Free Republic

WASHINGTON D.C. (CBS SF)– Two Democratic stalwarts from Massachusetts are suggesting that Rep. Nancy Pelosi should leave the party’s leadership team in Congress after big electoral loses last year and in 2010. Reps. Michael Capuano and Stephen Lynch made the statements on WGBH’s “Greater Boston,” with Lynch predicting outright that “Nancy Pelosi will not lead us back into the majority.” Asked by host Jim Braude if the answer to the question whether Pelosi “should go?” is “yes,” Lynch said, “Right.” Capuano was also asked if the 75-year-old Pelosi should quit leadership ranks. He said: “That, or she should change, one...

Ted Cruz just flagged the beginning of the 2016 election cycle. With hats now officially being thrown into the ring, it’s a good time to look back at what went well in social marketing at the midterms and what could be improved upon for the 2016 cycle. Let’s start with the fact that Facebook says it saw 43 million unique individuals engage in political discourse during the midterms, despite the fact that the U.S. had its lowest midterm-election voter turnout since the early 1940s. Moreover, according to research by Pew, voters were three times more likely to track political candidates...

The Democratic Party lacks a “single narrative” and must tighten its pitch to voters in order to compete in future elections, an interim report from the Democratic National Committee found. The report released at the party’s winter meeting recommended forming a national project to bring together party leaders, activists and messaging experts to hone in on a theme. Currently, the party is “loosely understood as a long list of policy statements and not with a common set of core values,” according to the report. The review was launched last year shortly after Democrats lost control of the Senate in the...

I’ve recently been counting down the top stories of the year, and there was no real competition for what should go in the #1 slot: it’s the Republican wave in the mid-term congressional elections—and, just as important, the unprecedented Republican wave in the statehouses, which may have an even greater impact over the long term. We first began to get an idea that something big was happening when my own congressman, Virginia’s Eric Cantor, lost one of the country’s safest Republican seats to a low-budget primary challenger, Dave Brat, who challenged Cantor from the right. As I explained at the...

Progressives have no power in a corporate, focus-grouped, Wall Street-leaning party. But we are the change we need The Democrats’ conduct since the midterm debacle is as sad and sorry as the campaign that caused it. The party’s leaders are a big problem. A bigger one is the closed system of high-dollar fundraising, reductionist polling and vapid messaging in which it is seemingly trapped. Some say a more populist Democratic Party will soon emerge. It won’t happen as long as these leaders and this system are in place. Nancy Pelosi says it wasn’t a wave election. She’s right. It was...

After three terms of service, Senator Mary Landrieu was defeated in the December runoff 56-44%. While pundits attributed her defeat to the unpopularity of President Obama in Louisiana, the seeds of her defeat were sown long before that. Senator Landrieu’s fundamental problem was that she had a low ceiling of support – in the three election cycles (1996, 2002, and 2008) she was on the ballot before 2014, she never received more than 52% of the vote. And a closer examination of her 2008 vote revealed she was on shaky grounds even before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President in...

One of the reasons that Republicans won the midterm elections is because white evangelicals turned out, while Democratic-leaning groups stayed home. For good and for ill, white evangelicals are one of the most effectively organized groups in American politics, and they reliably vote Republican. We should all be asking what we can learn from conservative evangelicals about how to energize voters in midterms. Back in October, pollster Robert Jones argued that white evangelicals were declining as a percentage of the population, even in the South. This could have been bad news for Republicans, who counted on loyal support from white...

The votes have been tallied and all recounts completed. Congress even managed to adjourn sine die. That means it really is time to close the books on the 2014 election cycle. It also means that we are going to take some time off to recharge for the 2016 election. We’ll be back the week of January 12, 2015. In the meantime, here are 40 interesting facts about the 2014 election to hold you over while we are away. Happy holidays. 1. There were two magic numbers in 2014: 86 and 1928 - Democrats now have the lowest number of U.S....

I haven't seen this posted yet but it's been certified that Republican Martha McSally beat the Dem in the Arizona House seat recount.The good guys win a recount!

Sweeping House losses have not only pushed Democrats into a historic minority, they’ve depleted the bench of potential Senate recruits for the 2016 elections. After losing the majority in the midterms, Senate Democrats are seeking strong recruits for 2016 in hopes of netting the five seats necessary to ensure they win control again. Party officials argue the majority is within reach because many Senate Republicans elected in 2010 are seeking re-election in a presidential cycle in competitive states such as Florida, Illinois, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But brutal losses in 2010 and 2014 have decimated the ranks of...

