My precinct captains and fellow volunteers held a cold-eyed postmortem into the wee hours after the fiasco last night, and the exit poll data has made the reasons for Shellacking Part 2 in 2014 quite clear. The key data is this, and it's important to re-emphasize if only to shut up the useless, overpaid political consultants who idiotically babble about "moving to the center" or "compromising with the other side":
1. The Democrats actually won the "future voters" demographics, handily taking a solid majority of 18-30 year-olds and 30-44 year-olds. We decisively won the demographics we've been consistently winning for years. For that matter
2. The Democrats' "core voting pool", i.e. their underlying demographic advantage continues to grow every year, as their winning demographics continue to grow. The USA is no longer in any way a center-right country, despite idiot pundits still stuck in 1984 and the Reagan-Mondale election.
3. Unfortunately, voter turnout among our core demographics was utterly abysmal, in some ways even worse than 2010. That's right: The 2014 electorate was even older, whiter and more conservative than in 2010.
4. Conclusion, and the only thing that matters: What matters is turning out our voters. That's it. The Democrats win when we fire up and turn out our base.
5. How do we do that? By fighting the GOP ruthlessly, tooth-and-nail, by obstructing and filibustering everything that comes out of the GOP-held Senate outside of the most basic budget bills to keep the lights on, and by never, ever compromising. That means no TPP or other free trade agreements of any sort, no "omnibus" bills, no "grand bargains" or any other sweetened label the media hacks attach to them. Nothing gets through the GOP-held Senate. The public won't be able to sort out the details of the battles, but our base at least will know that our elected officials are fighting hard on their behalf, and that very act of fighting ruthlessly and never giving in-- even more than the policy itself-- is what wins elections these days. Also, it's finally payback time for all the GOP filibusters, holds and other obstructionism in the Senate, and if nothing else, obstruction by our side will be a deterrent, driving home the point that if the GOP engages in such reprehensible behavior against Democratic initiatives, they'd better be prepared to expect the same from our side. Anything less would be a complete dereliction of duty.
The usual rejoinder I've heard to this dogged, scorched-earth stance against the Republicans (at least until last night took off the rose-colored glasses) was, "What about the country? Wouldn't Democratic obstructionism just hurt the United States? We're supposed to be the grown-ups in the room, the ones who don't stoop to the GOP's level. Even if the Republicans are awful people, we still have to self-sacrifice and try to reach across the aisle, for the good of the country."
To which I LOUDLY CALL BULLSHIT, since all this post-partisan self-sacrifice capitulation has only emboldened the GOP and led to more obstructionism, hurting the country even worse (exemplified by the debt ceiling disaster and downgrade in 2011, or the shutdown last year). The only way to do right for our beloved country is to crush the GOP opposition as FDR did in the 1930's, not to engage them, not to compromise with them on anything. The US political environment has entered a state that resembles a pitched and ongoing shooting war, and the only outcome is to win, not to compromise. Things are going to suck for the country for the next few years and there's nothing anyone can do to avert that, but compromising will only prolong the misery and make it worse. Only complete victory and crushing the GOP opposition will give us any hope of saving the country at this point, nothing less.
And I don't buy the claims that GOP obstructionism and "voters not giving Obama enough credit" were the causes of the disaster last night-- they were factors no doubt, but far more important were specific, absolutely inexcusable blunders by Obama and the Democratic leadership that showed them as weak, compromising and irresolute, which kept millions of our voters away from the polls. Details below the fold.
