“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need” – Rolling Stones
Democrats seriously suck at politics. On the other hand, you can fight the opposition, you can fight the media, you can fight the money, and you can fight vote suppression.
But, idiocy is damned near invincible. And sadly, idiocy is pretty well distributed across party lines:
After a massacre on par with the catastrophic election of 2010, 2014 proves that you hold elections with the citizens you have. Democrats didn’t accept that reality. As the Wrongologist said on November 3rd:
The Democrats have no closing argument. The great tragedy of the Democrats is that they still believe politics is about competing sermons.
They ran to the right, distanced themselves from the Obama agenda, and hoped that their ground game would bring them victory. It didn’t, and it’s not going to be easy to get the same quality of GOTV effort that Obama got in 2008 and 2012, after coming up so short this time. If you look at the political map, what you see is red and purple counties in suburban and rural areas that taken together, in low turn-out elections, are now equal to anything that solidly blue urban areas can muster. This problem prevents any Democratic effort to undermine the ability of Republicans to successfully gerrymander secure districts.
Are establishment Democrats who are now on their way to their lucrative post-political careers, going to have the will to fight for anything before they go? Beltway Democrats have a lot to answer for. And one question is whether the Democratic Party is more than a regional party that can win in only a few coastal states. Their political infrastructure has now mostly gone to seed. Here is a modest program for improvement:
1. The old guard leaders must go. The Democratic caucus should throw out the entire leadership team and start over. Why would any candidate want to brand themselves with the organizations run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz, Steve Israel, and whoever it was that allowed Democratic Senate candidates to run this year’s content-frees campaigns?
2. They should look at the political landscape: People are discontented. Why? In part, because incomes haven’t risen in 15 years. What did Democrats do in response? Nothing. What did voters do? They voted enmasse for the party that has done everything possible to keep their incomes down. Apparently, any change was better than more of the same inaction.
3. They need to listen to constituents. The current bunch are over-manipulative, over-controlled, and fools for the money. Over the past 30 years, the Wrongologist has met with Governors, Senators and Congress people to push policy ideas. But today, what mostly comes out of those meetings (if they will take them) are platitudes and polite put-downs.
4. They need to realize that good Ideas can come from the people: The purpose of Occupy Wall Street was to drive the 1%-99% inequality idea. It gained traction. Everyone knew it was true, but Democrats could (or would) not operationalize any policy from the idea. They let the bankers off the hook, while mildly pushing tax reform and the Minimum Wage. Maybe what we saw last night was the “Revenge of Occupy”.
People tend to believe what Republicans say about Democrats, instead of what Democrats actually say about themselves. Their peer-pressure techniques block out reasoned political conversation. This has the effect of isolating people, and convincing them that everyone around them believes Republican-speak, and that to cross that line will result in personal approbation, or possibly, social excommunication.
Allowing this to continue has been the greatest failure of Democratic leaders.
The problem is that people either don’t know what the Democrats and the Republicans stand for, or don’t really care. Based on the Pew poll of voting types, nonpartisans have no idea who runs what in Congress.
If we can get voters to understand what Republicans are for and what Democrats are for, there could be Democratic majorities even with the level of turnout we saw yesterday. This is “branding”, and Democrats have to stop letting the R’s do it for them.
Look, we’ve made surprising progress on some issues in the past 6 years. The gap is with connecting the winning issues to the winning candidates. Unless the Democratic Party changes, it is a casket for progressive ideas and candidates.
Sources:
don’t know what to think. Republicans win by telling stupid rural voters that the good old days will return if they vote Republican, but in fact Republicans a lying, and have no plans to build back an economy that provides good jobs. democrats have the uncomfortable burden of telling the truth – they really do believe that what they propose will help. i don’t see how democrats can win (in off years) unless they also begin to rely on lies crafted into talking points.
Terry,
That’s quite a broad brush you use to paint with. Not all Republicans lie, just like not all Democrats tell the truth. I would venture to say that the Republicans did so well because our President has done so poorly. Why can’t we all just get along?
Here are some crazy thoughts as to why the Republican’s won. We the People, don’t want any ILLEGAL immigrants crossing the borders. We want DECISIVE leadership on the national and international stages. We don’t want to be perceived as WEAK to our enemies. And most of all. MICHELE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT SCHOOL LUNCHES. Have you noticed that every program instituted by Barry and his wife don’t effect them, but costs everyone else a whole helluva lot of money?
I’ll get off of my little soapbox now. Have a blessed day. 🙂
BTW: Terry…I grew up in the country. I am rural. I take offense as being described as stupid. I also take offense for all of my rural friends, family and countrymen. Next time you need a war fought you can go get some Metrosexuals to do it.