Anatomy of a Democratic Midterm Freakout

[DonViejo]

PHILIP BUMP

National Democrats are in a near panic — if the media's highly-attuned panic detectors are any indicator — with a "poisonous" president unable to use his popularity to sway voters, a "screaming siren" warning about mid-term turnout, and Republicans on the offensive on Obamacare. There are a long eight months until November, but Democrats seem unlikely to get much sleep over the interim.

There are (at least!) six reasons why.

1. The midterms were always going to be bad for Democrats because of turnout.

It's important to remember that the midterm elections were always going to be difficult for the Democrats. Lower turnout elections usually favor Republicans, whose older, wealthier constituents vote more reliably. One large reason that Republican David Jolly won the special election in Florida last week was that turnout was very, very low.

On Bloomberg TV over the weekend, Obama advisor David Plouffe didn't mince words. "We have a turnout issue," he said. "This is a screaming siren that the same problems that afflicted us [in 2010] could happen again." In 2010 — a low turnout election that strongly favored the nascent Tea Party movement — Democrats lost 63 seats. Republicans are unlikely to make that much progress again simply because they did so well four years ago. But Democrats are unlikely to make much headway — and certainly won't retake the Chamber. "No prominent Democrats predict their party will win back the House," The New York Times drily notes.

2. President Obama is near all-time lows on his approval ratings.

That Times article also contains a quote explaining one of the key reasons Democrats are freaked out. "One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming 'poisonous' to the party’s candidates." Presidential popularity can be a key tool for ginning up support on the campaign trail. And being tied to an unpopular president can be an anchor.

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http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/03/anatomy-democratic-midterm-freakout/359229/

[JayhawkSD]

1. Well, it's "The Wire." Who takes them seriously? n/t

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Meh to them.

You want to get turnout up, you do things voters want. You want younger voters, you do things younger voters want.

Start a full-court press on employment, on student loan debt, on poverty. Don't just talk about 'creating jobs', get working on putting people INTO jobs. There are a lot of highly educated young people out there and unemployed. Start figuring out how to get employers to actually hire them, rather than demanding more H1-B visas to bring in foreign nationals for jobs Americans actually can do.

[djean111]

3. [phone]

Infrastructure. Jobs. Everything you said.

You want to get turnout up, you do things voters want. You want younger voters, you do things younger voters want.

Right now we are told "Fuck what you want, just vote for the "D" and shut up".

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. Sort of sad that President Obama is considered "poisonous" without any clear reason why

Bush was considerably toxic by this point in his (P)residency but he really worked for/earned it for his incompetence in preventing 9/11, launching a war of choice in Iraq that resulted in a prolonged and entrenched occupation, tortured prisoners, started up Gitmo, engaged in warrantless wiretapping, etc. I can't for the life of me understand why President Obama has "scared" off so many people. The absolute worst things that one might be able to legitimately say are that he staked a lot of capital on passing ACA and the rollout has been a bit bumpy so far and that he still hasn't cleaned up a lot of Bush's mess but it's not been for a lack of trying.

The Republicans, no matter how "toxic" they act, no matter how irresponsible they govern (to the extent they govern at all), they always seem to be able to get their people- as well as draw in a few "Independents" and low-information voters by spinning things so that Democrats get the lion's share of blame for everybody's problems (or for not fixing them fast enough)- to keep (re-)electing them to Congress and Statehouses everywhere.

is going on here in this country? It's enough to make you want to scream some days!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

5. A lot of folks feel he has both continued and expanded Bush programs

by using drone strikes that have killed a lot of civilians in countries with whom we are not 'at war', with the incredible overreach of the NSA and CIA, by sweeping the war crimes of the Bush crowd under the rug, with not prosecuting many of the finance folks who tanked the economy with sleazy deals, with making politically expedient promises rather than being honest about how some (relatively few in terms of percentage) people would be disadvantaged by the ACA, by taking one step forward and one step back on the environment in things like stringing out the KXL decision and reopening the Gulf to BP, by trying to set up chained-CPI Social Security, and so on, and so on.

For all the positive things he's done, he's undermined himself and the democratic party by his embrace of Republican ideas in the name of 'compromise'.

People don't like Republican ideas, whether they come from Republicans OR Democrats.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

6. Yeah but I don't really think that those are what has made him "poisonous"

I know that many progressives are upset at him for those things but most of what I see on message boards, Facebook, etc. is usually right-wing trolling about President Obama being a wild-eyed socialist tyrant out to grab our guns, freedoms, and money. Or he's an "effete", weak national leader unable to match the resolve and fortitude of Vladimir Putin and prevent him from doing something that we really have no power to do outside of impractical military options.

I also see right-wingers try to attack President Obama for things that we (rightly) faulted Bush for and/or things they celebrated about Bush or things that were just SOP for Presidents in past years (i.e. raising the debt ceiling, recess appointments, executive orders, czars). And of course, ACA, President Obama's signature accomplishment, is so radioactive after years of deliberate right-wing lying, smearing, distorting and keeping people ignorant of that it's nearly impossible to defend. I also have to believe that racism, both subtle and explicit, has SOMETHING to do with President Obama being "poisonous", especially in the South.

The problem with all this is that Republicans are able to put all this junk out there, the MSM helpfully transmits it to everybody, and their Fox brain-rotted followers eat it up and it drives them to the polls thinking, I guess, that the Republicans will put an end to President Obama and Democrats once and for all- at least until the next election and they do it all over again.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

7. But those are givens.

It's a given that folks on the right are going to be against him from the start. All the 'reaching across the aisle' detracts from his cred on the left. So he started at roughly 50%, then loses points from there. At least if he actually *had* been a 'socialist', he would have kept the 50% of folks on the left.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

8. The wingers hate all Democrats all the time.

Nothing much different from when Clinton was POTUS- aside from being slightly more unhinged/deranged because of the teabaggers. Democrats like Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieau aren't running from President Obama because he's considered to be "too right-leaning" or too Republican-leaning but because their constituents have been exposed to so much Fox that they believe that President Obama is a far-leftist and that anybody who so much as shares the same party identification as President Obama is guilty-by-association.