Four year ago, as we Democrats were on the short end of a Republican trifecta, we had to engage in soul-searching similar to what Republicans face now. The conclusion Democrats arrived at was that our problems were mainly non-ideological and related to strategy and infrastructure. This conclusion could be seen with the DNC's election of Howard Dean on a fifty-state strategy platform, in the papers produced by NDN with their New Politics Institute, and also in the netroots as perhaps best exemplified with Crashing the Gate. The Democratic soul-searching conclusion of late 2004 and early 2005 was not that our ideas were either wrong or unpopular, but rather that we faced organizing and structural deficiencies that allowed Republicans to eke out 50% +1 victories through fundraising, media, grassroots activist, message packaging, and strategic resource deployment advantages.
Republicans seem to be reaching similar conclusions now. The post-election Pew survey shows they think they should move in a more conservative direction by a large 60%-35% margin. Further, according to Democracy Corps, two-thirds of Republicans think that McCain and their congressional candidates lost because of the media, and the same number think that McCain wasn't aggressive enough in his attacks on Obama. (This latter conclusion strikes me as particularly difficult to justify, given that McCain and the RNC went 100% negative with paid media during the final five weeks of the campaign.) Further, in their description of how to rebuild the Republican Party, The Next Right seems to be repeating what Democratic netroots activists said back in 2004: run a fifty-state strategy and build up media and grassroots infrastructure. The over-riding Republican conclusion seems to be not that their ideas are wrong or unpopular, but that they need to improve their organizing, get more aggressive with Democrats, become more conservative, and destroy the mainstream media.
So, Republicans seem to be reaching the same conclusions Democrats did four years ago: we are neither wrong nor unpopular, simply out-organized, out-strategized, and facing structural deficits. While the Democratic conclusion was quickly proven correct as Bush's approval rating dropped below 50% and then suffered a long, slow decline over the next four years, the Republican conclusion seems largely untenable. This is because, as I describe in the extended entry, the Republican deficit is much larger than the one Democrats faced four years ago. Further, it arose out of a more damaging source: Republicans have become highly unpopular in 2008 because of how they governed, while Democrats were unpopular four years ago because of their image.
Here are some key differences to the situation that Democrats faced two years ago, and Republicans face now:
Partisan Identification: Four years ago, after the 2004 election, Democrats and Republicans both represented 37% of the electorate. This time, Democrats were 39% while Republicans were 32%, for a Democratic advantage of 7%. There is a big difference between starting out tied versus starting out down 7%.
Party Favorable Ratings: Four years ago, the Democratic Party still had a net positive favorable rating, and in fact had a higher favorable rating than the Republican Party. By contrast, right now the Democratic Party has a 62%-31% favorable rating according to the latest CNN poll, while Republicans are at 38%-54%. While Democrats were tied with Republicans in partisan self-identification four years ago, and actually still polled more favorably than Republicans in the abstract, Republicans face gaping deficits in both categories at the end of 2008.
Presidential results: Barack Obama currently leads the popular vote by 6.80% and rising, which is much larger than Bush's 2.46% victory four years ago. Further, Obama is the fourth Democrat in five elections to win the popular vote, and the third out of the last five to secure over 360 electoral votes. By contrast, the largest electoral total for Republicans over those five elections was 286, a margin that could have easily turned into defeat with a shift of only 1.1% from Bush to Kerry in Ohio. In other words, Democrats winning the popular vote and the Electoral College has become the norm, while the best Republicans can do is squeak out narrow, disputed victories. This is the reverse of the situation Democrats faced in the five Presidential elections before 1992.
House results: Democrats have won the popular vote in the last two House elections by an average of 8.3%, compared to the Republican average wins in 2002 (3.6%) and 2004 (2.6%). Further, Republicans never reached a majority of the House popular vote during their entire time in the majority. Yet further, the current Democratic seat total of 257 dwarfs the Republican peak of 232 from 2005-2006. While the most seats Democrats ever needed to win was 15, Republicans will now need to win at least 40 seats in order to control the House.
Senate Results: The Democratic caucus currently stands at 58 seats, three higher than the 55 seat maximum reached by Republicans four years ago. Perhaps even more importantly, four years ago Democrats actually won the popular vote to determine the 100 Senators that composed the Republicans 55-45 Democratic Senate. So, not only did Democrats face a smaller deficit, but that deficit happened despite their victory in the Senate popular vote. That was clearly a swing district defeat caused by strategic and organizing deficits, rather than a broader problem of ideology and popularity.
In summary, four years ago, Democrats faced a 3.6% average deficit in the U.S. House, an anomalous and disputed 2.5% deficit at the Presidential level, were tied in partisan self-identification, ahead in party favorability polling, and ahead in the Senate popular vote. Our problems were clearly a series of narrow defeats caused by insufficient organizing, infrastructure and message packaging, rather than a deeper problem of our ideas being wrong and / or unpopular.
Republicans, by contrast, face an 8.3% deficit in the House, regular and often large popular vote defeats at the Presidential level, an inability to reach 300 electoral votes, a 7% deficit in partisan self-identification, a 24% deficit in party favorability, and massive Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress that significantly surpass anything Republicans ever accomplished. These problems are of a different order of magnitude than the ones Democrats faced four years ago, especially if one takes into account current demographic trends. It is very difficult to conclude that these are narrow losses caused merely by strategic, organizing and infrastructure deficiencies. Or, at least, it seems very difficult to make this conclusion if you are not a Republican.
The main reason why Republicans face a much more serious deficit than Democrats is that when Republicans actually put their ideas into governing praxis, it made people's lives worse. As such, people now hate them and their ideas. Democrats, by contrast, left power with high approval ratings in both 2000 (President Clinton) and 2002 (Senate Democrats). Democrats were defeated in 2000 and 2002 despite their popularity. It was the theoretical promise of improvement under Republicans that put them in power not disaffection with Democrats. Republicans won because of image, not because what Democrats were doing was unpopular. By contrast, Democrats pretty much only won because people hate Republicans with a vengence right now.
So, Democrats faced a non-ideological deficit of strategy, organizing and infrastructure that caused them to lose despite their popularity, while Republicans face a problem where they lose even when Democrats are unpopular (check out congressional approval ratings if you think Congressional Democrats are popular). The former means there is no need to change your ideological stance, while the latter means you better apologize for, and then swiftly and sincerely change, your governing philosophy almost altogether. Republicans may think they only need to get a more favorable media, a more thorough-going conservative candidate, better online organizing, a fifty-state strategy, and more aggressive campaigning, but unless the country collectively develops amnesia over how much things sucked when Republicans actually governed, all of that combined ain't going to help that at all.
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