to fill the streets with angry mobs. Their hatred of the military (Spitting on returning Vietnam soldiers) is going to embolden our enemies unless we give the Pentagon everything it wants and go to war before they can 'do it' to us. Anything else will let the terrorists win. Democrats want those immigrants sent by terrorists to spread Ebola while they steal our elections! (Animals!)
When Democrats try to use logic and reason to counter the Lizard Brain, and talk about real problems and real solutions to them... Republicans offer up more fear and anger, AND soothing lies to make people feel good about them and themselves. Morning in America. America is the Greatest Country on Earth. God has a plan for America. Traditional values - we will be fine if we just return to to them. Everything wrong with America will be fine if we just reject all those things Liberals have done to us and go back to the glorious past. (Like when we were kids, and a Big Daddy took care of us as long as we were good - and didn't challenge him in any way. You hear that, woman?)
The Lizard Brain doesn't give a damn about the future, facts, or history. It has no empathy, no ethics. It's about unthinking survival reflexes that are incompatible with civilization if not channeled safely, and a powerful tool to manipulate the masses.
Democrats haven't figured out a way to counter this, and couldn't coordinate on it if they tried. Which they're mostly not doing. Triangulation, centrism, neoliberalism has kept money flowing to them, so why give up on something that seems to be working? Except it isn't. All of the above appeals to the lizard brain have one purpose: take things that should be Democratic strengths and turn them into weaknesses. Real needs, real desires are going unanswered - and potential Democratic voters are not hearing anything that speaks to them. That's why they don't turn out. They show up for presidential elections because they can see how that would make a big difference in their lives, but as for the rest of it?
Take a look at this challenge. There's a big debate going on now over what Democrats should do about the South - walk away and let them get what they voted for, or refuse to concede. Over at Political Animal, Ed Kilgore is looking at arguments over what to do about the South: adjust positions to try to win it back, or go on the attack.
...the idea that the national party is being held hostage to conservative southerners is becoming as anachronistic as Deep South Democratic Senators. Yes, Obama decided to postpone his executive action on immigration until after November 4, but it’s not clear to me that was strictly because of southern demands; a lot of midwestern and western and even northeastern House candidates seem to have been pretty worried about it as well. And besides, if the problem is national party concessions to “the South,” the solution is to stop making them, not to lash oneself to the mast like Odysseus in the land of the sirens and scream curses at those charming southerners so as not to succumb to their seductive songs.
I'd suggest that a way forward for Democrats would be to stop trying to compete with Republicans over "Guns, God, and Gays"; it's their turf, so why play on it? Instead, Democrats need to find their own talking points to leverage. Can it be done?
Pierce has weighed in on that also.
...Bernie Sanders is drawing big crowds in South Carolina and in Mississippi. He wouldn't come close to winning anything in either of those states, but there is a working-class audience there that is interested in listening to him, and that is worth respecting in our politics. There always has been a kind of working-class populism in the South, and it always came to grief over race. But it's 2014, and forging an actual alliance of working people, black and white, in the places that need it the most, is a worthwhile effort whether it fails initially or not. To abandon the people trying to forge that alliance -- and, therefore, to abandon the people on whose behalf that alliance is being forged -- would be political malpractice of the highest order....
Political malpractice - it's a pretty good description of the feckless leadership that has forgotten how to appeal to its base;
the Sister Souljah moment is a peculiarly Democratic ritual in which candidates are expected to publicly demonstrate their willingness to attack 'extreme' elements in the party. It has no known counterpart on the GOP side - in fact the concern there is to placate their extremists while the media looks the other way.
So, what's extreme? Healthcare for all Americans is considered extreme. Raising taxes on the rich and corporations is extreme. Raising the minimum wage is extreme. Boosting Social Security is extreme. Single payer? Extreme. Effective action on Climate Change? Extreme. Jail for bankers? Extreme. Immigration reform? Canceling bad trade deals? Extreme. Universal Pre-k? Extreme. Equal Pay? Extreme. And so on. Begin to see a pattern here? The Lizard Brain rules even here.
