Dont overthink it. Obamas approval rating on election day exit polls was similar to GWB at 2006. Both ended in the same result for their parties. You cannot outrun the fundamentals. People are more likely to vote against the president's party than for some local candidate in mid terms.
It may feel worse than 2010 but it shouldnt. 2010 was atrocious because we lost senate seats in blue states. That did not happen last night. We lost senate seats in Red States. NC is a red state that is trending blue but even Obama didnt win it in 2012. Virginia was close, but we still won. EG ran probably the best campaign of any republican candidate btw. Meanwhile Warner was asleep at the wheel. But we still won.
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The only true purple losses last night were Iowa and Colorado. But neither one is a blue state. They are purple states trending blue. In 2010 we lost Ill and WI senate seats, way worse. We won Michigan, Oregon, and Minnesota last night.
California is the path forward for the left. Us californians have turned the land of Reagan and Nixon into the center of Democratic dominance. How? By taking advantage of the changing demographics and running Democratic candidates that are good politicians. Jerry Brown can win elections. He might not be my favorite candidate, but he can and does win elections because he knows how the game is played. Additionally, we have won the policy wars on the local level. What I mean by that is that we have radically changed how the suburbs view the cities and vice versa. All three major cities, San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, are highly diverse and way more integrated than the used to be. I live in Los Angeles and it is absolutely amazing how much this city has changed. It used to be divided along invisible racial divides. That is changing. Echo Park used to be all Latino with huge crime rates. It is now filled with latinos and white hipsters. Guess what? That has lowered the crime rate, and made those whites living here much more liberal. They now see poor latinos struggling around them and have empathy for them. I cant overstate this enough, I am always amazed by how liberalizing living in los angeles makes young white people. Our local politicians have done enough to bring in people with some money into our poorer communities which has had positive effects for all.
Hillary is the better answer than Warren. I am with Warren on the issues but I dont think she can win in purple states. Hillary can create a lot of buzz with the idea of the first female president. Also, yes Bill was the master of triangulation but dont for a moment think that neither him or hillary are not true liberals deep down inside. They campaigned for Mcgovern! What both of them are are master politicians who move as the issues and national mood moves. Unfortunately, that is how you win elections. See Ronald Reagan. People joke that Reagan couldnt win a republican primary because of what bills he signed but that is because he knew you had to sign bills against some of your ideas to get votes so long as they were minor. Spend? Sure why not. As long as I get my tax cuts. Someone else deal with future consequences. That is good politics.
The american people are not bright or cultured. Sorry, but this is an accurate assessment. They still dont understand what Obamacare is. They never will. You cant sign things that complicated and expect them to get it. And if you do sign it, you better make sure the benefits kick in way before the actual pains. Technocrats dont get politics. Had Obama simply handed everyone a stipend to get health insurance, and then had stuff for pre-existing conditions etc without the website and the rest, people would have loved it. That might have problems, but those problems are for politicians to fix later. A check in the mail saying this is your health insurance stipend is tangible and not something people would have opposed. People love action, even when its not needed. Obama over and over again moved slowly on ebola etc. He needed to have done something just to show he does something. People are stupid, they dont understand science. Better to have meaningless executive orders and quarantines etc. Think to katrina. Seriously, had that happened under clintons watch, he would have been on the first plane to New Orleans hugging strangers telling them he feels their pain. Same with Ebola or ISIS. Empty action is better than technocratic thinking. Empty action for votes, but behind the scenes let your technocrats do their thing.
Finally, if you run on Hope and Change, then actually govern on them and not simply more of the same. When we had the House and Supermajority, what we needed was a massive sledge hammer to push through tons of legislation early and often. Bipartisanship be damned. Obama like a moron tried to get support. He had a true mandate. He should have pushed it to the point that TARP was 20 times its size and actually created true jobs. When you listen to morons like Geitner, you get moronic results.
Obama is and will always be a failure because of his inability to understand politics. His record is actually better than any president since Nixon (not a nixon fan but just saying both actually did have decent legislation that was not short sighted like clinton and reagan). But just like Nixon, technocrats are doomed. The average american votes on his day to day.
FDR aint walking through that door. This is the hardest to take but its the truth. The lincolns and FDRs dont exist anymore. FDR was and will probably remain the last great progressive president because he had major cajones to radically change america. He was born into the upper .01 percent of the country but he fought for the bottom 99% and told his own birth side to go f themselves. Perhaps it was the polio that made him feel akin to the downtrodden. Who knows. But maybe the real lesson is that us progressives should understand that what we need is good politicians. FDR didnt run as a progressive, he became one the second he got in charge and just kept going at it. He saw the pain in the american people and worked for them and they in turn kept electing him and his party. What we really needed was an FDR and we got a Nixon instead. But remember, Nixon laid the groundwork for Reagan. We need to keep at it on the local level. Keep winning, and sooner or later, we can find that one candidate that can grasp that anger and turn it into a political will for progressive ideology. Dont underestimate Hillary. The Clintons have no illusions about what Republicans are. I actually do think, they do want some revenge for impeachment. And I know she does want some revenge for how she was treated.