Democrats should be winning right now. Any political operative who understands historical trends knows this, as it is simply statistical odds. But they’re not.
The party that doesn’t occupy the White House coupled with the president’s less-than-stellar approval ratings mean Democrats should do well in special elections to fill open congressional seats and then mid-term elections. But Republicans are 4-0 in special elections this year.
When Georgia Congressman Tom Price was selected by President Trump to head Health and Human Services, Democrats felt there was a chance to take his seat from Republicans whenever the special election was held. Last week, this was the latest loss by Democrats who have also lost recently in Kansas, Montana and South Carolina.
In the most expensive congressional race in history, where the Democrat led in almost every poll, Republican Karen Handel won. What’s more is she won by a bigger margin than Trump.
To be fair, these elections were in Republican-leaning districts. So it is no surprise quite frankly. But if you believe the media, Democrats should have won or at least kept the margins closer.
The media isn’t learning from these losses. Each election is consistently the same theme. It is called a referendum on Trump. The Democrat leads in the polls. The media says the Democrat is favored to win.
Then when the Republican wins, the media loses touch with the reality they just created. They then claim the Democrat loss was really a win. It wasn’t a referendum on Trump after all. They then move back to Trump and Russians. The liberal New York Times even headlined after these losses that Democrats were less popular than Trump.
Here’s the real situation that Democrat strategists face. The most obvious is that Democrats are unlikely to retake the Senate. The GOP holds 52 seats. In theory, Democrats only need three to take control. The problem is Democrats will be defending 25 seats. Republicans will only be defending eight.
What’s worse for Democrats is 10 of the seats they are defending were in states Trump won. Five of those states Trump won by more than 18 points. This contrasts with Republicans defending only one state where Clinton won. Democrat strategists secretly just hope they retain their current seats.
Then over in the House, Democrats need 24 seats. To do this Democrats would have to exceed Clinton’s performance, achieve increased Democrat turnout, hope for depressed GOP turnout then swing significant numbers to their side simultaneously.
Another problem is the younger voter demographic Democrats depend on to accomplish these tasks are the very voters with less history of turning out in mid-terms.
Democrats received 10 times more money from California than Georgia in last week’s Georgia race. Nothing has moved their numbers.
Diplomatic Democrats would be wise to tap into Trump’s passion for the art of the deal and cut deals with him. There is a lot of room for diplomacy, but unfortunately it’s not going to happen.
Recently a video surfaced of a CNN producer admitting Trump was right, calling their reporting a witch-hunt because they had no proof of things like Russian collusion. But it was good for their ratings.
You can tell more about a group, not by how it wins, but how it loses. Constant shaming of the president is not a strategy for change nor is it going to result in Democrat wins. It fires up supporters but converts none.
It didn’t work for far right activists in 2012 and it isn’t going to work for the far left in 2018 and beyond. Neither side should engage in this level of attacks, fueled by the media.
It isn’t as vicious at the state and local level, but these obstacles affect candidate decisions. Blue Dog Democrats are becoming Republican and far right Republicans are learning to be more moderate under Trump. So while Trump isn’t popular in the media, Democrat candidates seem to be less popular.
