MONTPELIER,
Vt. (Reuters) - Still sifting through the wreckage of the Nov. 8
election, Democratic leaders nationwide are struggling to find a new
message to claw back support and avoid years in the political
wilderness.
Not
only do Republicans control the White House and both the U.S. Senate
and the House of Representatives, they now hold 33 governor’s offices.
New England, long considered reliably Democratic, is a prime example of the party's demise.
Republican
Phil Scott won in Vermont over Democrat Sue Minter who was criticized,
like presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for failing to develop an
economic message that resonated with voters worried about good-paying
jobs.
Considered
a liberal bastion, Vermont has a tradition of sometimes choosing a
Republican governor to keep one party from having too much control.
Elsewhere,
Republican Chris Sununu will replace a Democratic governor in New
Hampshire while Maine and Massachusetts already have Republican
governors.
“We
lost the governorship of freaking Vermont,” lamented Washington-based
Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. “We didn’t just lose an election.
This was a national rebuke. This was biblical.”
Republicans
also command 32 state legislatures and have full control -- meaning
they hold the governor’s office and both legislative chambers -- in 24
states, including swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. When President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, they
controlled just nine.
“There
are more Republicans at the state legislative level than there have
ever been,” said Tim Storey, an analyst with the National Conference of
State Legislatures.
Republicans
scored a major coup when they seized the Senate in traditionally
liberal Minnesota, giving it full control of the legislature, and they
gained full control of next-door Iowa.
“The
party’s message, structure and apparatus are broken,” said Kofinis, who
was chief of staff to moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West
Virginia. “We haven’t acknowledged it for years because we had the White
House.”
Obama’s two terms masked a crumbling party infrastructure.
During Obama's tenure, Democrats lost over 800 state legislative seats, at least 13 governorships and both houses of Congress.
Party insiders are reluctant to blame the popular Obama but cite plenty of reasons for the decline.
These
include a muddled economic message; an overemphasis on emerging
demographic groups such as minorities and millennial at the expense of
white voters; a perception the party is elitist and aligned with Wall
Street; a reluctance to embrace the progressive populism of Senator
Bernie Sanders, the former presidential hopeful; and failure to field
strong candidates in key states.
There
is an emerging consensus, they add, that the party has been too focused
on winning national races and has not invested enough in local
campaigns, along with a grudging admission that Republicans have done a
better job of competing on the ground.
As
a result, a poor performance by the Democrats in the 2010 midterm
elections gave Republicans control of statehouses across the country,
allowing them to redraw legislative maps to fashion districts that would
help ensure their long-term electoral success.
“I
think the foundation was built back in 2010,” Wisconsin Governor Scott
Walker told Reuters. “There was a big wave and then for many of us that
were elected in ’10, we got reelected in ’14 in battleground states -
Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Michigan. You look at the states that were key
to the presidential win, were states where Republicans did well in ‘10
and then sustained it.”
“UNDER-RESOURCED”
Democrats
are working to recover and looking ahead to governor’s races in New
Jersey and Virginia next year to make up lost ground. Governor’s offices
have become crucial for another reason: Republican governors signed
voter suppression measures in states such as North Carolina that
Democrats believe damaged turnout.
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