How many of you have read a story in the past week that supposedly points out the weakness of the Democrats by being at “their lowest point” and then something, something, state legislatures, Congress, etc.?
It seems these types of articles are everywhere. And there is truth there, but I think this is leaving out a huge part of the equation. I am not trying to be Pollyanaish here. I know Democrats have problems.
However, let’s look at a little history. It seems Democrats had one really bad election in 2010. This was in the middle of the recession that the party had inherited. We had the cranky old white people brigade going nuts from FOX about death panels, etc. Democrats were over-exposed everywhere. It was bad.
But here is where the real story is. Karl Rove’s REDMAP went into effect. We had a gerrymandering overdrive that killed us. We had a good election in 2012 and it did us very little good in the House and state legislatures because the Sociopath Party (GOP) for lack of a better word, cheated. The Democrats could win the popular vote in places like VA, PA, WI, etc. and still get hosed in seat totals. I think any analysis that doesn’t talk about this is like talking about the Civil War and leaving out Gettysburg.
The sad fact is that bad journalism let us down too. This issue should have been front and center. This was the purposeful disenfranchisement of African-Americans and the media was treating it like inside baseball.
The redistricting is coming up in 2020. We need to do all we can. But the point is that 2010 put us in a GENERATIONAL hole, that has been very hard to climb out of, even when we win.