I don’t think it’s exaggerating things to say that the 2014 elections in North Carolina were an unmitigated disaster for Democrats. True, there were a few bright spots: they swept the Wake County Board of Commissioners races, gained a few seats in the State House, and did well in the judicial races.
But those were just about the only bright spots. Here’s the real story: despite implementing the most dramatic conservative reforms in North Carolina history and seeing the approval numbers of the legislature plunge through two contentious sessions, Republicans maintained their veto-proof majorities in both chambers. For the liberal readers on this site, read: Republicans implemented an extreme right-wing agenda, angered a whole bunch of people … and got away with it.
In the State Senate, Republicans actually gained a seat. This isn’t like 2012 where Republican gains were almost solely attributable to redistricting and the GOP crowed about it anyway, though. They’re going to crow about it this time, too, but the crowing will be more warranted.
And in the U.S. Senate race, Tillis, the leader of one of the chambers of the so-called extreme right-wing legislature, edged out Hagan despite trailing in the polls for almost the entire race. Observers said that Hagan was extremely resilient. Turns out, the national environment was even more resilient.
Not all of this, of course, lies at the feet of NC Democrats. In the face of a huge red tide, there’s only so much one can do. It’s to the Hagan campaign’s credit that she came within two points of Tillis in such a hostile environment. And the wave, of course, affected the legislative races as well. But it’s clear Democrats need to do a lot of soul-searching and make a lot of changes if they want to be successful going forward.
If there’s one thing they absolutely can’t do, though, it’s to do nothing and to just hope they can ride a more expansive electorate to victory in 2016. I’ve heard a lot of North Carolina Democrats say, effectively, that they were a dealt a bad hand in 2014 and they were killed by lower than expected turnout. Even then, Hagan came real close to Tillis. With presidential turnout, she would have won. And since 2016 is a presidential year, Burr and McCrory better be nervous.
Now, McCrory needs to be nervous regardless of what the turnout looks like – but the idea that 2016 will be a cakewalk for NC Democrats simply because it’s a presidential year is a great way to ensure another cycle of painful losses. Make no mistake, Democrats have some serious work to do, and counting on the 2016 electorate to pull them over the finish line is a recipe for disaster.
First of all, we don’t know what the 2016 electorate is going to look like. It will almost certainly be younger, more Democratic, and less white. By how much we don’t know. For one thing, we don’t know what turnout is going to look like with a Democrat not named Obama. Second, Obama will still be President and will probably still be unpopular. And like Bush in 2008, Obama in 2016 will drag down Democrats everywhere despite his name being found nowhere on the ballot. The 2016 could be 2008-in-reverse: a respected senior Democrat of vaunted appeal goes down to an insurgent Republican running on a platform of change. If that holds true, then Republicans, not Democrats, will be favored to keep Burr’s seat, regardless of whether or not he runs again.
Democrats should also be realistic when assessing their prospects of taking out Burr. People tend to underestimate his political skills and even if it’s a good year for Democrats, he’ll be hard to take out. An open seat would be less challenging, but they’ll need to find the right candidate. That’s my initial assessment of the 2016 Senate race.
Now, Governor is another story. In terms of vulnerability, McCrory is leagues ahead of Burr. That’s not to say McCrory is extremely unpopular or doomed to being a one-termer. He’s slightly underwater in the polls, which indicates he’s at about even odds of a second term right now. Gubernatorial races are less influenced by the environment, and it’s definitely conceivable to see McCrory go down to Cooper even if Republicans are having a good night nationally. (Just like how Perdue almost went down to McCrory despite a huge year for Democrats in North Carolina in 2008.)
But the D’s are going to have to work at it. Yes, 2016 should see a much higher turnout, and that should be good for Democrats, but the fundamentals – an unpopular Democratic President in the White House and general fatigue with Obama – do not favor them. Yes, it’s true Republicans could go too far to the right now that they have both chambers of Congress, but right now we’re in the same situation as 2006, just in reverse.
Democrats who think higher turnout is going to bail them out in the next cycle are fooling themselves. This is a particularly egregious error because it’s the same one they made this cycle. Democratic strategists pretty much said it didn’t matter that they didn’t have a message because they were going to gin up anger with their base and get them to turn out. As Glen Bolger, pollster for the Tillis campaign, said: “You can’t win on turn-out if you are losing on message.” Democrats can definitely take out McCrory and maybe Burr, but they’re going to have to find a message that resonates. This year’s tired strategy of Koch Brothers and incessant focus on lady parts clearly did not. To Democrats who say they lost because of turnout, that turnout wasn’t unavoidable. Fact is, Democrats around the country did a poor job of giving voters an affirmative reason to support them. They paid the price.
Two years ago, after their 2012 defeat, Republicans made an effort to figure out why they lost and how to rebrand their party. Democrats are going to have to do the same this year. Unless they do so and can communicate a compelling message to voters, and to get people who would otherwise support them to care about participating in the electoral process, they’re going to lose, again and again, both nationally and in North Carolina.
