Thomas Frank has an article on Salon about how the Republicans "hijacked the mid-terms" by stealing the progressive message from Democrats - and how Democrats let them get away with it.
He makes the case that, in race after race, Republican candidates actually adopted anti-1% rhetoric that should rightly belong to Dems, while Dems allowed themselves to be painted as pro-1%ers.
Indeed, it is now possible for a Republican soldier like Frank Luntz to explain the Republican victory by writing, “People say Washington is broken and on the decline, that government no longer works for them — only for the rich and powerful.” You read that right: After deliberately breaking Washington, the Republican Party just rode to power by protesting Washington’s brokenness. Having done all they could to enrich the rich and empower the powerful, the GOP has now succeeded in presenting itself as America’s warrior for social justice.
Frank then goes on to list several prominent examples of Republicans doing just that:
In the election just completed, Freedom Partners Action Fund pursued its phony war against capitalism by attacking health insurance companies, which it accused of profiting massively from Obamacare and also of donating massively to Democratic candidates. The Freedom Partners injected the charge into pretty much all the contested Senate racesb—bIowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Colorado. A version of the attack tailored for Alaska voters put it this way: “Senator Begich isn’t standing up to insurance companies; he’s standing with them.” A favorite line the Freedom Partners kept coming back to: “The hypocrisy is shocking.”
In this case, we have conservatives critiquing the ACA essentially from the left.
More examples:
American Crossroads, one of Karl Rove’s personal agitprop units, was even worse, constantly pounding Democratic candidates with critiques that were also derived from, well, us. The group, or one of its allied super PACs, assailed Mark Begich for allegedly paying female staffers less than he pays men. It described Rep. Bruce Braley as being “on the side of billionaire special interests, not Iowa workers,” a reference to campaign donations Braley got from the wealthy environmentalist Tom Steyer. It accused Sen. Kay Hagan of cutting Medicare to pay for Obamacare and blasted her for supporting a “controversial” plan to raise the Social Security retirement age — a reference to the Bowles-Simpson Grand Bargain, which was only “controversial” because people like Paul Krugman opposed it.
And how did Democrats respond to this wholesale theft of their issues? By nominating a raft of senatorial candidates culled from "the aristocratic children of famous politicians," candidates like Michelle Nunn, Alison Lundergrin-Grimes, et. al.
This led to results like these:
There’s a reason Iowa Senate candidate Bruce Braley thought it a crushing put-down to describe a certain senator as “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” It’s the same reason “working-class white men make Democrats nervous,” to quote a recent Newsweek headline. It’s also the reason an election night NPR report on the disastrous results of the Kentucky Senate contest included a snippet of commentary from a voter who dismissed the Democratic candidate as a “spoiled rich kid.”
I have my issues with Thomas Frank. At one point, he scolds the Democratic candidates for not running on Obama's accomplishments, "such as they are," even though, recently, Frank has been on a bit of a tear himself against Obama's record of achievement. Still, in this case, I think he is definitely onto something. If Democrats don't grab these populist themes back, the Tea Party Republicans will grab a hold of them for many more election cycles to come.
Definitely worth a read.