Posted on 01/16/2015 7:13:24 AM PST by Din Maker
President Obama's muscular victories in 2008 and 2012 inflated Democratic egos, giving the party visions of a never-ending string of victories in nationwide presidential races. Just a few years later, such over-confident prognosticating seems extremely ill-advised.
The 2014 midterm elections were a disaster for the president's party. Republicans picked up nine Senate seats, claiming a majority for the first time in eight years. And House Republicans bolstered their ranks to the party's highest levels since Herbert Hoover was president.
Even worse for Democrats: The apparent loosening of their near-lock on the Electoral College, which actually determines who gets to the White House. In three states that were critical to Obama's wins in 2008 and 2012 — Nevada, Colorado, and Virginia — Republicans showed remarkable resurgence and strength in 2014.
These states were very recently thought to be safely in the Democratic column. Demographics had seriously shifted in recent years, thanks in no small part to influxes of Latino voters, Asian residents, and other swaths of non-whites. Bankable wins here meant Democrats could forgo traditional battlegrounds like Florida and Ohio and still win an Electoral College majority.
The three states are worth 28 electoral votes, out of the 270 needed to win. But add that onto the 242 electoral votes Democratic candidates won in the six presidential races from 1992 to 2012, and they're in the White House, with what seems like an all-but-assured win every four years.
Not so fast! Thanks to the GOP's big comeback in 2014, Republicans have plenty of reasons for optimism as the next White House scrum gets going.
Nevada. The Silver State was long frustratingly out of reach for Democrats. Despite Nevada's unusually influential organized labor movement, conservative-leaning suburbanites in the Las Vegas area and the state's massive northern sector gave Nevada a strong Republican tilt.
That finally changed for Democrats in 2008, after losing two straight Nevada presidential contests with George W. Bush heading the GOP ticket. The national economic collapse hit Nevada's tenuous housing market particularly hard. And party organizers mobilized Nevada's rapidly growing number of Latinos and Asians, many naturalized citizens. The Obama campaign racked up 55 percent of the vote. Four years later, with the desert economy still lagging, Obama prevailed over Mitt Romney, 52 percent to 46 percent.
Just two years later, though, Republicans rallied big time. In 2014 Republicans picked up both chambers of the state legislature. And in one of the biggest surprises of Election Night, freshman Democratic Rep. Steve Horsford lost to Republican challenger Cresent Hardy, a state assemblyman. Republicans also won a hotly contested race for Nevada attorney.
Nevada Republicans clearly have the wind at their backs. And if there's a friendly national political atmosphere come 2016, there's every reason to think the state is back in play for Republicans. That would be huge: Nevada has been carried by the winner in every presidential election since 1912, except for 1976.
The trick will be increasing registration, getting people out to vote, and crucially, appealing to Latinos. There's already reason for optimism on that front. Gov. Brian Sandoval, among the most prominent Republican Latino officeholders, won re-election in a landslide with 70 percent of the vote.
Colorado. Two states to the east, Republicans can celebrate their most successful election in more than a decade. Rep. Cory Gardner knocked off an incumbent Democratic senator, Mark Udall. Colorado Republicans also won back the state Senate majority for the first time since 2004, and made big gains in the state House.
That's a stark turnaround from just two years before. Obama's 2012 win in Colorado — his second straight — was supposed to symbolize the ascendancy of a new Democratic-friendly coalition, with single women and Latino voters at its core. In fact, an exit poll "showed Obama carrying Latinos 75 percent to 23 percent — a big increase over 2008, and a big enough vote to account for all of his popular vote margin in the state," writes The 2014 Almanac of American Politics.
So much for that advantage. That big edge among single women and Latinos proved fleeting and temporal. In 2014, Colorado's turnout of women voters was at its lowest point since 1992, according to ABC News. That despite Udall's repeated attacks on GOP challenger Gardner over issues relating to abortion and contraception.
The Latino vote, too, came up short of what Democratic strategists aimed for. "Latino activists spent months in Colorado organizing voters on behalf of Democratic Senator Mark Udall, a strong supporter of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, against Republican Cory Gardner, who had voted to defund the president's program protecting DREAMers," reports MSNBC. That can't be heartening for Democrats heading into the 2016 presidential race.
Virginia. Leading up to the 2008 election, the Old Dominion had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since the 1964 LBJ landslide. But rapidly changing demographics — specifically new liberal-ish voters in suburban northern Virginia — changed the equation.
Virginia was such a high priority for Democrats that Obama made his final 2008 campaign appearance in the far southwest corner of the state, just hours before polls opened. President Obama won Virginia a second time in 2012, cementing its status in the minds of Democratic partisans as safely in their camp.
So imagine their surprise on Election Night 2014 when one of Virginia's two Democratic senators, Mark Warner, narrowly escaped electoral disaster. Warner, a former governor who had been one of Virginia's most popular politicians, was expected to handily win a second term. But Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, rode a wave of support for GOP candidates nationwide, and almost knocked Warner out of the Senate despite being outspent heavily.
