The Republican Congress took over the reigns of the House and immediately started addressing the weighty needs of the country with abortion rights legislation that didn't have a chance of passing the Senate. Since then GOP has continued to bungle their way through a government shutdown, the endless Benghazi nonsense, repeatedly insulted women and alienated minorities with a bizarrely bigoted stance on immigration.
If the GOP has one salvation, one thing that's keeping them from being the laughing stock of political history, it's the equal ineptitude of the Democrats. It would be hard to imagine a setup for a more lopsided election than what the GOP handed their opponent, yet Democrats have failed miserably at capitalizing on any of those mistakes and stubbornly stick to a strategy that's going to end in an epic ass kicking in November unless they get it together.
You don't have to take my word for it, a recent CNN Poll shows the GOP with a 46%-45% but the real margin is likely closer to 48%, near the numbers Republicans were putting up in 2010. How did Democrats get into such a precarious position against an opponent that raises incompetence to an art form? Our local Democratic party offers some clues that point to bigger institutional and systemic problems.
I signed up for the local Dems email list and I still can't articulate their position on any local, state or national issues. I can't name any local Democratic officials and only one Democrat in a state race, Charlie Crist, who is running for governor. The majority of emails I get are begging for money. Being the poor party, I try to give them a little slack on that, but what turns up in my email box is a daily barrage of fundraising pitches, usually with a lead-in about the Republican scandal of the day. Most recently I received an invitation to a fundraiser for Governor Crist. The email listed dollar amounts for suggested donations that started at $10,000 and ended at $500. Because nothing says we support working class Americans quite like a $500 a ticket fundraiser just down the street from the Koch family home in Palm Beach.
Other than being against Republicans, I can't figure out from the mailing list emails just what the Democrats are for. Sure, I have a vague idea that Democrats support immigration reform, minimum wage and voter rights but I'm not getting that from the local party. What I'm getting instead are requests to hold a party at my place; to open my home to a group of strangers and, you guessed it, try to get money from them. It would be nice to get to know some of these people in other venues before they come trooping over. In fairness there are social events for Democrats, one of which required dues to participate. The other frequent request I get it work the phones at the campaign office. In between elections I hear very little from them.
I'd be more impressed if I'd gotten an invitation to join Charlie Crist in front of McDonald's protesting sub-par wages, I might even have shown up for that one. Or a job fair sponsored by Democrats, I'd definitely volunteer for that, or a show of public support for voting rights. Maybe a volunteer day at a local food shelter or Habitat For Humanity. I hear what the Democrats are saying about supporting the poor and working class, but I don't see them actually getting their hands dirty.
So it's no surprise then that the Republican base is more energized than ever in 2014. They have the money to run nearly non-stop TV ads that have started already. They have the 24/7 conservative outrage propaganda channel providing a daily dose of vitriol, backed up by talk radio. Democrats don't actually seem to fight very hard for their base, don't have any kind of messaging machine and it's hard to blame people for not being energized by a waterfall of fundraising emails.
The polls show what most Democrats feel, that they're not really appreciated all that much and that's not tremendously motivating. If mid-term elections prove anything it's that Democrats can't win simply being Republican Lite. Unless Democrats boot Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and install someone with a better plan for messaging and activism as leader of the national party, the Dems are going to sleepwalk into another disaster in November.