WASHINGTON, DC – It finally dawned on me that voters who live 15 minutes from this city are completely cut off from the people who work and govern here.
At least it appeals to the minds who must manage campaigns to maintain the largest congressional majorities ever held by a political party; the jury is still out on the Obama administration.
“It’s bad. “No, let me put it another way – it’s toxic for any sitting president, especially one with a ‘D’ after his name,” one Democratic insider admitted over coffee in the shadow of the Capitol.
He doesn’t predict a total defeat for Democrats in Congress and the governor’s mansions. However, if the election were held today, his clients’ losses would outweigh their victories.
“The president and the Democratic Party need a moment to turn things around,” he says. “But it has to be authentic. It has to be credible. In a moment, people will see less of everything and then we will really start to lose places.”
After President Obama’s State of the Union address, his team sent him to the “salt of the earth” (to quote The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart) to reconnect with Main Street America. They also sent him to separate “question time” sessions with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to show that he was “listening” to everyone.
His messages were almost the same: large banks, Wall Street and Big Oil are bad; Washington’s partisan bickering must end; Republicans are the party of no.
Here’s the whole problem: Obama campaigned on this issue two years ago; he had a whole year to do something about any of these issues. Eventually, voters will realize that while the rhetoric is laudable, the results are destitute.
The only Democrat who managed to come down from the top of the political elite was Hillary Clinton.
In the 2008 primaries, Clinton’s humor came as she relaxed, listened to voters and connected with them. Unfortunately for her, this didn’t happen until the Ohio and Texas primaries, when she was too immersed in math and caucus failures to win the nomination.
However, Clinton “got it” much faster than Obama. It managed to bounce back and win almost all of the recent primaries and, ultimately, the popular vote, but lost superdelegates from the political elite and far-left party activists who vote in the caucuses.
In a bit of pure irony, Obama needs to pull the “Clinton” to regain voters’ trust.
Democrats in Congress need to pull out Howard Dean’s elderly playbook on 50-state programs if they want to keep their seats.
In 2006, as national Democratic chairman, Dean introduced his plan to make the party competitive. He invested in party infrastructure, even in ruby-red Republican districts where Democrats had no activity.
Between party workers in the field and the “values message” that reached Christian voters in rural areas through subtle radio ads embedded in weather forecasts, news, and agricultural reports, Democrats won enough seats to gain a majority in Congress.
However, no one has sent them a “message of value” for a very long time. The claim that “big special interest companies are bad and the rich should pay higher taxes” has no merit; people know they will never receive a paycheck from a destitute person.
Claims that Washington has lost touch or partisan bickering also have no merit. Hi? Mr. Obama, don’t you live in Washington? And attacking Republicans at every town hall meeting is seen as partisan bickering, or at least incitement to it.
There is a huge disconnect between the Washington Beltway and American voters for John Deere. Without the latter, no one can win a general election; they are Reagan Democrats with election influence, independents, who began withdrawing from this administration last March.
“The base is very demoralized,” Dean says. “At Democracy for America, the grassroots, progressive political organization I founded, activists and volunteers have no interest in federal races. They are truly disappointed with everything that happened in Washington last year.”
Instead, he says, they focus on recruiting, training and financing progressive candidates to run for school boards, city councils and state legislatures.
“Democrats losing their majority is still far from ideal,” admits the Republican strategist. “The Republican brand still has a bad smell. But for Democrats to have a demoralized base while losing independents is brutal.”
Dr. Dean agrees.
