In case you
somehow missed the message amidst the applause following every victory speech
in the nation and the sour denial of the New York Times, Republicans won last
night. They won big. Twelve seats in the House came to the GOP, exceeding their
1940s win to give them the largest majority that the party has ever enjoyed. In
the Senate, at least seven seats have turned red, with races in Alaska,
Louisiana, and Virginia either too close to call or poised for recounts and
runoffs. Even gubernatorial races in Democratic strongholds like Maryland,
Massachusetts, Illinois, and Connecticut have gone in favor of Republicans.
Commentators on every cable network and social media have been weighing in, and
only the most desperate Democratic mouthpieces have refused to call this a
Republican wave and a referendum on President Obama’s performance. It was not
an anti-incumbency movement—incumbent Republicans in tough races fared
wonderfully. It was not just an anti-ObamaCare vote (though it was partly that)—the
biggest issue for voters this year continues to be the economy. This was a
condemnation of a failed Democratic leadership in the White House and in the
Senate who opted to stifle legislation and productivity to secure their own
places while feeding special interests and neglecting the well-being of the
country. At least as detrimental to their cause, however, was the oft-hailed
but ultimately petty strategizing of the Democratic Party, and it is important
to understand how their approach is a detriment to both their party’s victory
and to the country.
I. What
Economy?
If the
Democratic Party’s talking points were presented with the names and specific
references wiped and one compared it to the poll numbers on American voters’
priorities in 2014, you might believe that you were looking at references to
two entirely different countries. American voters’ number one priority in this
election was the economy, with 43% of voters citing it as the most important
factor in their decision. Among those who expressed this view, Republicans won
by at least twenty percent of the vote. Consider that after an election night
in which one- and two-percent differences in candidates’ results are strikingly
common.
Across
generations, demographics, and historical eras, one thing in politics remains
constant: voters hate a bad economy, and they want someone to pay. Republicans
succeeded this year by, amidst consistent attacks on ObamaCare and branding
their opponents (usually rightly) as shills for the president, providing a pro-growth
message of cleaning up a tangled regulatory system, lowering energy prices, and
improving the job market. Whether or not they were clear in their policy
advocacies or whether they yet have a consistent idea of how to improve the
economy the morning after election night, they demonstrated to voters that
their priorities matched those of the voters and that they were committed to
achieving results for them. This goes beyond mere parroting of voters’ words to
show a degree of respect for the hardships that they have endured since 2007
and continue to weather today. It showed empathy and respect for the voter,
valuable and under-appreciated qualities in today’s political culture of
high-gloss cable news interviews where elections often seem to be about anything
but the people.
II. From
big picture to local news
The Democratic
Party is shrinking. Not in its numbers, which remain healthy if not at an
all-time peak. Not in its purses, which despite recent years’ fundraising
hardships were well stocked by election night this year. It is shrinking
intellectually. It lacks the passion for the moderate, mixed-economy
politicking that kept it in power through the heart of the twentieth century,
and it senses, though it dares not say it aloud, that its New-Left-inspired
goals of democratic socialism and loosely conceptualized ‘social justice’ are
deeply at odds with the rest of American culture. As a result, it has cowered
from world and major national issues. What is the Democratic Party’s stance on
the situation in Iraq and Syria? They have none—at least none that they have
gone to any length to express publicly. What is the Democratic Party’s strategy
for restoring the job market and promoting a growing economy? Again, none—at
least none that do not pursue electorally motivated views contrary to economic
science, such as raising the minimum wage. Where are Democrats with respect to
the escalating situation in Ukraine and US relations with Russia? Blank out.
