My first election working in politics was 1994. I was helping on a state senate campaign in rural North Carolina. We had put together a good organization and had a small direct mail program. We were feeling good about our chances when the wave on Election Day knocked us out. Democrats across the country were swept out of office and Newt Gingrich and his Contract for America were swept in.
Few people saw that wave coming, at least not in the magnitude that it hit. We didn’t have the ubiquitous polling that we have today, but a friend who was working at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said that any Democrat who was leading by less than six points lost. In other words, the wave obliterated the margins.
In 2006, Democrats caught a similar wave. While most people knew the year would be good to Democrats, the election turned out to be far better than expected. Democrats picked up 31 seats in the House and six in the Senate, capturing both chambers.
In both 1994 and 2006, motivated constituencies on both the right and left drove the campaign. In lower turnout off-year elections, the Republican base in 1994 and the Democratic base in 2006 surged at a time when their numbers had the largest impact. In 1994, Democrats were also a bit demoralized over the failure of healthcare and Bill Clinton’s difficulty in getting his administration off the ground. In 2006, Republicans were dismayed over the Iraq War, Bush’s response to Katrina, the Abramoff Scandal, and, finally, the Foley Page scandals. Independents broke for the party out of power both years.
In 2016, the wave that might be forming in North Carolina is driven by a rejection of Donald Trump and the damage to the state’s reputation caused by HB2. Trump’s campaign seems to be collapsing. The full impact of that collapse might not show up in polls until closer to Election Day. In 2012, the implosion of Todd Akin’s US Senate campaign in Missouri wasn’t apparent until the week before the election and no polls captured its magnitude.
Democrats would be wise to spend money to get as many down-ballot candidates as possible within five points of their opponents and hope the wave does the rest. This year might offer the opportunity for massive gains instead of narrow ones. The cautious bet is to put money into a few races and hope to pull closer in legislatures and Congress. The bet with the bigger payoff is to spend broadly to help even marginal races get close and hope for a wave. With a year like this, it’s worth the risk.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
While recent polls have shown Hillary Clinton is up by larger margins over Trump, down ballot Dems are not faring so well. The latest polls show the Burr and Ross race, and the McCrory and Cooper race as well, are at best toss-ups, and the edge may be to the Republican’ts. This is disappointing.
Ross is widely believed, at least nationally, to have been a weak choice as as a Senate candidate, and she appears to be proving that she doesn’t have the charisma that a challenger needs. Cooper’s late slowdown is more puzzling, as he seemed to have the race more or less in the bag, given McCrory’s problems with HB2 and his weakness is the major urban areas, especially Charlotte, the Triangle and Asheville. However, apparently his handling of the post-hurricane crisis, and the higher profile it brought him, has helped him.
Both Ross and Cooper are going to have to stage a strong last two weeks to bring this home for the Dems. I’m giving what extra money I can to both, and I hope they’ll use at least a good part of their campaign funds in grass-roots efforts to get out the rest of the early vote as well as voting on election day.
Early voting trends seem to be favoring Democrats, and I hope that continues.
This is an unprecedented year for Republican voters.
Who could expect loss of sports tournaments in the home of the Atlantic Coast Conference? North Carolina is the cradle of basketball, a place where some of the greatest stars are nurtured – superstars like Michael Jordon and Steph Curry. The loss of the NBA All-Star Game, the NCAA tournaments along with the ACC, all as a result of HB2, is an epic failure for the GOP. No one believes their reasoning, their excuses or their legal arguments. HB2 is an unforced error that the Republicans make worse every chance they get.
Their NC Republicans’ have been called out on their racist laws, particularly their efforts to suppress the black vote. They have lost a series of decisions in court, but they continue to push to keep black people from the polls. The GOP is making a mess of what was once a good school system. Businesses are going elsewhere. What advantages are North Carolinians holding onto with Republicans?
At the national level, Republicans must set aside any pretense at morality as they pull the lever for a sexual predator, a man who bragged about watching teenage girls undress and who grabs women by the, well, you know. He beat and raped his first wife. The morality questions do not stop with his sexual transgressions. He does not honor his agreements and cannot be trusted with your money. His conflicts of interest cannot be eliminated. He has used the press corps to promote hotel openings. He endorses the Russian dictator and wants betrays our allies.
The laundry list of offenses by Trump and incredible missteps by North Carolina Republicans should have set the stage for a broad-based transition – a tsunami benefiting Democrats With so much going wrong in so many ways, a wave might be expected. The thing that is new in 2016 is the presence of the alternative universe of fact-free news and spin.
Mind-bending scenarios enter the national dialogue without a shred of evidence. There are dozens of alt-right, fascist and neo-conservative sources found on websites, the radio and cable news. Discredited or absurd theories stay on life support for months or years in this new media tributary. The plain truth and the obvious fact struggle for attention. The mainstream media is complicit because the crazy stuff is irresistible.
The crazy stuff coming from Breitbart is no longer a sideshow; it is central to the Trump campaign. Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon is the author of much of it, and he is in charge of the Trump campaign.
What this campaign cycle has revealed about Americans is not flattering. A large number of Americans condone sexually predatory behavior, blatant racism and religious bigotry. They hate women, Muslims, Mexicans, and black people. Bannon is an anti-semite, and, while Trump may not be, one wonders how he hired man who hates Jews to fashion his message. An angry, vindictive, dishonest, pathological ignoramus should not be competitive, but he is. His poll figures are still within striking distance of victory. This election illustrates how the American experiment could end.