via Lincoln Mitchell: What Both Parties Can Learn from New York.
For the Democratic Party, the New York mayor’s race is a reminder of a different kind. The party is poised to lose its fifth consecutive mayoral race in a city where they enjoy a registration advantage over Republicans of roughly six to one. One can try to excuse away this away using demographics of money, but since 1989 losing Democratic candidates for mayor have been African American, Latino and white, Jewish and Christian, male and female. Democrats have lost when severely outspent and when campaign spending has been equalized by New York’s strong campaign finance laws. Democrats have lost in good economic times and in bad, with Democratic and Republican presidents in office, and when the country has been at war and at peace.
Given this, it seems like the problem might lie with the Democratic Party, and probably has relevance beyond the five boroughs of New York City. Unlike the 2006 and 2008 national campaigns, recent Democratic candidates for mayor in New York have not had the luxury of running against failed parties and failed presidents. Without this enormous advantage, the Democratic Party in New York has been unable to persuade voters that they offer meaningful solutions to a range of problems including education, public safety and fiscal management. More significantly, they have utterly failed to articulate a compelling progressive vision for urban America. The lesson for the national party is that in the few places where Republican Party candidates are not dysfunctional and on the ideological fringes, the Democrats still need to do some work on figuring out what to say to voters. Unless they do this, if the Republicans were willing and able to nominate Bloomberg type candidates in other parts of the country, the Democratic moment might dissipate pretty quickly.
I do not take aim at the good professor because of the mismatch. I cannot even spell “professor” without spell-check. I only want to add my two cents real quick here and be done with it.
When you have a Republican candidate who takes on a populist persona and speaks of Democratic values as if they were settled, New York values, then that candidate is going to win hearts and minds of New Yorkers. What Bloomberg has done is to “out-democrat the Democrats”.
Just two more quick things. First, there are no other Bloomberg-type candidates in other parts of the country for the Republican Party to pick. Second, there was a candidate who instinctively knew what to say to the voters (and he won) – Barrack Obama.
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via Dem Advantage Over GOP Has Expanded Since Election: Gallup.
Mike Lux, a progressive political strategist says not to get too overly excited about the future. He cites the economy and the current debate over health care reform as key situations that could cause the mid-term elections to go badly for Democrats even though the party identification looks overwhelming right now. He warns, “If the economy is still weak and we blow it on passing health care, we could have a bad year.”
To further kill your buzz, John Pitney, a Republican strategist and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College says that the party identification looks good for Democrats, but don’t get too excited:
So true. BUT, if there is such an overwhelming tilt toward the Democratic party in an overwhelming number of states, how do you suppose Republicans win elections disproportionately to the data?
Republicans held the White House “36 of those 70 years” by electronic ballot stuffing, voter suppression by “caging”, false vote counts through “hacking”, denying access to voting machines, gerrymandering, mailing false notifications of voting places, targeting local Democratic Party leaders for prosecution for voter fraud by partisan U.S. Attorneys when no case existed or impeding investigation of Republican election fraud, and many more tactics.
Was it Joseph Stalin that said it doesn’t matter who votes, it only matters is who counts the votes?