The DNC has named a 10-person panel to help diagnose what went wrong for Democrats in 2014 and 2010 and the effort is being led by a Democratic governor from a red state and a Silicon Valley executive,
reports the Associated Press.
Democrats are turning to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and others to lead a task force to address problems in recent midterm elections.
Are these really the guys who should be leading the charge in figuring out why the Democratic base stayed home in 2010 and 2014? It seems DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has wildly misread the lessons of these two fateful midterms.
Allow me to review. Prior to the 2010 midterm, the Democrats failed to address bills on climate change, immigration, "don't ask, don't tell" repeal, labor organizing, and they dealt a major blow to reproductive rights advocates in the healthcare bill they did actually pass. Democratic voters stayed home. Hmm.
The 2014 picture is a bit more complicated, but in essence, Democrats failed to tout the benefits of their two signature achievements from Obama's first term: health care and the stimulus. The party didn't talk about job growth, the falling deficit, the falling unemployment rate, significantly slowed growth in healthcare spending, or the substantial drop in the number of uninsured. Then, in the final months of the campaign, Senate Democrats convinced Obama not to take executive action on immigration before the vote. Is it any wonder the Democratic base was demoralized in either instance?
The question of who should lead the Dems' post-mortem on 2014 and 2010 goes back to the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party we keep hearing about. Should Dems heed the consultation of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, for instance, or of Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia? Well, let's see—Warner's a pro-business centrist who just barely won his 2014 re-election bid while Warren has now become a household name by championing the causes of hardworking Americans across the country. When's the last time you heard about a serious movement to draft Mark Warner for a 2016 presidential bid?
Beshear may have done an enviable job of selling Obamacare to his conservative state. But he did that by doing exactly what has hurt the Democratic Party with the broader progressive base—running away from Democratic issues (in this case, Obamacare) in order to sign people up. Most Kentuckians didn't even know that Kynect was Obamacare; therefore, a plurality of state voters approved of Kynect while a majority disapproved of Obamacare. That type of misdirection may have sold Kentucky on Obamacare, but it won't sell progressives on the Democratic Party.
Democrats have had electoral issues in the last two midterms precisely because they failed to excite their base. Nothing made that clearer than the success that President Obama had with his 2012 re-election as he made a pointed effort at highlighting issues related to immigration, the environment, reproductive rights, and LGBT equality. It's hard to imagine how a red-state governor and a tech titan are going to help the Democratic Party reconnect with its base.