So Democrats are still debating what happened in last week's "shellacking." Two camps have emerged.
Some Democrats think voters punished them for deploying too much government, too quickly, in too many areas beyond the economy. As the old Grateful Dead song goes, "Maybe you had too much, too fast." These "Shakedown Street" Democrats are led by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a Blue Dog who has been barking his way to retirement, and they want to pare down federal spending and work more with Republicans.
Then there are Democrats spoiling for the fight that President Barack Obama never had. Obama's many compromises enervated the base, depressed turnout and, these Democrats argue, helped tie the party closer to Wall Street than Main Street. Led by the progressive firebrand Adam Green, these strategists want to double down after the election.
By playing Goldilocks -- aiming for more than the incrementalists' cold soup, but telling progressives their porridge was too hot -- Obama wound up disappointing both sides.
But who is right about what actually went down?
A week later, we have enough data to see that the Blue Dogs are right about campaign strategy in some conservative districts -- but they greatly overstate their case. The Bold Progressives, to borrow a term from Green's homepage, are right about aggressively mobilizing their way to victory. That tack may not be viable, however, in every region.
Now for the evidence. These groups often talk past each other, because they are focused on different voter universes.
On Shakedown Street, they mourn the heavy losses in swing districts. There is no Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), explains MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, without a corps of victorious Blue Dogs. Meanwhile, liberals long for the voters who stayed home.
Let's start with swing seats. More than half of the House GOP's gains came from districts that John McCain won in 2008, where Democrats were playing defense. Here, there is only mixed evidence that bucking Obama's agenda helped Democrats survive.
Take the 36 McCain districts that Republicans won. Exactly half of these losing Democrats backed TARP and health care, and half opposed those measures. It was a wash.
For the 11 Democrats who held McCain seats, half backed TARP -- another wash. However, nine of those Democratic winners voted against health care. So while plenty of health-care foes went down, most of the Democrats who survived a rough cycle in these conservative areas opposed Obama's signature domestic achievement. In McCain districts, you were better off being seen as a Blue Dog than a blue vote.
What about the rest of the GOP's gains?
The other motherload of swing seats were held by Wave Democrats, who won in the blue cascades of 2006 and 2008. Thirty-four of the seats that Republicans won were reclaimed from these recently red neighborhoods. (Some of these areas overlap with McCain districts, of course.)
But there is surprising news for the Beltway: 11 of the 14 Wave Democrats who won backed health care -- a higher share than Democrats who lost wave districts. About 79 percent of Democratic victors in these tough areas took the tough vote with Obama. 71 percent of losing Democrats backed health care.
This data undercuts the idea that all Democrats in competitive areas have to oppose government, or Obama, to win.
At a minimum, it suggests they can win regardless. While one midterm does not make a trend, the results show that in these wave swing districts -- in contrast to McCain Country -- new Democrats can do better by standing strong than splitting differences.
This granularity is usually lost in our political narrative. That's because many commentators lump all swing districts together, though the numbers suggest subtle, diverging politics.
If being a proud Democrat works in (some) swing districts, then how does it work on the base?
We know many Obama voters stayed home, because the enthusiasm gap topped five points. Obama was elected by seven points nationally, but midterm voters were split evenly between him and McCain.
In places where Obama voters still turned out last week, however, Democrats usually benefited.
Sounds logical, but it's not automatic, since last election's Obama voters could have turned on his party. It's worth remembering, however, that every time you hear pundits say voters "changed" their minds it's a stretch, since the midterms were caused by an altered electorate, not a major shift in actual preferences from 2008.
But back to the blue. The Democratic senators who did beat the tide managed to turn out a good chunk of the loyal based from 2008.
In Washington state, Patty Murray, a reliable liberal who opposed the Iraq War, mobilized an electorate that voted for Obama by 13 points.
Michael Bennet, a political neophyte who led the public-option fight in the Senate, turned out Colorodans who backed Obama by four points.
Bennet is especially instructive because he won a tight race by consolidating his base, drawing 89 percent of Obama voters -- a crucial three points higher than his opponent's share of McCain voters. Indeed, had the Republican simply matched Bennet's partisan pull of 89 percent, he would have drawn 20,000 more votes and won the race. Bennet won by 16,000 votes.
There is a caveat for Wisconsin, where the midterm electorate favored Obama by six points, but a striking 15 percent of those Obama voters voted against liberal Russ Feingold. As always, turnout is not enough when they turn on you.
Overall, the enthusiasm gap was largest in targeted states from 2008. That's because the midterms were "an aligning election" where partisan trends matter more than incumbency, as statistician Nate Silver documents, and because no one matched the turnout operation of the 2008 Obama Campaign. Remnants of that program were rolled into the Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America, which boasted 80 million calls and door-knocks during the midterms.
Ask any field organizer, though, and they'll tell you it helps to have something motivating to call about. In a few regions, it is clear that bolder and newer Democrats did turn out more voters than a mixed message about the Obama agenda. In most of McCain Country, it was still too much, too fast.