By contrast,
what are the Democratic Party’s views with respect to the situation in
Ferguson, Missouri? Where was the Democratic Party on California’s new
legislation meant to combat sexual assault on college campuses? How did the
president of the United States respond to the coming-out of the first openly homosexual
NBA player? What were his views on the conviction of George Zimmerman last
year? Whether or not one agrees or disagrees on Democratic responses to any of
these issues, the fact remains that the president and Democratic lawmakers are
playing national politics like micromanaging state and local officials who feel
obligated to aver on issues that will have no bearing on any American not
directly involved in them. Instead of taking a stance on the issues of our
time, Democrats are trying to change Americans’ priorities to match points
where they think that they might be able to eke out some minor victory on
social policy issues. Lacking coherent and palatable views on issues of real
importance, they take the Don Draper approach to politics: “If you don’t like
what’s being said, change the conversation.” Unfortunately for the rest of
America, changing the conversation doesn’t make our nation’s challenges
disappear, and Rome won’t stop burning no matter how sympathetic Nero’s tune.
III. The
age of paternalism
Americans don’t
like being told what to do. Persuaded, yes. Instructed from on high, no.
America as a culture retains a self-esteem and sense of individualism that
distinguishes it from most other cultures, even those in the West. It is
precisely that independence of thought and of action that inspired such
admiration from the world and that, in the course of trying to convince the
world of our meagerness and shame, the left seeks to undo. Contrary to that
independence, today’s Democratic Party pursues a consistent policy of
subordinating the individual to the collective and to the state. On healthcare
(‘everyone needs insurance, whether they know it or not’), the minimum wage
(‘you are not allowed to work for less pay even if you choose; we will decide what
you deserve’), voter ID (‘women and minorities can’t figure out how to get
photo IDs on their own’), regulation (‘you can’t buy that’), antitrust (‘you
can’t sell that’), environmentalism (‘you can’t build that’), and a litany of
other issues, Democrats approach voters as an overbearing grandmother, fully
prepared to correct their misguided thinking about what is in their best
interests, to revoke their privileges when they act in any way contrary to a
predetermined model of economic and social behavior, and to convince them that
they have been victimized and abused when they look as thought they might stray
from the herd.
Whether they
recognize it explicitly or not, at an individual level Americans remain
possessed of an instinct to bridle when they feel the hand of the state growing
too heavy. If Democrats have neglected the economy, they have doubled their
energies in the pursuit of manufactured causes and crises that generally entail
convincing some group that they have been victimized. To their profound credit,
Americans resist the characterization of themselves as perpetual victims. They
reject the left’s view of them as fodder, adrift in the wind, ready to be
yanked to and fro by one greater force or another. They choose to view
themselves as independent and efficacious actors, and by spurning that mold
they make that vision a reality. Unfortunately, the strategy is still
destructive even when it is not successful. In the process of stoking
animosities, it may not succeed electorally, but at a cultural level it digs
rifts between social demographics and pits them against one another for its own
gain.
IV.
Interest group warfare
This last point
may be the most tragic and the most dangerous of Democratic strategies. For
every grievance that must be manufactured in order to achieve a Democratic
victory there is a new animosity—a new victim and a new villain. I have written
elsewhere in these pages of the left’s love of divisive politics and
its many dangers, but it cannot be overstated. Statist economics requires
villains—scapegoats to be punished so that a crusading politician or party can
prove themselves a hero to the people. The Democratic Party is, by all
appearances, on a standing mission to wedge every rift, find a punishable
culprit for all of life’s challenges, and to reap the spoils of a culture war
that they will have made.
To the left,
every lack is theft—someone not having health insurance must mean that someone
else is actively denying them their right to it, women making ninety-two cents
for every dollar that a man makes (not seventy-seven, as is often
claimed—that’s just bad economics) is conclusive proof of sexism and cannot be
explained by differences in career patterns and behavior, and any income or
educational discrepancy between demographics is due to discrimination and the
specter of “white privilege” (despite Asian Americans’ higher per capita
incomes, educational attainment, and credit ratings). If one accepts the collectivist
premise that each individual lives not for himself but for the good of society
and can be sacrificed accordingly, then such a culture of guilt, suspicion, and
animosity is the only possible result. The Democratic Party’s strategy can thus
be seen as a natural consequence of their fundamental philosophy. In an America
that does not share that premise, however, it can also be viewed as the cause
of their failings.