What not to do: Democratic own-goals of 2013-14 that led to the fiasco last night:
1. On the 2013 immigration reform bill-- I was worried the White House and Dem leadership were going to botch and water down this signal legislation in the interest of "compromise" and "reaching across the aisle", but even my worst fears didn't anticipate the mushy corporatist bullshit that ultimately emerged from the Senate. The Democrats could have gone full-FDR and pushed through an immigration bill that, rather than caving to corporatist interests and H1B visas, instead introduced strong worker protections and demands to respect the wages and human rights of immigrants and native workers alike. Since the bill was going to be blocked by the House anyway, the Dems could have at least taken the opportunity to show that they would never, ever back down on workers' rights, following the lead of FDR, the founder of our modern party. But instead, Democratic leaders and drafters of the bill went wishy-washy and passed a spineless excuse of a "compromise" immigration bill full of sops and payoffs to crony capitalist interests, a ridiculously punitive set of barriers against immigrants trying to legalize their status and gain citizenship (not only intrusive checks and English language tests but also outrageous fines that would pose difficulties even for well-to-do immigrants), idiotic "concessions" on a militarized border fence, with lots of invitations to imported cheap labor and few protections whatsoever from exploitation (of both immigrant and native workers) by unscrupulous corporate interests. In other words, the Democrats in the Senate stupidly "compromised" themselves into a bloated, worthless bill that irritated everyone and pleased virtually no one-- and which was then blocked anyway by the House. I remember a lot of anger in response to this bill by reliable Democratic constituencies-- Latinos, well-educated scientists and engineers, African-Americans, union members, the working class-- who felt betrayed and belittled by the "elitist, out-of-touch limousine liberals" (I heard this a lot in many variations) of the Democratic leadership. This cost us millions of votes, and I have a strong suspicion that their support of this weak, sell-out "compromise immigration bill" may have been what tipped the balance and cost Udall and Hagan their Senate seats based on the falloff in base turnout (especially union and working-class voters) in their states. When it comes to something as basic as immigration and workers' rights, there can be absolutely no compromise especially with a bunch of reactionary neo-Confederates and 1%er sycophants as the current GOP. Either pass a strong progressive bill, like the 1965 legislation, or pass nothing at all. We already have an immigration framework in place (if clunky and quite flawed) so major overhauls of the immigration system happen maybe once a generation-- we cannot afford to screw up something like this with mushy, give-away-the-farm compromises. If we don't have the votes in Congress to get such a bill passed, then simply work harder (no compromises) to turn out our base and crush the GOP in the next Congressional elections so that we do have the votes.
2. The TPP free trade betrayal. An absolutely inexcusable and incredibly stupid move by Obama in supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and trying to suppress debate on it. A historic blunder on par with his failure to prosecute and punish the banksters responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. Even after last night I still greatly respect and support Obama for what he's done, but he deserves sustained and unyielding criticism for his TPP-related stances, and defenders of Obama really have no case here. (To his credit, Harry Reid himself helped to block the TPP from getting a fast-track vote in the Senate, but Obama's own machinations in favor of all the secrecy and betrayal of that repugnant treaty had already been noted by and infuriated the progressive base.) The most common argument I heard was that Obama was pretending to do the free traders' bidding to win big donor support (important since Citizens United), but this argument is utter bullshit. The Kochs, Adelsons and Waltons were going to donate heavily to the GOP anyway, and even more to the point, why did Obama insist so heavily on keeping the TPP negotiations secret? Why did he strive so mightily to keep the sunshine out regarding this horrible, corporatist, anti-American treaty? If Obama had wanted to play political kabuki and mollify big donors while still defending workers' rights, he needed only to do the utterly obvious thing and open the TPP to transparent debate and media coverage in Congress, as happens with everything else. Once the public saw provisions like the atrocious corporate courts, open-season on even basic workers' rights, carte blanche to pollute people's drinking water and other hideous aspects of it, Congress would have been forced to shelve it or risk political suicide. But Obama failed to do this-- he continued to keep the TPP negotiations secret and thus, quite reasonably, gave the Democratic base the sense that Obama really does support the TPP. This cost us millions more votes.
3. Net Neutrality. No introduction needed here. Obama really stepped in it by appointing a big-telecom lobbyist like Tom Wheeler as FCC head and basically tossing juicy morsels to the plutocratic interests trying to gain control of the Net. There's no middle ground or compromise on something like this. The United States is already embarrassingly behind the rest of the world in terms of Internet speed and affordability, due to all the monopolistic bullshit controlling US Internet access in the very country that invented it. This is bad enough, but Obama's meekness in the face of corporate attacks on the Net's most basic principles caused a lot of consternation among young voters, for whom Internet outlets are among the only equalizers they have to fight the propaganda power of big money and the 1%ers. It's utter political malpractice for Obama to have been unaware of the sensitivity surrounding this issue especially in the wake of the Occupy Protests.
4. Meekly assenting to billions of dollars in cuts for food stamps and extended unemployment benefits. "No, we won't cut off your whole hand like those meanie Republicans over there, we'll just cut off a couple fingers." Yeah, a real winning message there. Once again, the Democrats' caving, craven weakness here was pathetic and turned off our working-class base. While voters may not catch all of the details in a legislative fight like this, once again they can see if our side is fighting and fighting hard, digging on our heels and taking it to the enemy, responding to their obstructionism with threats against their cherished programs and states (by for example demanding cuts in subsidies to rich farmers-- often GOP Congressional cronies-- if they persist in their obstructionism). In a game of chicken like this you don't blink, and once again, all those appeals to the "good of the country" in encouraging compromise are absolute bullshit when a party's spineless actions only embolden the country-damaging reactionaries on the other side. Another stupid own-goal by Dem leadership. What makes this even more appalling is that for once, corporations and 1%ers actually weren't loudly demanding the GOP agenda. Wal-mart and other big retailers basically depend on food stamps, extended unemployment and other safety nets to underwrite their profits amid their own pathetically poor wages. (And the results have shown, as Walmart's profits have fallen hard after the cuts.) In this case it was the rabid Tea Party extremists pushing the GOP's agenda. But Dems failed to realize this and pathetically capitulated.
