The Democrats enjoyed a renaissance last decade, thanks in 2006 to backlash over the presidency of George W. Bush and then the rise of Barack Obama. It’s basically been downhill ever since. Today in Politico Mag, Edward-Isaac Dovere looks at the scale of the desolation:
They were counting on a Clinton win to paper over a deeper rot they’ve been worrying about—and to buy them some time to start coming up with answers. In other words, it wasn’t just Donald Trump. Or the Russians. Or James Comey. Or all the problems with how Clinton and her aides ran the campaign. Win or lose, Democrats were facing an existential crisis in the years ahead—the result of years of complacency, ignoring the withering of the grass roots and the state parties, sitting by as Republicans racked up local win after local win….
…What’s clear from interviews with several dozen top Democratic politicians and operatives at all levels, however, is that there is no comeback strategy—just a collection of half-formed ideas, all of them challenged by reality.
The whole piece is very much worth reading (it also contains some terrific graphics and maps) for some perspective on how bad things are for Democrats right now after a brutal and completely unexpected loss. It’s not just that they’re out of power — time is also their enemy. If President-elect Trump enjoys even modest success as president in his first two years, Republicans are a decent bet to keep the House and almost a sure bet to hold and even gain in the Senate in the 2018 midterm. And the Democratic Party has only until 2020 to win back enough of a foothold at the state level to avoid having Republicans dominate next decade’s redistricting process, which would make the road back to power even steeper and perhaps even longer.
Meanwhile, the party is divided between those who think everything is okay (after all, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and the long-term demographics seem to work in Democrats’ favor), and those who feel the party must change but don’t necessarily agree on how. Is Sandersism the future? Should they look for areas to cooperate with Trump? (“Trump works best with a foil, and they’re determined not to serve themselves up to him as obstructionists.”) Or should they resist absolutely everything? (“It’s very dangerous to give this man anything,” as one Democratic congressman put it.)
Should Democrats be thinking about winning back the Trump Democrats who flipped and turned the Midwest Red? Or is that a lost cause? Should they double their bet on the “ascendant” coalition that President Obama assembled? Or can it even be counted on to stay as Democratic as it was when Obama was running?
Perhaps planning is overrated. As Trump proved for a struggling Republican Party, sometimes there is an answer, but it ends up being something you just can’t see over the horizon. For example, perhaps Obamacare repeal really will blow up in the Republicans’ face, and the Democrats’ next election will practically win itself. Then again, Republicans remained in the wilderness of American politics for more than six decades last century, and a party without a plan could face a similar fate.
Finally, as they move forward, Democrats will be running behind mostly elderly leaders at the top and an empty bench at the bottom. And they will be without the crutch they enjoyed in the form of the still-popular Barack Obama’s leadership of the party. It’s no coincidence that Democrats have suffered painful losses in the last three elections where Obama wasn’t on the ballot. What if post-Obama politics look a lot more like 2002 and 2004 than they look like 1996 or 2006?