Just as
Americans do not like to think of themselves as victims in need of saving, so
they do not take well to the self-image of animals in line for the slaughter or
as sneering villains holding the blade. As the Civil Rights movement
demonstrated, Americans are willing to coalesce behind the cause of equal
rights when injustices are apparent, but they will not submit en masse
to political strategists pitting them against one another for electoral gain.
They do not want civil strife, and they resent the sight of political
opportunists and their sympathetic media passing out black and white hats at
the first sign of turmoil.
The Democratic
Party’s strategy for 2014 was a consistent alternation between demographics,
trying to convince each of their victimization—mostly women and racial
minorities. As election night grew near, the rhetoric grew to hyperbole and
cheap accusations. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana accused Republicans of racism two
days before ballots opened, suggesting that their real issue with the president
was the color of his skin and not the failing economy or healthcare legislation,
as they claimed. Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis baselessly accused
her opponent, Republican Greg Abbott, of secretly intending to ban interracial
marriages—no doubt to the surprise of his Hispanic wife. Meanwhile, Democratic
Senator Mark Udall of Colorado spent his whole campaign discussing birth
control and abortion, all on the claim that challenger Cory Gardner harbored
unexpressed ambitions of denying birth control to women despite Gardner’s
protestations to the contrary. Indeed, the frequency of baseless and arbitrary
accusations by Democrats against Republicans was enough to seem conscious and
deliberate, as if party strategists were directing them to start slinging mud
as soon as the going got tough.
Unsurprisingly,
such a strategy comes with considerable costs. Men continue to leave the
Democratic Party in the wake of the “War on Women” rhetoric of 2012 and 2013.
In fact, it can easily be said that the Democratic Party faces a crisis around
the corner as men—particularly white men—have abandoned the party that sought to use them as the go-to villain for
every social ill. Meanwhile, women under thirty are more fiscally conservative
than ever, suggesting that while Democrats may currently hold the majority of
women’s votes, they will either have to swing right or face losing them in
coming elections. Black voters remain considerably Democratic, but with an
increasing number of prominent black Republicans (including the first directly
elected black senator in US history, Tim Scott) that may even out over time so
long as Republicans perform well on the economy.
No matter which
demographic line one refers to, however, the pattern is clear: as Democrats
chase a strategy of scapegoats and division, they must make sacrifices. For
every crisis they stoke in order to play the crusading hero, they must label
victims and villains, and so long as American culture retains its self-esteem,
the villain demographics will not take well to being tarred and feathered. The
next two years may be a risky gamble for Democrats as they reconsider the
wisdom of doubling down on narrow demographics at the high cost of losing
Middle America. Meanwhile, as Republicans pursue a broad-based, issue-oriented
strategy of appealing to a wider cross-section of Americans, they may not
achieve as high of an average approval rating in many demographics, but they
clearly earned enough of each to succeed to 2014. As for which is the better,
healthier strategy for America as a country, there can be no doubt that
issue-based campaigning that highlights the unity of American interests over
petty divisions will lead to a stronger, more enduring national character able
to take on the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Republicans
have won. Whether America achieved a win in the process is yet to be seen, but
with respect to the campaign strategies and messaging that triumphed in 2014,
Americans should be proud. For all of the doubts that are frequently and
understandably expressed today as to our country’s future, the 2014 elections
can be taken as a sign of the integrity of Americans and their refusal to be
whittled down into predetermined social identities and treated as movable
blocks rather than individual, rational, self-interested voters. What happens
next is a test of the character and conviction of those who have been elected
to office. Yesterday was a test of the American people’s, and they should
proudly consider it nothing less than a glowing success.
Source:http://themendenhall.com/2014/11/05/2014-democrats-lost/
Comments
Excellent analysis.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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