Remember back in 2010, when President Obama described his party’s defeat in the midterm elections as a “shellacking?”
Well, everything is pointing to a shellacking, part two in this year’s midterm elections for the president and his Democratic Party, with most observers giving the Democrats absolutely no chance to take control of the House and predicting the party is on the precipice of defeat in key Senate races that would tip control of the Senate to the GOP.
Midterm elections traditionally see lower voter turnout than presidential years, but a low turnout among the Democrats’ most important constituent groups spells disaster for the party. Take the case of a recent campaign appearance by the president in Maryland’s Prince George’s County to support gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown. The president was there to push for African-African turnout next month. Most of the several thousand in attendance were African-American, the county is majority African-American, and the president continues to enjoy high approval ratings among that constituency. But ten minutes into his 25-minute speech, people started leaving, and this was a campaign rally in one of the bluest states in the country and for a candidate who is running ahead in the latest polls, (albeit by only 9 points with more than 10 percent still undecided — a worrisome number if you’re a Brown supporter.)
Maybe those who walked out on the president were just trying to beat traffic on a football Sunday. But the fact remains that so many got up and left in the middle of his speech that they created a bit of a traffic jam themselves — right near where all the press happened to be sitting! Not the kind of visual the Democratic Party wants with a crucial election right around the corner.
Democratic candidates who are hanging by a thread in more conservative states have been distancing themselves from the president, preferring to have more popular party leaders such as former President Bill Clinton campaign with them, and even that may not help them. Take Arkansas, for instance. Republican Tom Cotton is leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor 49 percent to 36 percent — even after Mr. Clinton came to his home state to personally campaign with Mr. Pryor.
In Louisiana, meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu — from a prominent political family as daughter of the former and sister of the current mayor of New Orleans — is in a tight race against her GOP opponent.
The Democratic Party has not helped itself by committing a number of missteps along the way, including sending a daily barrage of emails warning of dire consequences should the Republican Party take control of both houses of Congress. The alarmist emails start with the usual “we’re counting on you” and escalate to “dig deep in your pockets,” “imagine the McConnell disaster as Senate leader,” and so forth and so on. These emails are not sent just to party supporters and contributors, but to members of the press and anyone else on the party’s vast list of names. Few are spared.
A progressive group took the alarmist email blasts even further, sending out a ripped-from-the-headlines appeal warning that should you get sick and die of Ebola you can blame the Republicans. The emails so infuriated TV host Jon Stewart — someone the Democrats could in the past count on for support — that he recently excoriated the party on his show.
Even first lady Michelle Obama, who remains popular among party faithful, has not been spared the missteps. At a political rally in Iowa for Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democratic candidate who is seeking to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, the first lady repeatedly botched his name, calling him Bailey even while surrounded by his campaign signs.
Additionally, party officials looking to inject funds into that tight race are butting heads with Mr. Harkin. The five-time incumbent has several million dollars in his campaign war chest, but is refusing to hand the funds over to the party, preferring to use the money to start a new policy institute at Drake University that will bear his name.
Mr. Braley himself is not helping matters in the hotly contested race, saying earlier this year at a campaign stop that if he were elected Iowa would have a lawyer serving on the Judiciary Committee who knew what they were doing, and not “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school and never practiced law.” It doesn’t take a PhD to know that insulting farmers in Iowa, of all places, is not the best strategy. Nor were Iowa women spared Mr. Braley’s foot-in-mouth disease. A Braley TV ad compared his opponent, Joni Ernst, a Republican state senator who grew up on a farm and served in Kuwait and Iraq with the U.S. Army and Iowa National Guard, to a baby chicken — a “chick,” which women consider condescending and sexist.
Other notable races include Colorado, where polls show incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall trailing Republican congressman Cory Gardner, who has been successful portraying himself as a moderate. In North Carolina and Georgia, Democrats have a better chance, but those Senate races remain extremely competitive, and Republicans feel they still have a natural edge in the two red states. In Alaska, Democratic Sen. Mark Begich has been consistently behind in the polls. In New Hampshire, most polls show Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen ahead, but Republican challenger Scott Brown — the former Senator from Massachusetts — is gaining ground.
Both parties agree that voter turnout is crucial this November, and for Democrats the grim prospect of a key constituency sitting it out is not far-fetched. That would be the growing number of Hispanic voters, the group that played a decisive role in the Democratic presidential win in 2008, and has remained central in maintaining that slim Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. Both the president and Democratic legislators say they wouldn’t be in office were it not for the Hispanic vote, but this year disappointment with the president and the party over a lack of movement on immigration reform may keep many away from the polls.
The president and Democrats have blamed Republicans for a stalled immigration bill in Congress, but Hispanic voters say the president can use his executive powers, and they were infuriated when Mr. Obama announced he would delay any executive action on the issue until after the midterm elections. Mr. Obama was heckled at this year’s annual Congressional Hispanic Caucus gala, and several groups protested outside — a first in the gala’s 20-plus-year history. Latino groups are sponsoring phone banks and get-out-the-vote initiatives nationwide, but a growing number of Hispanic voters say they feel ignored by the president. If a significant number of Hispanics stay home on Nov. 4, it could be the death knell for a Democratic majority in the Senate.
In 2010, Mr. Obama said he understood that voters were frustrated and that “we lost track of the ways we connected with folks who got us here in the first place.” The way things are going now, it would serve him well to save some time and fish that speech out of the recycling bin. Voters continue to say they feel frustrated, and there are rumblings that many key Democratic voters plan to stay home.
Patricia Guadalupe is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. She has reported for several media outlets, including National Public Radio’s Latino USA, CBS Radio and Pacifica Radio Network.
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