Much has been made of the fact that when losing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) leaves office in January, Louisiana will not have a Democratic statewide elected official in office for the first time since the 1870s. The Republicans who occupy all of the Pelican State’s high offices are in good company; Republicans now control every U.S. Senate seat, legislative chamber, and governor’s mansion across the Deep South – from Texas to the Carolinas. This condition is giving some Democrats, loyal to the party for whom the term “Solid South” was coined, indigestion. The best example of this phenomenon is an...

Republicans will hold at least 246 House seats come January, according to election results on Saturday, giving the GOP a commanding majority that matches the party's post-World War II high during Democratic President Harry S. Truman's administration. The GOP retained control of two seats in runoffs in Louisiana, expanding the advantage for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who can afford defections from his increasingly conservative caucus and still get legislation passed. Combined with the Republican takeover of the Senate, Congress will be all-GOP for the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term.

This meme is in story after story. Since when is Florida not the "deep south"?? Was it not also part of the old Confederacy?? It certainly isn't a border state up near Virginia and Kentucky!

When Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her re-election runoff on Saturday it put Barack Obama in the record books as the two-term president with the most midterm losses for his party. The record previously was held by Harry Truman. Truman’s Democratic Party lost 74 seats in 1946 and 1950, while under Obama the Democrats have lost a total of 75 seats in 2010 and 2014. He could lose one more if Republican Martha McSally beats Democratic Rep. Ron Barber in Arizona in an election recount, Breitbart News reports. McSally is currently ahead by only 200 votes. …

It's about time. We've finally retired Mary Landrieu

In the final insult of a devastating 2014 election for Democrats, Sen. Mary Landrieu, the party’s last remaining statewide officeholder from the Deep South, was trounced Saturday in the head-to-head Louisiana Senate runoff election. Republican Bill Cassidy’s resounding victory is the ninth Senate seat picked up by the GOP in this year’s elections, three more than the party needed to take control of the chamber. With nearly all the ballots counted, Cassidy led Landrieu by 14 points, 57 percent to 43 percent.

Democrats have been worried about the African-American vote in Louisiana for months. But what really doomed Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelection bid was the near-monolithic white vote against her. Landrieu's loss Saturday to Republican Sen.-elect Bill Cassidy followed a November all-party primary in which the incumbent got a lower share of the white vote (18 percent) than all other Democratic Senate candidates in the country but one, according to exit polling. There was no exit poll Saturday night due to a lack of media interest in the runoff, perhaps because even Landrieu's campaign acknowledged that she would need at least 30...

A civil war has opened up inside the Democratic Party over Obamacare. With half of all Senate Democrats who voted for Obamacare no longer in office, top Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and outgoing Tom Harkin (D-IA) have begun trashing Democrats' decision to embrace the deeply unpopular Obamacare program. Indeed, even progressive New York Times columnist Tom Edsall now concedes that Obamacare is partly to blame for working-class Americans' all-time low 27% approval rating of Democrats, which Edsall says has now nosedived to "dangerous levels." [Snip] "If more Democrats had been willing to defend the best thing they've done in...

There's no sugarcoating it. The November 2014 election results marked a serious setback for Democrats, the anti-ultra right alliance and the broad people's coalition led by labor. The fight for jobs at living wages, workers and immigrant rights, racial and gender equality, for climate justice and peace proceeds under more unfavorable conditions. The election resulted in a wave of victories for the Republicans and ultra right that may have surpassed 2010. However, while the GOP claims otherwise, it was not a mandate for right-wing policies. Grassroots efforts by labor and its allies mobilized millions of voters. Tens of thousands of...

The values that are pre-eminent for Republican Party voters are probably freedom, independence, autonomy, limited government and self-reliance, and a strong belief in the powers of capitalism and a free market,” Cross said. “We see them in the South: the calls or less government, the call for people to take personal responsibility, the inveighing against the dependent class.” And in Louisiana and other energy-producing states, he said, the perceived antipathy of national Democrats for the oil and gas industry helps swell Republican ranks. “We’re looking at something more than just a bad year,” said Charlie Cook, the Shreveport native who...