This was the year Democrats wish they could forget. But they will be reminded of it well into 2016.
The party lost its majority in the Senate and gave Republicans a historic majority in the House. The top Democratic contender for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, reemerged from the sterile diplomatic sphere to find a changed and challenging political terrain. And President Obama, who helped steer the party to great electoral success just six years ago, was an albatross around the Democratic Party’s neck.
Not that any of it came as a surprise. For Democrats, the year 2014 was a chronicle of a death foretold. By contrast, what comes next for the party skews unpredictable.
At the start of 2014, Democrats’ best hope for victory was a last resort: changing the entire midterm electorate.
The ambitious gambit, named the “Bannock Street Project” by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, sought to turn out voters on a size and scope usually seen only in a presidential election year. The question: Could $60 million across 10 states offset troubling trend lines?
With the worst of the Obamacare rollout still fresh, President Obama’s approval ratings hovered around the low 40s. Meanwhile, most vulnerable Democratic senators would be fighting for re-election on Republican turf.
Messaging alone would not be enough.
“We’re making a fundamentally different choice,” DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil told the New York Times in announcing the Bannock Street Project.
It was a bold move, and Democrats ultimately did see some gains in turnout compared to a normal midterm election cycle. But the counterweight was too strong.
Democratic candidates hoped to survive by portraying themselves as independent of the president, while crossing their fingers that he would hold off until after the election on any controversial executive actions. Early in the year, DSCC Chair Michael Bennet urged the White House to hold off on announcing any executive action on immigration until after November.
Obama did hold off — but he didn’t do Democrats any favors, either.
“I am not on the ballot this fall,” Obama said during a speech at Northwestern University in October. “But make no mistake: These policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”
By the end of the election, Obama had become so toxic in Senate races that some Democratic candidates, such as Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, would not even discuss whether they had voted for the president.
In Alaska in late October, Sen. Mark Begich confirmed that he had supported the president, but grew frustrated as he answered the question.
“The president’s not relevant,” Begich said.
Voters disagreed, and come January, Republicans will hold 54 seats in the Senate.
If Democrats have spent a year in political winter, however, many within the party remain optimistic that spring awaits.
But there is no consensus yet as to what shape that renaissance will take.
With diminished ranks in Congress, Democrats will have their most progressive caucuses in years — and already, that segment of the party is making its presence known on Capitol Hill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been the most in the spotlight, recently butting heads with Senate Democratic leaders and the White House over a congressional spending agreement.
Warren’s outspokenness has received outsized attention because of speculation that she might pose a threat to Clinton’s bid for president. Warren, a master of using media to her advantage, has disputed such chatter but stopped short of quieting it.
Even if Warren does not run for president, her influence could help push Clinton and the party to the left. Indeed, the early signs suggest that Democrats might respond to the events of 2014 in much the same way Republicans reacted to those of 2008, when Democrats walloped the GOP on all fronts: by catering once more to the party base.
For now, Democrats have concluded their post-election mourning period and moved on to a soul-searching and self-improvement phase. The Democratic National Committee has begun what chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called a “top-to-bottom review,” not unlike the Republican National Committee’s autopsy after the 2012 election cycle.
The most powerful leadership will no doubt come from the eventual Democratic nominee for president — be that Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley or any other of the potential contenders.
If Clinton runs for president, as many Democrats anticipate, she would be an instant front-runner. But Clinton’s first year back in the political arena since her 2008 campaign showed that even she could be susceptible to missteps moving forward.
Clinton released a memoir this year, Hard Choices, and barnstormed the country to promote it. The tour was not unlike a campaign, chock full of rope lines, interviews, and speeches.
Most of the publicity was tightly choreographed, with a laser focus on the rosier points of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State. But when Clinton veered off script, she could appear rusty. In one interview with ABC News that left a lasting impression, Clinton insisted that she and Bill Clinton were “not only dead broke, but in debt” when they left the White House in 2000.
Later this year, Clinton edged back onto the campaign trail, stumping for Democratic candidates in key battleground states — some of which, conveniently, are also key presidential election battlegrounds.
But when Democrats lost, Republicans were quick to connect the dots back to Clinton.
“This was a referendum not only on the president, but on Hillary Clinton,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said at the time. Online, Paul posted pictures of losing Democrats with Clinton, calling them “Hillary’s losers.”
Such taunting is only a preview of 2015 and beyond. This year, Democrats hope, they’ll be ready to bounce back and fight.
