Facing the quarter century Democratic Party disaster

Sam Smith – Buried in the second to last paragraph of a Washington Post story on its new poll with ABC that found Trump having only a 42% approval rating, was one of the most stunning survey results seen in years:

The new survey finds 46 percent saying they voted for Clinton and 43 percent for Trump, similar to her two-point national vote margin. Asked how they would vote if the election were held today, 43 [percent] say they would support Trump and 40 percent say Clinton.

This is further evidence of two major stories that Democrats and major media have been unwilling to face, namely that the Democratic policies of the past quarter century have been a disaster and that the Clintons (and, to a lesser extent, Obama) were a significant part of that disaster. 

While both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama stayed in office for two terms, what was unreported was what was happening to their party as a whole. but based in part on stats from Associate Professor Nick Hillman of theUniversity of Wisconsin:

Democrats won 11 new Senate seats during the Reagan years for a 7 seat majority. Two years into Clinton’s administration the Democrats had lost nine of those seats and by George Bush’s election had suffered a tie in the Senate.

Obama started with a 6 seat Senate majority but by the end of his administration had a four seat minority.

At the time of Clinton’s election, Democrats had an 82 seat lead in the House. By the end of his term, the Republicans had a 9 seat lead. At the time of Obama’s election, the Democrats had a 78 seat lead in the House. At the end of his terms, the GOP had a 47 seat lead.

At the time of Clinton’s election, Democrats controlled 19 more state legislatures than the GOP.  By the time of Bush’s election, the GOP controlled 2 more than the Dems. When Obama won,  the Dems controlled 13 more state legislatures that the GOP. By the time of Trunp’s election the GOP controlled 18 more than the Dems.

And in 1995 the Democrats controlled 30 governorships. By 2016 that was down to 18.

This is a loss that is all the more remarkable given that the media almost entirely failed to report it.

Ironically, liberals bought into both Clinton and Obama despite their being creations of the conservative Democratic Leadership Council which was trying to move the party to the right. While Obama tried to disassociate himself from DLC, the fact is that he remained far from a traditional liberal.

But then liberals in general had become increasingly an upscale cultural demographic rather than a political ideology and in the process had dumped their loyalty to lower wage workers, especially non-urban ones. Economic issues helping the lower classes disappeared from the liberal agenda.

It’s well past time for Democrats to dump the Clintons and Obama and rediscover their roots. They’ve had a quarter century trying something different and it’s been a disaster.