Reflections on the Bloodbath

The left is disturbingly familiar with failure. As the returns began to come in on Tuesday night and it became clear that Democrats would lose almost every major contested race, I knew immediately it would be one of those elections. The next month would be spent talking about why we lost, why we failed.

And there is no need to sugarcoat. It was a disaster. Democrats lost control of the Senate, lost more than a dozen House seats (at least), and lost every high-profile gubernatorial race and more. Come January, Republicans will govern Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, which are traditionally among the bluest states in the country.

So what happened? Why did the Koch Brothers’ dreams become reality?

Commentators have discussed some of the structural factors that hurt Democrats this year at length. President Obama’s approval rating is relatively low. The president’s party typically performs poorly in the sixth year midterms. Midterms generally have lower turnout and an older, whiter electorate (*), which favors Republicans. The Senate seats up for election this cycle were in disproportionately conservative states. Finally, every election obviously has area-specific factors that help determine outcomes.

It is important to remember however that some of these variables aren’t entirely independent of each other and have root causes themselves.

Polls consistently show that jobs and the economy are the most important issues to the public. The popular emphasis on the issue has declined somewhat since the height of the Great Recession, but it still far surpasses any other individual issue.

At first glance, the economy seems to be in recovery, improving if somewhat slowly. The unemployment rate has dropped below six percent, and GDP growth has been strong. 

But the top-line numbers obscure a more grim reality of stagnant wages and rising inequality. Median income in 2013 hasn’t moved since the recession officially ended in 2009, and remains 8.7 percent below it’s 1999 peak, according to Ben Casselman of Five Thirty Eight. The rich have captured 95% of income gains during the recovery, according to data compiled by Emmanuel Saez at UC Berkeley.

The unequal post-recession growth means that economic insecurity continues to define American politics. That is a big problem when voters almost always blame the party in power when things are going wrong.

Turnout for the midterms was very low, even by midterm standards. Votes are still being counted, so it’s not clear exactly how low, but it was way down from 2010 and 2012. Not surprisingly, it was especially down among the core Democratic constituencies: single women, young people, non-whites, and low-income voters. The low turnout among these groups is likely a big reason why Democrats performed poorly.

This news has been greeted by hand-wringing about millennials and civic disengagement among the liberal commentariat, typified well by this tweet from Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones:

Dear millennials, winners show up: http://t.co/d06QzjtmQB pic.twitter.com/BGYMitYpRG
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) November 5, 2014

I got into an argument on Twitter last night similar in tone about non-participation among low-income folks.

This sort of critique is frustratingly incurious about the actual reasons that lead to certain groups not voting. Why should anyone vote for Democrats? What tangible benefits have they given to voters that warrant keeping them in power?

Obama was elected during the depths of a financial and economic panic worse than anything the country had experienced in seventy years. It occurred under a president of the opposition party who the public already viewed as corrupt and incompetent. It was a perfect storm that led to a huge electoral wave. Democrats had power in 2009-10 that, while not unlimited, is more than political parties in the American system typically get.

He has been in office for six years now, and the economy still isn’t working for the vast majority of Americans. It’s due in large part to the economic policies the Obama administration pursued during those first two years: 1) an economic stimulus insufficiently large, 2) a premature pivot to deficit reduction and austerity, 3) shielding the financial industry from legal consequences for the crisis and regulation that would lead to structural change, and 4) a bizarrely tepid response to the massively destructive foreclosure crisis.

When you cultivate an image as a party of the disadvantaged, this is inconvenient politically, to say the least. 

Furthermore, Democrats haven’t rewarded the individual constituencies that typically support the party during elections. 

Total student loan debt in the U.S. now approaches $1.2 trillion total, second now only to mortgage debt. Despite the strong support among voters 18-29 for Obama in 2012, he signed into law legislation last year that will see student loan interest rates rise in the long run (**).

This does rather suggest some long-term, structural problems pic.twitter.com/KVOwRb4fSC
— Ryan Cooper (@ryanlcooper) September 24, 2014

Latino voters also supported the president over Mitt Romney, 71 to 27 percent. Obama and congressional Democrats, to their credit, pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, an issue of great concern for that community. It was blocked by House Republicans. This past summer, Obama announced he would take executive action to give legal status to as many as five million undocumented immigrants. He delayed that action until after the midterms in an unsuccessful effort to help Democratic senatorial candidates running in conservative states. It’s unclear if it depressed Latino turnout, but it probably didn’t help, and maintaining the current immigration regime has real human consequences. After a record number of deportations during his presidency, the relationship between Obama and the Latino community is understandably uneasy.

In isolation, neither of these moves necessarily had decisive impact, but they speak to a broader unwillingness of the Obama administration and the Democratic establishment to deliver for the party’s base. 

That decision has consequences, and yet some continue to express surprise or contempt when those voters don’t bother to vote for Democrats.

To be clear, it’s not that voting is pointless or Democrats aren’t worth supporting. Republicans have inferior policy positions on every issue discussed in this piece and will make things worse if their agenda is enacted. Crucially, Democrats do sometimes achieve policy victories like the Affordable Care Act (***) that materially improve people’s lives (****).

Unfortunately those policy victories are far too infrequent, and being the lesser of two evils has real limits as an electoral strategy. We saw that Tuesday night.

You have to actually give people a reason to vote for you. That’s the lesson I hope Democrats take from this year’s elections.

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(*) CNN exit polls confirm this happened in 2014.

(**) Over the objections of liberal senators like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

(***) It’s fair to ask why the ACA hasn’t helped Democrats more electorally. I think it’s due to multiple factors: (1) 21 states have blocked the Medicaid expansion, the most rewarding part of the law. (2) The law bears costs on young people over 26 mandating they buy insurance to spare the elderly high premiums. (3) Conservatives have waged a successful campaign to brand the law negatively with public.

(****) Some liberals (including my own dad) have argued that Democratic candidates should’ve articulated liberal policies and made more of a case for Obama and the Democratic Party. While I think the strategy of campaigning as Republican-lite and running away from Obama certainly didn’t work, I’m skeptical that arguing differently would’ve changed outcomes. Tangible benefits and/or positive circumstantial changes are what persuade and motivate voters.