WE GOT SHELLACKED AGAIN AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS OLD T-SHIRT WHILE HRC WAS ON A BOOK TOUR
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer declared 'the end of an era for Democrats
Krauthammer may have unintentionally meant an end to democracy by declaring an end to the "first charismatic phase" which could mean many things: the five/seven stages of grief or the rise of fascism which could have been the same thing in Weimar Germany that for some signaled the hope that capitalism might be withering away, much to History's subsequent chagrin. Just as post-World War America's Marshall Plan and Bretton-Woods globalism led to globalization, the GOP may generate an anti-
Nixonian shock with its temporary control of Congressional majorities.
Whomever the GOP nominates as a candidate for POTUS, they will be sufficiently extreme to signal the possibility of a return to the financial disaster that ended the Bush dynasty. It remains for the Democrats to craft an intelligible middle class strategy, a consistent message and a 50-state electoral college tactical plan.
SHELLACKING, THE SEQUEL Tuesday's rout again revealed the limits of the modern Democratic coalition.
For Democrats, the miserable 2014 election resembled one of those horror-movie sequels where the plucky survivor inexplicably finds herself back in the haunted house with Jason or Freddy.
President Obama pauses during his press conference Wednesday in the East Room of the White House. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)Tuesday's resounding Republican sweep closely followed the script of the GOP's landslide in 2010, and it exposed perhaps even more deeply the limits of the modern Democratic coalition—while underscoring the party's persistent inability to convince enough whites that they will benefit from activist government.
But just as President Obama recovered from his party's 2010 rout to comfortably win reelection two years later, some cautionary 2016 signs for Republicans are buried within the rubble of this week's Democratic disaster.
Ultimately 2016 is about a diverse middle class addled by cellphone obsolescence and mobile television consumption where there is a market for pickup truck diesel exhaust stacks designed simply to piss off hybrid drivers.
If "one is the loneliest number" then 2016 should be negative numbers for any shellacking and positive for shellacking the GOP if Democrats can stay on message. Otherwise we may have a data mine gap...
Another powerful lesson is that even with the best technology, Democrats remain dangerously dependent on a boom-and-bust coalition of young people and minorities, whose turnout is much lower in midterms than in presidential elections. Despite overheated predictions, Democrats performed almost exactly as well with millennial voters (including whites) and most minorities as they did in 2010 (although their performance did decline among Asians). But the share of the vote cast by those under 30 was 6 percentage points less in 2014 than in 2012; the minority share dropped 3 points. On both fronts, the pattern exactly followed the sharp falloff from 2008 to 2010, despite this year's huge Democratic investment in turnout.
That suggests Democrats cannot compete for Congress without more support from middle-class and older whites. In the national House exit poll, Republicans carried exactly three-fifths of whites, virtually unchanged from 2012 and 2010. That advantage was remarkably consistent. The only Democrat in a top-tier Senate race who carried a majority of whites was New Hampshire's Jeanne Shaheen, who won. Continuing their contemporary pattern, whites over 45 and those without college degrees broke especially hard against Democrats.