Posted on 11/17/2014 4:02:53 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The coalition of voters that twice elected President Obama to the White House might not be there for the Democratic nominee in 2016, party strategists are warning.
Following their disastrous showing at the polls this month, many Democrats have consoled themselves with talk of how the groups that fueled Obama’s resounding victories — namely minorities and young people — will make up a bigger slice of the electorate in two years’ time.
But some fear the party is placing far too much trust in demographics, while ignoring the unique circumstances that led to Obama’s rise.
“I don’t think the Democratic Party should take anyone for granted, or should just assume that these voters are just going to back our nominee, and more importantly, going to turn out for the same level as President Obama,” said Democratic strategist Doug Thornell.
“They’re going to need a reason and they’re going to need a message.”
Obama won the Electoral College handily in 2008 and 2012, vanquishing the GOP with a coalition of millennials, minorities and women in swing states such as Ohio, Iowa and Colorado.
The wave of support gave Obama the former GOP strongholds of Virginia (in both elections) and North Carolina (in 2008), stirring anxious chatter among Republicans about being locked out of the White House for years to come. Obama’s victories, combined with the rising Latino population, have convinced many Democrats that the presidential map is skewing decidedly in their favor.
Yet some question whether the supposed advantages will materialize when the name at the top of the ballot isn’t Barack Obama.
A former Democratic campaign official stressed that the eventual nominee, whether Hillary Clinton or not, will need to find “new ways to energize our folks.”
That need seems particularly acute after the drubbing the party took in the midterms — dismal results due, in part, to overall turnout sliding to its lowest level since 1942.
“The messaging we put out there hasn’t been translating,” a senior Democratic operative said. “I don’t want to sugarcoat it. It has been an issue for us.”
“We need to try and communicate what’s at stake,” the operative added.
Not only did Democrats lose seats in red and purple states this year, they also failed to win the governor’s mansion in deep-blue Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland, where exit polls showed black and young voters found other things to do on Election Day.
“People just stayed home because the candidate didn’t motivate them and didn’t manage to convince them to go to the polls,” Thornell said.
But anxious Democrats think there could be more to the problem than that.
They note that even when Obama got involved in encouraging his base to vote for the candidates of his choosing, the results were tepid at best.
Obama focused intently on turning out the black vote, conducting a series of urban radio interviews and taping commercials for black networks. Despite that, Democrats received a lower percentage of the black vote, and fewer blacks turned out at the polls than in either of Obama’s presidential contests.
“The magic of 2008 will be hard to reproduce,” Southern Methodist University professor Cal Jillson said, pointing out that the Democratic advantage among blacks had gone from “10-to-1 to 19-to-1” under Obama.
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate known for stringing together political coalitions at the other end of the political spectrum, said Democrats face two major problems.
The first: Many of the party’s structural advantages — from volunteer lists to technology infrastructure — were built by Obama’s campaign team, not by the party.
The second, he said, is that demographics are not destiny.
Norquist said anyone looking at the electorate through the prism of race, gender and ethnicity would miss the rise of “issue voters,” including the swelling numbers of gun-permit holders, homeschoolers or school-voucher recipients in swing states.
“The electorate is different today than when Obama got elected — people now have freedoms and rights they didn’t before,” Norquist said.
Any Democratic nominee expecting Obama’s supporters to fall into his or her lap will be in for a rude awakening, he said.
“They’re not transferable, you can’t hand people off like they are serfs or something,” he said.
The 2008 Obama campaign had an additional advantage: the then-senator could clothe himself in the garb of the outsider running against the status quo, all while seeking to make history as the nation’s first black president.
Now, the Democratic candidate will be running as the de facto incumbent, associated with Obama’s checkered record to a greater or lesser degree.
Polls indicate that a still-lagging economy and the lack of progress on key issues such as immigration reform have wounded the party — and the president — among groups that once offered stalwart support.
A Washington Post/ ABC News poll released Nov. 2 showed Obama’s favorability among Hispanics had dropped a staggering 19 points since January. His standing had declined 9 points with blacks and 6 points with independents.
The numbers bear a striking resemblance to the pre-Obama world, when the electoral map was less friendly to Democrats.
Warnings about the crackup of the Obama coalition have come from none other than David Plouffe, the operational mastermind behind the president’s two White House victories.
“We shouldn’t just assume that the Obama voters will automatically come out for Democratic presidential candidates,” Plouffe told The New York Times after the Democrats’ midterm losses.
Democrats insist Obama can remedy that situation during his final two years in office and ensure that his coalition endures.
Aggressive moves on net neutrality and global warming have already reinvigorated liberals, and expansive action on immigration reform could help bring Latinos back into the fold, they say.
There’s also hope among Democrats that the historic nature of a Clinton campaign could lead to a different, but still vibrant, electorate.
Strategists say a potential Clinton bid would likely generate outsized enthusiasm among young and single female voters, which could offset drops in other parts of the electorate.
