How Democratic Progressives Survived A Landslide - AmericanProspect (Long/Great Info)

[WillyT]

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How Democratic Progressives Survived a Landslide
They ran against Wall Street and carried the white working class. The Democrats who shunned populism got clobbered.
By Bob Moser - AmericanProspect
2/11/12

<snip>

Ann Kirkpatrick was surely toast in 2014. The two-term Democrat represented one of the most sprawling and politically unpredictable House districts in the country, an Iowa-sized expanse of northern and eastern Arizona dotted with fiercely conservative small towns, heavily Democratic small cities like Flagstaff and Sedona, and 12 Native American tribal lands with varied political loyalties. An affable Anglo who grew up on the Fort Apache Reservation, where her father ran a general store, Kirkpatrick owed both her wins—in 2008 and 2012—to presidential-year turnout in the half-minority First District; without it, in 2010, she lost. No Democrat, in fact, had won a midterm election in this district, which was once represented by John McCain, since 1950.

After pulling off a 9,000-vote squeaker in 2012—Mitt Romney more than doubled her margin of victory as he also carried the district—Kirkpatrick landed immediately on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s list of the seven top Democratic targets for 2014. Which meant she would be facing not just another likely Republican wave, not just another whiter and older midterm electorate, and not just a powerful and well-connected opponent—Andy Tobin, Republican speaker of the state House—but a Dresden-level air assault from outside groups as well.

If you asked the political wizards of Washington, Kirkpatrick’s only hope would have been to sing from this year’s midterm hymnal: Run away from Obama and the “Democrat” label as hard and fast as humanly possible; vow to “fix” the Affordable Care Act rather than defend it; hit your opponent for being “anti-woman”; promise nothing but “bipartisanship” and deficit-reduction if you’re sent back to Congress—oh, and run a superior field operation to draw out the minority voters you’ve been ignoring with your Republican-Lite campaign. Model your campaign on Michelle Nunn’s “I’m as Republican as my opponent” run for Senate in Georgia, say, or Senator Kay Hagan’s Obama-dodging effort in North Carolina—two campaigns that Democratic strategists considered pure genius all the way to Election Day. (In a National Journal “Insider’s Poll” taken just before the midterms, both Democratic and Republican leaders deemed those the “best” Democratic campaigns of 2014 by a wide margin.) And if you must choose an issue to run on, follow Nunn’s and Hagan’s lead and try something inoffensive like “education,” or debt reduction. Just don’t wade into any pesky details.

Few Democrats in Congress were as well positioned as Kirkpatrick to undertake a campaign of Clinton-style triangulation. She voted “just” 89 percent with President Obama, according to the Sunlight Foundation—one of the lower partisan-purity tallies on the Hill. But Kirkpatrick had tried the “no-D Democratic” approach before, in 2010, when she spent the campaign on the defensive after voting for Obamacare, insisting she was actually a model of “independence” and pledging fiscal responsibility and aisle-crossing. She got whomped. So this year, Kirkpatrick made the curious strategic decision to run as herself: a deal-cutter who brings millions in grant money to her cash-starved district; an opponent of EPA regulations when they threaten local jobs, and an environmentalist otherwise; and, most important, a progressive populist on such defining issues as immigration reform, corporate taxation, and health-care reform. She’d talk about her independent streak, sure—because it’s real—but the meat of her campaign would be about what government can, and should, be doing for local folks in need. And rather than focus her efforts on conservative white voters, she would spend much of the campaign on tribal land, which accounted for 25 percent of Kirkpatrick’s total votes in 2012. (By contrast, her Republican opponent won only 3 percent of his votes on the reservations.) She’d invest in the most targeted effort to turn out Native Americans that anyone had seen. In sum, Kirkpatrick would—disaster alert!—play the role of herself in the campaign, and try to reassemble the minority coalition that elected her in 2008 and 2012.

This was not supposed to work in 2014...

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Much More: http://prospect.org/article/how-democratic-progressives-survived-landslide

[sabrina 1]

1. That is a very good analysis of the mid terms. I love how all the winners were using Occupy lingo,

the 1% V the 99%. And relentless focus on Wall St. Unfortunately the DLC/Third Way political operatives who controlled much of the election strategy, detest OWS.

A good strategist would look at how successful and how rapidly that movement swept the country and ask 'what was it that captured the interest of so many Americans'. Instead they chose to try to discredit it, and they LOST.

The great lessons of 2014—drawn from the Democrats who lived to fight another day—proved to be mostly old-school and plainly commonsensical. Timid, consultant-scripted Democrats lost. Democrats who spent the campaign posturing as moderate Republicans lost. Bold, aggressively populist candidates—the few, the loud, the proud—won.

Of course, don’t try telling that to the ’90s nostalgists who continue to dictate so many Democrats’ election strategies no matter the results. Even as some of the votes were still being counted, Politico published a “Blueprint for Democratic Victory” by the high priest of triangulation, Democratic Leadership Council founder Al From. He advised his party that the way to look forward after the 2014 debacle was to look backward—to the supposed glory days of DLC hero Bill Clinton and his loyal band of Wall Street funders. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, From refused to acknowledge the reality that Clinton Democrats were approximately as popular as lepers in 2014, and that the candidates who followed his formula—which was most of them—were whipped in virtually every competitive race for Congress or governor.

Rage on, Mr. From, against the dying of the light.

From's Third Way/Regressive politics lost. What message will Dems take from the losses this time? From what I've read so far, they are still looking BACKWARDS, making the same mistake they made in two mid terms now, 'we need to go FURTHER backwards'.

Time for the old DCLers to retire, a new wave of populism, thanks to the disastrous results of THEIR policies on the working class, is sweeping the country and voters are taking matters into their own hands until they see some leadership that demonstrates their party is listening to THEM, not to WALL ST.

[Demeter]

2. "This was not supposed to work in 2014... " Dammit! Serve your base works all the time!

I sure hope they aren't paying such misbegotten strategizers for their advice.

[MisterP]

3. they'll just argue that the Torydems have the winning argument even though they lost because

they were "tough districts," and then say that they have to be cons because they're in tough districts

it's the sweatshop model, except it's turning out votes instead of widgets: just be grateful you HAVE a maquila roof over your head! where else would you go? outside the FTZs the money's been sucked out of the economy/political culture

(OTOH why are we using "voting with Obama" as the criterion for liberalism?)

[TheKentuckian]

7. "why are we using "voting with Obama" as the criterion for liberalism?" Framing

Obama must be set as at least the left most edge acceptable and practicable politics and if it can be swung I believe the aim is actually to paint him as outside that spectrum and that as always the party needs to move to the right to salvage relevance from foolish though well intended over reach.

It is a tricky balancing act so they'll settle for Obama's moderate right corporate enabling, smaller bore interventionist politics as the acceptable bleeding edge but in key areas we will see some "principled distinctions born of a more experienced world view" or some such bullshit will be coming to push more overt war, banker taint licking, and corporate globalism.

[Enthusiast]

4. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

[aspirant]

5. It will be more of the same

as long as we have Wasserman-Schultz in the DNC chair and Jon Tester as DSCC chair. Lujan as the DCCC leader is an unknown but anything is better than Steve Israel.

Donations to these groups guarantees Blue Dogs challengers to our Populist candidates in the primaries.

Going to the unrepresented groups, Native Americans, the poor and others (our true gigantic base) will work just fine for us.

[bvar22]

6. If you work for a living,

never, EVER donate to the DSCC or the DCCC.
They WILL use your money against you.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. I actually took the time to tally the results

The Progressive Caucus lost, I think, two seats. I don't remember how many the Blue Dogs lost, but it was a much higher percentage.