So for this year's intramural debates, both camps have some valid points. Looking to 2012 strategy, however, the partisan Democrats are probably more relevant.
Turning again to Silver, who has one of the best crystal balls in this imprecise business, we see that playing defense will soon be a numerical priority for Republicans. House Democrats have only 12 McCain districts left to "defend," he explains, while "Republicans have 55 where [Obama] took the majority."
One probably can't mobilize those Obama voters to boot Republicans, of course, by running as a pale, periwinkle, diet incarnation of the GOP. Like Murray and Bennet, challengers in those areas will probably come home again -- and run as Obama-backing Democrats.
Ari Melber writes a regular monthly column for POLITICO, where this was first published. Click here for Ari Melber on Facebook.
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You simply cannot win by voting for your enemy, and creeps like Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus have smacked us in the face with the message, "I am your enemy."
The Dems need to work on explaining monetary policy better.Obama didn't create the TARP bill ,Bush did.People understand the need to acquire some debt like for a home or college education.Those are actually investments in the future.Tax cuts you can't afford for people who don't need them are stupid.Why do the rich think they are entitled to more tax breaks than the rest of us? They get the greatest share of refunds as it stands.Those are facts.Ask a tax specialist.
Blue Dogs need to decide what values they will endorse.They also need to educate themselves on monetary principles.Its really bad when a housewife knows the difference between monetary and fiscal policy and the politicians don't.
President Obama bears little, if no, resemblance to the man who ran for office two years ago.
What have you done with him..... and when will he reappear???. If he doesn't, by 2012, there probably will be the same, if not more, "enthusiam gap."
Dayum..... why is that so hard to understand????
it's motherLODE, not motherload.... The Motherlode is where all the riichest deposit of metallic ore is to be mined. a lode is a metal deposit in the earth.. ( an iron lode attracts a magnet-- therefore lodestone, not loadstone
these poor relatives of american progressives need to be offered credibly antiplutocratic alternatives that they can vote for.
the defeats of most right-wing and blue-slime demobliRats are due mainly to soft-rightwing voters going back under the republirats' tent. and progressives should ignore soft-rightwing voters.
no more millionaire-gentleman candidates who hold their noses when they see a repair man.
btw, liberals' morbid stressing of charity "giveaways" is insulting to most people, even to actual recipients of aid (remember Kerry's delirious "help is on the way but chinese enslaved labor is off the table"TM campaign?).
most leading progressives --nader included-- are best-intentioned upper-middle-class (patrician or not) bleeding hearts who have no idea how the dignity of simple people works.
hat off to the republiRats since they truly know how to approach the poor and deceive them into voting against their interests.
PS. slick willie's 1998 capital-gains tax cut meant bigger savings for the ultra-rich than W's taxcut. have you seen many "progressives" denouncing the clinton creep as the toady of the plutocrats that he is and asking for that "good times" tax cut to be undone ?
Why can't TV adverts be just banned - makes the playing field so much more equal :)
This data undercuts the idea that all Democrats in competitive areas have to oppose government, or Obama, to win.
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Anyone running for public office opposing the principle that government serves the public need not apply. You've just failed the job interview.
- Tom
Further, my Republican Relatives all said they had hopes that Obama and the Dems would have been strong leaders and were very disappointed by their failure to lead. Most of them agree that the Dems are just not willing to fight for what they believe in, like the Republicans do. These are real comments from real people. You don't get this from Polls.
Well Ari, you can use polls and surmise what happened or you can talk to the people and really understand what went down last week. My Family hails from Arkansas and I was raised in Michigan. I am a Dem but they are usually Reps. When they Voted for Blanche Lincoln they thought they were voting for a Democrat. "They thought" is the key phrase. They got sick of where the Republicans were taking the Country and wanted to give the Democrats a try, but, what they got was a Republican that called herself a Dem. In fact, they were stupified to watch Lincoln as she blocked and stopped and voted against everything the Dems tried to do. It pissed them off!! At a backyard, Family Bar-B-Que, one of them said, "If I had known Lincoln wasn't a Dem I would have just Voted for my usual Republican." The whole bunch laughed and agreed and another added "Yea, I expended a great deal of Anxiety voting for a Dem, for NO REASON." This showed me that, even the staunch Republicans understood that the Bluedogs were a huge problem for the Dems and were a big contributor to the downfall of the party. For some stupid reason, Blanche thought it was because she was too Liberal. She didn't realize it was because she was a phony Democrat that was not really a Democrat, at all.
Trying to take a big picture snap shot at individual districts means little.
What about other factors like money and uneducated voters? I believe these are the top two reasons for swing voters.
A progressive solution would be to impose GREEN TARIFFS on imports made using fossil fuels or from the destruction of rain forest. If progressives in congress pushed for Green TARIFFS manufacturers would not need to out source and they would have the support of small and medium size businesses across the country! You could even get CAP&TRADE! And they could win back those Blue Dog Democrats seats.
This would be good policy for the U.S. and the World! And who knows maybe we could even save the POLAR BEAR!