The GOP-friendly midterm results in Virginia, like Colorado and Nevada, won't necessarily hold in the 2016 presidential races. Non-presidential year electorates are famously older, whiter — and more Republican-leaning. But the recent results will, at the very least, keep Democratic campaign operatives up at night. And the eventual Democratic White House nominee will likely have to spend crucial resources on those three states — states that party mandarins once thought they had locked-up.
Yes it’s troubling that the Dems seem to be able to pull this off consistently in states with Republican governors and Secs of State.
Yes, he was. And when the Democrats made the mistake of running two honkeys after him (Gore and Kerry) they lost!
I think an unhealthy elderly white female with a black VP would have the same effect as the community organizers give the “wink wink” to the ‘hood about the plan.
That’s for sure. Especially as the GOP defends 24 Senate seats in 2016 whereas the democrats defend only 10.
And then there’s the issue of blase limp GOP leadership in Congress.
So far the momentum of 2014 is dissipating under an certain and ambiguous course direction set by McConnell and Boehner.
The more than one trillion dollars in funding for everything Obama wanted including pork for cronies during a LAME DUCK session with more than 1600 pages of legislation crammed down the throats of lame duck members in only 2 days HAS NO EXCUSE and is all the statement needed to understand that the GOP leadership product is a pack of lies.
Good tagline, actually.
The Crazy way Obama is acting the Democrats will lose more States next Election
We are at the tipping point. The Dems have created enough permanent votes for cyclical victories, with the dependent class, the illegals, and the voting dead, along with the media creating a propaganda machine that Goebbels would be proud of.
Democrats will get slaughtered in 2016, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico & Virginia wio,ill go Pubbie, big time...so will Texas, Florida, Ohio. Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc. Dems will carry less the twelve states with California and New York the biggest. The entire South will go ruby red. Republicans will gain seats in both the House and Senate.
The only action that can change this picture is, that Democrats turn on Obama. Less then that, they go out of office with him. 2016 will be a worse year for Democrats then 2014 was!!!
Never underestimate the ability of the GOP to screw it up.
1. the word originated from the practice of white males wishing to hire African-American prostitutes in the 1920's, and going to the appropriate part of town while honking their car horns to attract the whores. Some versions state that the reason for this was that the white men were too afraid to actually stop in those neighborhoods, so the honking would bring the hookers to them.
I realized that description fit Al And John perfectly!
Ha!
” So far the momentum of 2014 is dissipating under an certain and ambiguous course direction set by McConnell and Boehner.
The more than one trillion dollars in funding for everything Obama wanted including pork for cronies during a LAME DUCK session with more than 1600 pages of legislation crammed down the throats of lame duck members in only 2 days HAS NO EXCUSE and is all the statement needed to understand that the GOP leadership product is a pack of lies.”
Nothing for Democrats to fear. Plenty for the middle class to fear, though.
Those three states with 27 or so electoral votes didn’t make a difference in 2008 or 2012, and they almost certainly won’t in 2016. The familiar ground of Florida and Ohio are much more key.
Funny you should mention Florida and Ohio. The author explicitly states why NV, CO, and VA are relevant in relation to FL and OH:
"Bankable wins here meant Democrats could forgo traditional battlegrounds like Florida and Ohio and still win an Electoral College majority."
He implies that if NV, CO, and VA are in play in '16, which they most certainly are, then the dems must devote fewer resources to FL and OH in order to compete in these other three states.
How about Illinois electing a Republican governor? That enough electoral votes for ya?
Your mouth to God’s ear!
North Carolina is far more important than Nevada, and the 2102 vote was closer there. The closer vote is true of Iowa too.
“Past performance is not a guarantee of future results..”
Agreed. Still, with another two years of The Messiah, 2016 is starting to look pretty darn good!
“Expect the rats to come out with their old BS about getting rid of the electoral college and go right to a popular vote.”
Guess who, as a newly elected Senator, proposed exactly that as her first bill? (It probably was her first bill, surely Bubba has higher standards in women.) Maybe not.
Her Thighness
Vote Fraud.
‘Nuff said.
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Come on Sarge; it’s too early to start that “Vote Fraud” crap. It comes up, here on FR, every election cycle. We disproved that in the 2014 Midterms.
The familiar ground of Florida and Ohio are much more key.
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WOW! Then we better work our butts off to insure that we will have a Bush/Kasich Ticket in 2016.
(/sarc)
The Democrats have no choice but to run a Black candidate for President from now on, or they won’t be able to energize their base.
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Probably so, but, I’ve had many Dems, as well as Pubbies, tell me that after Barack Obama, they will NEVER vote for another Black man for Prez. I’d say this puts the DemocRATS in a quandary.
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