Also, while we’re at it, can we put to bed the ludicrous notion that Hagan is going to mount a comeback in 2016 against Burr? Thanks.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
The Democratic Party needs to learn how to stand up boldly for what they believe. The more backwards and divisive the Republican party becomes, the more loudly they stomp for their stupid and un-American ideals. Any fool should know that the country can’t grow that way, yet they manage to get people to go along with what they say. At this congress, they don’t owe their voters one thing because they never promised them anything in the campaign. All they talked about was Ebola and IsIL. Their agenda is to attempt to undo all the things that have been done and work on impeaching the president. They did nothing in the last 6 years but block anything that would help the country and plead to make the rich richer. They made all that money for doing nothing and the people were so ignorant that they rewarded them for doing nothing. In what world does that make sense?
Democrats need to adopt a New Deal/Fair Deal approach as advocated by Robert Reich. Until the middle class believes that the broken economic system, which sends most of the results of the recovery to the 1%, has been changed to share that wealth with them, Democrats will have a hard time.
The only answer I see now for progressives is to get the heck out of North Carolina. Only 30% of the population even bothered to get off their butts and cast a vote. Why do you want to live in or protect such a dump full of lazy dumb sucker clucks?
WNCguy I agree totally with your points; in fact, on a Thomas Mills blog today, I wrote:
“If the Dems had, as Thomas suggests, not hidden from Obama and also presented their goal of lessening income inequality and supporting minimum wage increases, new jobs programs, closure of corporate/wealthy tax loopholes, and assistance with college costs, they would have done much better……..”
My point re: Wynne’s piece was that you also can’t ignore the potential of the NC and national GOP disaffecting NC voters further as they continue to push their extreme agenda and to cut across the grain on social issues.
Some righteous and fired up leadership at the top of the party would help. I’m all for Roy Cooper who is de facto party head right now, but he can’t do it alone, plus he still has a job to do. We need a broad coalition in charge, obviously, but it’s not just a matter of appealing to voting blocs, it means conscious, strategic thinking,listening to the voters, finding issues of appeal, identifying and training younger voices, and then inspiring and mobilizing the public. The people of NC deserve better than the clowns in charge now.
And of course, John Wynne totally discounts the distinct possibility that the NC and national GOP will fail at doing much of anything to better the middle class and the center of the political spectrum, and could actually do a lot to earn the ire of that segment..
In NC, will they continue to seek court action against SSM and for charter schools, and if they lose in court or at the Federal DOJ level, seek to enact other sorts of voter suppression provisions? I’m betting they do. Will they sit and watch revenue deficits from their tax reform grow larger, forcing them to further cut key government programs. Looks like it. Will they stem the tide of good veteran teachers leaving NC? Doubt it. Will they continue to cut the UNC system, continue to ignore expansion of Medicaid, and actively try to suppress ACA enrollment again. I’d guess yes.
Nationally, no more games, no more “sense of the House” resolutions, no more obstructionism; now McConnell and Boehner have to lead and show the ability to pass legislation into law. Problem is they’ll need some Dems to vote with them in the Senate to reach 60 votes (or 67 to overcome vetoes), and to do that they’ll need to moderate their bills and work across the aisle. But in their own midsts, they have an extremist cult of arch-conservatives who won’t hear of compromise or “weakening” strident bills. My feeling is that if they can overcome resistance from the Dems and from within their own party and actually advance some good laws/bills, great—I’m all for progress. But I don’t see the odds being very good of that happening. Plus if they actually put their stupid hats on and try to impeach Obama, they will go into 2016 facing a huge wave of voter disgust.
John’s analysis is astute. The Democratic Party in this state should be in crisis mode. Relying on a hyper-inflated turnout every four years (and which may prove to be limited to the current president’s campaigns), and not appealing to the broader electorate, is a sure way to becoming irrelevant.
Mick they have constantly failed at governing but that has nothing to do with it. You have to have a compelling message that will resonate and we don’t have it. John is pretty spot on here.
The first thing we can also do is clean house at the Goodwin house including the caucuses. When you fail to achieve the objective, you bring in the resources you need to succeed. That includes a chairperson who can raise money and keep themselves out of headlines. It means a competent staff that can be the attack dog and provide a strong message piece.
It means getting the staff out of the caucus that have lost multiple cycles now. It means members of those caucus step up and pay their dues and recruit candidates now not at the end of 2015 we an additional renew focus on engaging with recruiting for local races.
It means an aggressive minority party in the NCGA that doesn’t just vote against every republican bill and whine and complain about super-majorities. but puts forth a vision, budget and blueprint to make government work again for the middle class. And it means that perhaps older members who have been in forever need to retire and invite new fresh blood in its place. Get off your duffs and work for it.
It means looking at the few wins were due to dynamic and mostly younger candidates that inspired people to break the trend and vote for something, to, in fact in many cases, vote for Tillis but not their republican member of the state house or their republican county commissioner.
In essence the ” you are future” talk that so many older people were talking about is done. THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED PEOPLE.