What are you going to do for me?

by | Nov 6, 2014 | 2014 Elections, Economy, Editor's Blog | 16 comments

In the aftermath of the election, a lot of liberals are angry at candidates who ran away from Barack Obama. They argue that Obama has been one of the most successful presidents in recent history. He saved the country from spiraling into a depression, he killed Bin Laden, he passed health care reform, he’s overseen the longest period of economic growth in decades and he’s brought the unemployment rate below 6%.

If candidates in swing states had embraced him and his record, these pundits and activists claim, they might have beaten the Republicans. Unfortunately, that’s not true. I think it was foolish to avoid Obama, too, but I don’t think it would have changed the election. If Obama had campaigned actively for Kay Hagan or Michele Nunn, he may have encouraged a few more African-Americans to vote but not in numbers large enough to alter the outcome.

Democrats needed to win the argument with that narrow group of swing voters who determine elections in competitive states like North Carolina. They are largely working class white folks who have been left out of the recovery. They don’t care what Obama has accomplished because they aren’t seeing the results in their daily lives.

Unemployment may be down and the stock market may be up but their wages are stagnant and many of them are still laboring under debt from the Great Recession. They don’t care what Obama or Congress or anybody has done, they want to know what they are going to do. They want some stability in their lives and a plan to help them get ahead.

Democrats offered them little. Republicans may not have offered any solutions, either, but at least they shared their frustration. The causes of their situations are too amorphous for most of them to pin down and Obama offers a tangible target for their anger. Republicans successfully exploited that.

I said throughout the election that Democrats needed to embrace Obamacare because they couldn’t run from it. But they should have offered a plan for the future, too. They should have made raising the minimum wage a more central part of their message. They should have focused more on making college more affordable. And they should have talked about closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich.

Instead, the national message focused on a caricature of two billionaire brothers who served as a symbol of a rigged system. These guys were going to buy the election for the Republicans and rich people. But these voters already think the political system is rigged for rich people. They just want to know what those rich people are going to do for them.

16 Comments

  1. NC Dem

    Three statistics should be noted. First, Obama’s NC approval rating is between 40%-52% (Elon) and 42%-52% (PPP). Second, PPP found him at 13-64% among undecided voters. Third, according to Jason Zengerle, African-American voters turned out at 2008 levels–21% of the electorate–despite Hagan not embracing Obama. You can’t wish away the facts. Wrapping herself around him would have been a mistake with little side benefit.

  2. N.

    “The president, whatever his good qualities, is woefully out of touch with a significant part of the country and clearly out of his element. Turning Kentucky and West Virginia into Republican redoubts takes a tremendous amount of cluelessness and political ineptness, but he has done that and he will now get what he deserves.”

    To be fair though, both those states, and especially West Virginia, started their realignment with Republicans before Barack Obama became president. Once a Democratic stronghold (Michael Dukakis carried in in 1988 for heaven’s sake) West Virgina voted for George Bush over Al Gore in 2000 and has not been competitive in a presidential election since.

  3. lily

    If some folks do not understand the workings of congressional system. They are quick to blame Obama for congressional screw ups. When, if fact, he has faced to a greater extent an age old problem, obstructionism. The republicans in the house refuse to put any legislation, that may possibly put the president in a favorable light up for a straight up and down vote. This obstructionism is practiced without regard for the consequences this legislation may or may not have on the folks who put them in office. They are acting entirely out of selfish motives. It is believed Ben Franklin said if we do not hang together, most certainly we will hang separately. . He pointed out , the effects of acting as a divided group. A clear understanding of what this country is all about is lacking. We need to create a more perfect union, founded on the belief we are all here for the same purpose. We are not a country of different races, sexes ,religious or non religious, blue or red. We are the “United States”. So far, up until recent times, this concept has made the US the strongest nation in the known world. It is time to chose, do we want to see the greatest country in history. Falling apart over the ranting of some self serving wackos. who spends most of their time shutting down the economy, or finding ways to defeat Obama or do we wish to move forward to a position of unity against our real enemy. ,

  4. Mick

    I think the rant against Obamacare among these comments misses Thomas’ point.

    Exit polling from Tuesday around the nation showed that the issue upmost in voters minds was still the economy, i.e., fears that income has still not caught up, that good jobs are too far and few between for them and for their kids, and that the economic standard of living has slipped or has not budged much in years.

    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.

    It’s now been a day a half of listening to some talking heads on TV warn of the possible ending of the Dem Party in the near future. What BS! Unless they figure out how to jettison the arch-conservative cult infecting their party, the GOP will not be able to offer voters “in the middle” anything that this key segment can support. The Dems need to hop on the Warren and Reich message bandwagons and voice the needs and demands of the middle class, as well as progressive ideas to improve it.

    • Blangbuff

      Mick:
      You put it down very well. The Democrats can do some good to themselves and the party by accepting who they are and what they represent. Forget about what the pundits, the “Chuck Todd” and what they say, instead focus on your job to help the “little man”
      Exit pollings can say all that it want but in the end we have seen who were the obstructionist to all the economic improvement bills that were designed to help people. Yes exactly, “the repugnicans” The state of our economy would have been better if not all the nonsense by selfish interest. Again, I must always say that this election was not about who can deliver well for us especially in the land of the southerner, rather some other crap.

