As you’ve no doubt noticed, election day was brutal for Congressional Democrats--especially in the House, where it appears we’ll lose roughly 60 seats and the majority. Now that most of us have uncurled ourselves from fetal position, there are a few things to note as we plan for what we do next:
First, the brutality was not evenly spread. Progressives fared pretty well, while Blue Dogs and New Democrats bore the brunt of the losses. The Congressional Progressive Caucus lost only three of their 76 House members: Reps. John Hall of New York, Phil Hare of Illinois, and Alan Grayson of Florida. By contrast, it looks as though the Blue Dog Coalition will lose 30 of its 55 members and the New Democrats will lose 27 of their 69 members. This will make progressives a much larger portion of the Democratic Caucus, with almost 40% of the Democrats in the House and roughly three times as many members as the remaining Blue Dogs.
It’s clear that the economy-- specifically unemployment-- was the major factor. With the unemployment rate hovering just under 10% and no light at the end of the tunnel, neither the Administration nor Congressional Democrats managed to clearly describe their plan for putting Americans back to work. Republicans were even more incoherent, but they could run against the failure, arguing Democrats had run up deficits without creating jobs.
In addition, the turnout and voting patterns strongly suggest that a degree of demoralization among the Democratic base played a significant role in the outcomes. Younger voters stayed home—not merely compared to 2008, but with a significant drop-off from 2006 numbers when the last Congressional midterm election was held. The same is true for blacks and Latinos. Women shifted sharply towards Republicans, from favoring Democrats by 14 points in 2008 to splitting evenly on Tuesday.
Suffice it to say for the moment that flagrantly throwing women, gays, organized labor, and Latinos under the bus, breaking campaign promises around which significant elements of your base have organized, abandoning the lofty rhetoric of the campaign to cut backroom deals with the people whose greed and bad faith created the messes we’re in, and actively and repeatedly insulting the people who communicate most often with your key supporters is probably not the optimal strategy for resounding political success. (But hey, bygones, right?) So what do progressives do now?
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