“Hillary is going to have to build that excitement in the base the way the president did in 2008. Voters are going to have to truly believe in her path and her vision and get excited by what she stands for,” a former Obama campaign official said.
Clinton will have to avoid the notion that she’s the inevitable candidate, the former official added, but can build excitement by emphasizing her place in history as potentially the first woman president.
“Done right, I think that can really help her,” the former official said. “Women will love it, and so will other groups, including young voters.”
People are SICK of the lies.
Rush is right.
The GOP leadership must EXPLAIN their message (as soon as they wake-up and embrace conservatism).
The electorate is HUNGRY for the truth - looking for a way to climb out of this ugly hole the Left has us kept us in (and are intent on digging deeper).
I wonder if Obama himself would win re-election today; his “coalition” was a self-serving bunch of people on welfare or workfare who now realize nothing has gotten better except for a very few.
Seeing photos of Ferguson MO says all one needs to know about the plight of Obama’s coalition.
Honestly, I think a significant portion (though not a majority) of blacks and young voters have, after six years, started to understand that Obama is a fraud.
The question, I think, is whether the Republicans will give that portion a reason to vote against Demon Rats.
The Demon Rats will not be able to convince this portion (however big it is) that the party of Obama will make things better....but they MAY be able to caricature Republicans in order to motivate them.
But, as the last election showed in Colorado, the “war on women” lie is dying.....so the liberals trying to make these type of issues as a way to siphon off votes may find such an effort increasingly difficult.
“They’re not transferable, you can’t hand people off like they are serfs or something,” he said.
Yet, they truly believe they can, because they truly believe that is what their voter base is.
BTW, the quote is from Grover Norquist which, in itself, ticks me off. Will no one rid me of this Islamic propagandist?
Bullhockey.....maybe a kick in the rear would make them face reality. The midterm women's vote was a bomb---only one of the women Hillary campaigned for won. Candidates mentioning the War on Women nonsense were laughed off the stage. Texas' Abortion Darling collapsed and so did Sandra "The Vagina" Fluck.
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CLINTON GRUBERING---Bill is already laying the groundwork for Hillary---hoping "stupid Americans" will ignore the details.
"We had 100 times as many people move from poverty into the middle class," Bill Clinton told an appreciative audience during a cocktail hour hosted by POLITICO, marking the 10th anniversary of the Clinton Presidential Center. "This shows the importance of policy," he continued. "We can do this again.”
Clinton plumb "forgot" MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber crunched those numbers for the ever-ambitious Clintons....basing the numbers on the Clintons' knee-bending abortion worship. Read on.
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World Net Daily reported November 14, 2014
BY Jerome R. Corsi / FR Posted by Cincinatus' Wife
NEW YORK – Obamacare architect, Jonathan Gruber, (exposed for his frank admissions that passing Obama's signature legislation required lying to "stupid" Americans)......published a paper during the Clinton administration observing that legalizing abortion saved the government $14B in assistance to economically disadvantaged mothers, including African Americans.....and lowered crime.
MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber argued in his Clinton paper that without the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, “marginal children” would have been born to many poor mothers. Gruber said statistics show these aborted children would have been 70 percent more likely to live in a single-parent family, 40 percent more likely to live in poverty, 50 percent more likely to receive welfare and 35 percent more likely to die as an infant.
Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner in their bestselling 2005 book, “Freakonomics,” relied on MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber’s work to argue that legalizing abortion was responsible for an approximately 50 percent reduction of crime in major urban centers in the early 1990s. more at wnd.com
IOW, people don't believe the lies anymore.
I just don’t see Granny Bloodclot “energizing” the millenials. She’s like a mean old aunt, the crazy cat lady down the street and a 4th grade teacher wrapper all up in one large pantsuit.
Obama and liberal judges have already given the gays everything they demand, so their 3% of the population aren’t going to be a factor as ther’e no need for them to dum money on the dems.
Hillary also has recently packed baggage with her stint as SOS which will brought to light over the next 2 years
And to top it off, there’s the screech. When she isn’t monotone droning with “you know” every 5 words, she goes into fingernails-on-chalkboard helium voice that makes ones ears bleed
In other words, we need a new set of lies to fool these stupid voters.
As Rush says, “Democrats wake up every morning thinking ‘How can we fool them today?’”
Yes!
The Democrat Coalition will lean more heavily on former illegal immigrants, wetbacks as it were. Amnesty followed by Citizenship by decree will trump everything else because the subject does not cover just the 5 mil or so being talked about but the tens of millions of others already here and the tens of millions that will flood through Mexico and over the border once Amnesty is done. If the Sultan is allowed to get away with Amnesty by decree the Latino population will rise to 30 per cent pretty quickly.
“....including the swelling numbers of gun-permit holders, homeschoolers or school-voucher recipients in swing states....”
Oh ok I get it...OUR people!
: )
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