5. All the stupidity surrounding the Snowden revelations. The mature thing for Obama to have done would have been to acknowledge the gross abuses of power by US intelligence and spy agencies and respected what Snowden was making clear-- especially since other whistleblowers who'd "done the right thing"-- working through the system-- had been sandbagged, muzzled or openly attacked. Especially since the NSA and other intelligence agencies clearly weren't using their tools for anti-terrorism, but rather for control of the populace and corporate espionage, clear violations of the Constitution and the most basic human rights of Americans. So what did Obama do? While claiming that he wasn't flustered by the revelations, he made it a National Security priority to apprehend Snowden at the expense of other important goals, to the point of forcing down a plane carrying the President of Bolivia (that Snowden wasn't even on), further enraging South America against us and embarrassing the country to the world. Obama pleased virtually no one and managed to infuriate practically everyone on this, not only progressives but also plenty of libertarian-leaning Independents, all in the service of whatever powerful interests have been using the data from US intelligence agencies for their own aims. Another stupid own-goal that cost us dearly.
6. All of these serious blunders on top of ongoing Democratic base suspicion surrounding Obama and Democratic leaders' intentions around chained CPI, Social Security and Catfood Commissions. Once again, the solution is no compromise with the GOP, no "meeting them halfway". The solution is to stand up and say that no cuts to Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare will be allowed. None. At. All. Not of these mealy-mouthed attempts at "nuance" or a "compromise bill" on the hallmarks of the Great Society and New Deal. The cap can be raised as needed and our bloated military can be scaled back (not a hard sell at all-- once again, we're no longer a center-right country), but we will not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly. Democratic leaders simply need to say this and repeat it, and rub it into the faces of the GOP with glee and relish.
Yes, the GOP's obstructionism frustrated and demoralized the electorate enough to depress voter turnout, and yes, too many of Obama's signal victories (the ultimate success of the ACA, concluding the wars, rescuing the economy from an even-worse-than-1929 Depression, taking student loans out of the hands of greedy private bankers) didn't net the Dems enough credit. But most of the Democrats' wounds leading to the debacle last night in 2014 were self-inflicted.
To summarize, as we saw last night, this compromise and conciliation is exactly what not to do, it's this mealy-mouthed conciliatory bullshit that lost us the Senate and other seats across the nation because it demoralized our base and kept them home, while Independents and "soft Republicans" didn't tilt to our side because they saw Democratic attempts to compromise with an implacable GOP opposition as being weak. And "weak" is what a US political organization absolutely cannot be in the current political environment. As we've seen from the GOP since Obama came into office, a political organization can be full of assholes and douchebags, even outright criminals, can work against the interests of the people, can push idiotic legislation and do concrete damage to the USA and still win elections so long as that organization fights and appears strong and resolute, thus turning out its base. Once again, the appearance and projection of strength is what matters above all else.
This is important because it goes beyond even the ideology and policy itself. Americans are so frustrated, overworked and distracted that they don't catch the policy nuances other than short, concisely packaged nostrums and summaries-- but what they do see unequivocally is whether their party is fighting and resolute. For example, while I'm not alone in having my ideological differences with the Clintons, the one thing they did well was to fight and fight dirty-- to plunge the figurative knife into the Republicans' body, twist it and then gleefully laugh in the process. (And this fighting spirit did lead to crucial progressive accomplishments like the tax law in 1993, assault rifle ban and the SCOTUS appointments.) The base saw this, and it's why Bill Clinton was able to frustrate the GOP in the 1998 midterms, a far cry from 2014 when the demographics are much more on our side and should have made the job easier for us. It had nothing to do with "compromising" or "moving to the center"-- the base in 1998 saw that Clinton was willing to fight and rub it in the GOP's noses, and even if we disagreed with a lot of his statements and his tendencies, we had no doubts that he was willing to take it to the GOP and enjoy making those Republican assholes miserable.
No compromise. No soothing engagement. No reaching out to the other side. Want to preserve and gain power, and save our beloved United States of America, Democratic leadership? Then crush the Republican reactionaries. Nothing less.