President Obama on Friday conceded that he failed as the leader of the Democratic Party to transfer his success down-ticket.
Obama was the first Democrat to win more than 50 percent of the vote in consecutive presidential elections since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But other than the coattails that lifted down-ballot Democrats in his first campaign, in 2008, the president’s party generally suffered under his leadership, and sits at a historic low point as he readies to exit the White House.
The House and Senate majorities that existed on his way into the Oval Office are gone, and so are more than 900 seats in state legislatures across the country. Obama said Democrats have to do a better job of showing up in local communities, no matter how Republican in their voting patterns, and deliver a strong pitch for Democratic values.
“It’s been something that I’ve been able to do, successfully, in my own campaigns,” Obama said during his final year-end news conference from the White House. “It is not something I’ve been able to transfer to candidates in midterms and sort of build a sustaining organization around. That’s something that I would have liked to have done more of, but it’s kind of hard to do when you’re dealing a whole bunch of issues here in the White House.”
Over Obama’s eight years, Democrats went from controlling 28 governor’s mansions to 18. They also went from 25 state legislatures to 12; 60 Senate seats to 48, and 257 House seats to 194.
The president is a historic figure and remains beloved across the party, so Democrats are hesitant to say, specifically, what he said about himself on Friday. But it’s an aspect of Obama’s presidency that they are slowly coming to grips with publicly as they look ahead to life after he exits.
“Clearly, whatever the leadership of the Democratic Party has been doing over the last many years has failed, and we need fundamental change,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said this week in a speech in Washington to progressive activists.
Sanders was speaking in support of Keith Ellison’s bid to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The Minnesota congressman’s main competition is Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who joined the campaign on Thursday.
Neither Sanders nor Ellison blamed Obama by name for the state of the party. And clearly other Democratic leaders, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, share responsibility for the party’s failures.
But the implication, however gingerly it is being made, is that Obama is at some point liable for the steep losses Democrats have experienced box during his two terms, as well as the poor state of the DNC as an organization. Ellison is making the top-to-bottom rebuilding of the party a central plank in his bid for DNC chairman.
“I know some folks don’t want to hear it, but since 2008, Democrats have lost 935 legislative seats and Republicans now control two thirds of governors office,” Ellison told progressive activists, after being introduced by Sanders at an event to promote his campaign. “It has devastated us.”
