Democrats Routed: No Indication They Understand Why

The extent of last night's rout of the foundering Democratic Party is captured in the fact that the race for the U.S. Senate seat in Virginia has yet to be called. That a threadbare corporate mannequin GOP apparatchik like Ed Gillespie is neck and neck with incumbent Mark Warner is a huge statement. This is a Republican midterm tsunami. As Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker report in "Riding Wave of Discontent, G.O.P. Takes Senate":

Democratic midterm losses during the Obama presidency now rival those of both Richard M. Nixon in 1974 and Bill Clinton in 1994 as the most destructive to his party’s political standing in Congress in the post-World War II era. It was a stunning reversal for the president, who was the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to twice win a majority of the national vote.

Democratic losses run the gamut. Kay Hagan, Democrat incumbent Senator from North Carolina, was predicted early in the evening to be the victor over Republican challenger Thom Tillis. She lost. Liberal stalwart Mark Udall lost in Colorado (Democratic Gov. Hickenlooper appears to be holding on ). Michelle Nunn was blown away in Georgia. Conservative Republican governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida both won.

The loss has to be laid at the White House doorstep. According to a story by Peter Baker, "President Obama Left Fighting for His Own Relevance":

Just two years after Mr. Obama’s re-election, the midterm results underscored just how far he has fallen in the public mind. Nearly six out of 10 voters on Tuesday expressed negative feelings about his administration, according to exit polls. For every two voters who said they had cast ballots to support Mr. Obama, three said they were voting to express their opposition to him. 

The electorate was deeply pessimistic about the country, with seven out of 10 describing the economy as not so good or poor and eight out of 10 expressing worry about the direction of the economy in the next year.

The most interesting part of Baker article is the picture it paints of Obama. The president -- incredibly -- doesn't think he is to blame:

WASHINGTON — Two things were clear long before the votes were counted on Tuesday night: President Obama would face a Congress with more Republicans for his final two years in office, and the results would be seen as a repudiation of his leadership. 

But that was not the way Mr. Obama saw it. The electoral map was stacked against him, he argued, making Democrats underdogs from the start. And his own party kept him off the trail, meaning he never really got the chance to make his case. “You’re in the Final Four,” as one aide put it, “and you’re on the bench with a walking boot and you don’t get to play.” 

The Republican capture of the Senate culminated a season of discontent for the president — and may yet open a period of even deeper frustration. Sagging in the polls and unwelcome in most competitive races across the country, Mr. Obama bristled as the last campaign that would influence his presidency played out while he sat largely on the sidelines. He privately complained that it should not be a judgment on him. “He doesn’t feel repudiated,” the aide said Tuesday night.

But the Republican tide was stronger than projected, sweeping away Democrats even in some of those few blue states where the president did campaign. Mr. Obama now faces a daunting challenge in reasserting his relevance in a capital where he will be perceived as a lame duck. If the hope-and-change phase of his presidency is long over, he wants at least to produce a period of progress and consolidation to complete his time in the White House. 

After making congratulatory telephone calls from the White House on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama will kick off that final phase on Wednesday with a news conference seeking bipartisan accommodation on issues of mutual interest, and he invited Republican and Democratic leaders at the White House on Friday. At the same time, aides said, Mr. Obama is eager to throw off the constraints of a campaign that he did not direct and begin to defend his record in a more robust way again. 

“He’s going to be aggressive. He’s ready to go,” said another senior official, who like others did not want to be identified discussing plans before the election results were tabulated. “We’ve got a lot of important stuff to get done in the lame duck. He’ll talk about that tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of important stuff to get done in the last two years. He’s anxious to get going on that.”

This should concern Democrats. It is a portrait of leadership walled off from reality, ready to cut deals on corporate taxation and trade that will accelerate the pauperization of a working class already savaged by the Great Recession.

There is no indication that the Democrats accurately discern the dire straits of the party. They are banking on demographics, that as younger and more non-white voters take to the polls they will vote Democratic. Jonathan Martin, "Voters’ Second Thoughts on Hope and Change," quotes Obama campaign guru David Plouffe as saying:

“We’re on a demographic march that is going to put more states in play,” said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, citing Arizona, Georgia and Texas. Such raw political projections are, of course, far removed from the hopeful rhetoric that vaulted Mr. Obama to stardom 10 years ago.

The shrewd Thomas Edsall notes, "‘Making the President Small’," problems with the "demographic wave" line of thinking prevalent in Dem circles, at least in terms of the 2016 presidential election:

Democrats counting on favorable demographic trends to carry their party to victory in 2016 should consider three significant developments reflected in the outcome of Tuesday’s elections. 

The first is that the Republican establishment, at least for the moment, has wrested control back from the Tea Party wing. This will make it more difficult for Democrats to portray their opponents as dangerous extremists. 

The second, and more important, development was the success of Republican candidates in defusing accusations that their party is conducting a “war on women.” The effectiveness of Republican tactics on this front is sure to influence strategy in two years, threatening to undermine a line of attack that has generated a gender gap and has been crucial to past Democratic victories.

The third was the powerful showing of Republican gubernatorial candidates in two Midwestern states important to Democrats in presidential elections: Wisconsin and Michigan.

All indications are that Democrats are clueless as to their lack of popular support. It as if they don't understand that their maintenance of a neoliberal Deep State of permanent warfare and endemic joblessness is not something to which voters will actively rush out to the polls register their approval.

Obama occupying the White House for the next two years means that the Democrats will continue to be yoked to a failed, brutal, unpopular Deep State. The GOP was able to remake itself in a jiffy after the 2008 Obama landslide because it was out of power; the Dems controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. There will be no clean break for the Democratic Party.

Hillary's run in 2016 will begin in earnest in a few months. There is no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. Dems will continue to hemorrhage despite all their demographic advantages because it remains a corporate party. Absent some form of makeover to convince voters in the rising demographic -- young people of color -- that the Democratic Party isn't primarily a vehicle for Deep State prerogatives -- war and the concentration of wealth -- losses will continue to mount.