These are all things that a majority of Americans could support - and yet the current leadership of the Democratic party, the media, the pundit class, the consultants, the lobbyists, the big money boys - this kind of talk makes them nervous. It might change things. People might actually get excited and turn out to vote - and then who knows what might happen?
If the Democratic party hopes to survive and thrive, it had really better find a way to answer that question and deal with the Lizard Brain - because being "Not Quite As Republican" isn't going to cut it, demographics or not.
Meanwhile, here's an idea I'll toss out just to shake things up. To paraphrase some advice, "When you're faced with a difficult situation and you don't know what to do, add some more complication. If nothing else, it will change things and you may see a solution. And, the people who've been trying to knock your feet out from under you will be thrown off balance - giving you a chance to get the drop on them."
To that end, here's the suggestion. Let's think about adding a new wrinkle to elections. If an election doesn't draw more than 51% of all eligible voters (eligible, not just registered), then that election will be declared void and will be rerun in two weeks with the top 2 finishers. If that run-off election doesn't meet the threshold, then a third election will be held in two weeks with the next two lower down finishers from the first election. If that doesn't meet the threshold, then the current officeholders will remain in office for another year, when a fresh election will be held. Or, alternatively, those offices would remain vacant, say for three months, until a fresh election. In either case, no one could run who had been on the slate in the first election. And so on.
This would mean attention would have to be paid to everyone who could register to vote, but doesn't. It could open up a shot for candidates running on party lines lower on the ballot. It would make buying elections a bit more expensive. It would penalize people for not voting. (An incentive for early and extended voting, voting by mail, etc.) It could be tried at different levels: local, county, state - national might be a problem - and we might see some interesting results.
Is this practical or realistic? Maybe, maybe not - but it has the advantage of making people think again about the whole voting process, breaks it out of the framing over voter fraud, voter restriction, and just might open up some other discussions.
And maybe we can find a way to short circuit the Lizard Brain while we're at it.
UPDATE: While following up the
Gaius Publius link to respond to a comment, I followed it back farther to
an analysis by Howie Klein that does much to explain why Democratic leadership in DC seems to have so little in the way of a response to the fiasco of the election.
And that brings us to the Democratic Party post mortem, which will be conducted by an ad hoc committee set up by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I've been told that the main purpose is to make sure that no blame whatsoever is placed on... Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Steve Israel. She "appointed a 10-person “Democratic Victory Task Force” that will investigate and address systemic issues that led to the Republican triumph in federal and state-level elections this year. None of the participants are from outside a list of well-connected Insiders-- Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (a big GOP donor), Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile, Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio, AFSCME president Lee Saunders and two Obamabots, Teddy Goff and Maneesh Goyal. I would bet they won't be discussing tough, thoughtful, sensible articles like this or this as part of their deliberations. One disgusted Democratic Congressmember told me that among her many other non-talents Wasserman Schultz can't even put a competent committee together. Well, if she was aiming for a meaningless whitewash... she was pretty competent in her selections.
This piece at Politico has some problems for me, but it does say a bit more about DWS that should alarm anyone wondering why the party leadership seems to think she's the person for the job she's holding down. She and Andrew Cuomo would appear to have a lot in common.
Back on 11-10-14, JDWolverton looked at DWS and pulled out the question the DNC can't seem to figure out: WIIFM? It's a highly recommended diary that I missed at the time - but it certainly complements this one and I suggest if you find this one useful, go take a look at JDWolverton's as well.
UPDATE: Here's
something Pierce picked up on...
...Jensen's account of how she spent her days seeking public office fills me with sadness and dread, even though the story is a sadly familiar one.
"I was surprised when I traveled to Washington and met with the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and some members of Congress, and the only thing people asked me was, 'How much money can you raise? Where are you gonna get your money?'" Jensen said. "There were no questions about my positions, no questions about my experience, no questions about why do you want to do this. The only thing was - it was like a script, word for word, everyone I talked to - 'How much money can you raise and how are you gonna do it?'"
And...
That 53 percent number of useless layabout non-voters is the most crazy-making of them all. Too goddamn many people have given up without realizing that having them give up was some people's plan all along. And, once again, let us pray in the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy:
"Independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption."
Yeah, that sentence is going to get a workout.
emphasis added