  5. Bob

    When candidates feel they have to apologize for something and play defense they have already lost. The NRA for example played this
    same game. First they were for strict background checks but free availability of guns. Having won the later argument now they are attacking the former and are against background checks. The whole Obamacare plan was designed to be bi-partisan and passed with not one GOP vote. It should have been “single payer” like Medicare from the start but it got watered down into a ridiculous amalgamation of subsidies and private insurance and mandates. Stupid waste of power in 2009,now gone.

    • Old School N.C. Dem

      Thomas’ analysis is astute. The Republicans are atrocious, but the Democrats outside a few coastal and big-city enclaves are in a death spiral and they better wake up before they become extinct in large swaths of the country. There are now 5 Democrats in the 33-member Tennessee state senate and probably all of them are African-American. That chamber was controlled by Democrats until just a few years ago.

      The only way to fix this problem, and thereby prevent a right-wing takeover of many state and local governments and in turn the federal government, is to address the everyday problems of everyday people. The president, whatever his good qualities, is woefully out of touch with a significant part of the country and clearly out of his element. Turning Kentucky and West Virginia into Republican redoubts takes a tremendous amount of cluelessness and political ineptness, but he has done that and he will now get what he deserves.

      The prescription I recommend will require years to achieve a result. The only other way to fix this is for the Republicans simply to blow themselves up — which, given their bent, they very well may do, as they came close to doing in 2006.

      One other thing that must be considered. Black voters should start voting wholesale in Republican primaries, as they did in Mississippi. That would radically moderate the Republican party. It would temporarily sideline the Democratic party, but it would restore some balance to the Republican party if they had to answer to black voters and beg for their votes in their primaries.

      • RJ

        I guess we’re on the same side here, but I have to disagree with your thesis that it was Democratic ineptitude and Obama being “out of touch” that lost the “large swaths of the country” that you’re talking about. As a middle-aged white southerner, it’s comforting to think that my fellow middle-aged white southerners don’t vote Democratic because the party hasn’t delivered for them. That’s a more comforting thought than the truth, which is that most of my cohort will not vote for a Democrat as long as we stand up for social justice.

        Haven’t you heard of the Dixiecrats’ tantrum against integrating the Army or Nixon’s southern strategy or Reagan opening his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi or Willie Horton or Jesse Helms’s campaign against Gantt or Lee Atwater’s entire career or… These blatantly racist appeals, going on now for 75 years or so, had a bit to do with losing white southerners’ votes in 2014, don’t you think?

        Likewise, the comment that Obama being “woefully out of touch with a significant part of the country” somehow prevents him from helping common folks is also off to me. Here are two examples where bills that Obama signed helped solve “the everyday problems of everyday people”: (1) Remember the tax relief for working families in the stimulus package that led to a large number of us getting an $800 tax credit? Did that make Obama more popular in West Virginia? (2) Kentuckians like Kynect, their ACA exchange, and the state expanded Medicaid, insuring hundreds of thousands working folks. Did that keep them from re-electing McConnell, who promises to repeal “Obamacare”?

        • Allison Mahaley

          I agree – people have to have it laid out in very simple terms, and even then, don’t always vote for what is in their own best interest

          Still voter turn out is the biggest problem. I don’t believe that the majority of people are dissatisfied, but I do believe that more dissatisfied people voted. I am looking forward tot he analysis of what effect eliminating early voting at almost all university campuses had not he election results.

      • khrish67

        So your solution is for Black voters to commit suicide to help a bunch of people who haven’t the balls to boldly take credit for all the progress accomplished under this president?????When people start feeling the cuts to their Social Security, keeping their salaries low and utterly telling all that are not rich where to go and how to get there. They will all join hands and reminisce of how things were. But first, you want to take it away test your results on Black voters. In other words if they would stop voting Democratic, you could get your party back???????Do I get it or am I off kilter?

    • khrish67

      Well if you couldn’t get people to understand and look forward to the bit of help they would get without yelling “socialism, communism and all kind of other words that they have no earthly idea what they mean……Things would have gone better? I wanted single payer as well, but I knew that it was never going to get through. The only reason that people fell for that whole stupid gun thing was because they are just stupid enough to believe the lies that were told to them…….or should I say, fairy tales. Most entertain ideas that can only be created in the minds of a certain group. That’s why it worked. There was no elaborate plan they used………………..Just the picture of a Man of Colour leading this nation and the fear of no longer being a majority. What was so complicated about that? Old Bush used that one a while back.

  6. David

    In 2008 Obama was on the ballot and Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate. In 2010 Obama was not on the ticket and Democrats lost seats in the House and Senate. In 2012 Obama was on the ticket and Democrats picked up seats in the House and the Senate. In 2014 Obama was not on the ticket and Democrats lost seats in the House and the Senate.

    Anybody notice a pattern? Why would candidates run away from a winner?

    Bill Maher said it best: “They (Democrats) remind me of the Iraqi Army – running when they should fight.”

    • khrish67

      We spell that answer S T U P I D.

  7. Joseph Miller

    I’m glad someone finally said it. Elections should be won or lost based on how well the message is delivered. This election turned into a mud slinging battle with an inability for either side to explain what action they were going to take.

    • khrish67

      Well, if they think they had nothing from all that the Democratic party has done……..Wait until they get a whiff of what nothing really smells like come January.

      • Blangbuff

        Well said khrish67. Its sad that these people forget so quick and easily. 7 short years ago, these republicans were in power and we all know where that led us. This was not about what the current administration did or did not do, its simply about who is in charge there. They can spin and spin until they can’t anymore – that is just the bottom line. But guess what! you, I, and the very many of them will stay to take the beatings of the republicans’ actions for the next two years.

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