(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In Kentucky's combative Senate race, Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes makes an appeal at a campaign rally, Saturday, November 1, 2014, at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. The results of the closely watched Kentucky contest will be crucial in the midterm election that could shift the balance of power in Congress.
Why are Democrats on the verge of an avoidable mid-term disaster? Some of the reasons include the six-year jinx, in which the president's party normally loses congressional seats. Some of it is luck of the draw in terms of who is running, with less than stellar candidates such as Bruce Braley in Iowa and Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky. And some if it reflects an electorate turning against an incumbent president who is hunkered down rather than fighting back.
Yet that set of alibis lets the Democrats off the hook far too easily.
There is a huge amount of unfocused anger and frustration in America, much of it around family economic issues. A full-throated pocketbook populism might well capture that unease and turn it to the Democrats' advantage.
But for the most part, Democrats in the campaign have not been playing to their latent strengths. As a consequence, the anger is generalized. It is directed against all large institutions, and against politics and government in an amorphous way.
On the way to the polls this morning, I saw a pickup truck with a hand-lettered sign in the back window, "Re-Elect Nobody!" That about sums up the Election Day mood.
Source: Stan Greenberg and Democracy Corps
And this reality plays to Republican strength in several reinforcing respects. For starters, the core proposition of the Democrats since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt has been that affirmative government is needed to offset the cruelties of the market economy. But if voters are turned off to government itself, the advantage goes to the Republicans.
By the same token, Democrats are more likely to win when demographic groups who vote in presidential years also turn out in decent numbers in off-year election. That includes young people, poor people, and African Americans.
If these groups are disaffected-and they clearly are-pro-Democratic turnout declines. The Republican hard-core base, meanwhile, is fired up and ready to go.
Source: Stan Greenberg and Democracy Corps
Some of this situation is the fault of our president. Obama might have used the financial collapse to remake the financial system; instead the administration gave priority to bailing out the banks. The right-wing Tea Party movement captured the popular revulsion against Wall Street. As a consequence, Obama is correctly seen as too close to the bankers, and the Democrats fail to get credit for the things they did achieve, such as preventing the financial collapse from turning into a second Great Depression.
Other legislative successes, such as the Affordable Care Act and the program of mortgage relief known as HAMP, send mixed messages to voters. They were designed in collaboration with industry interest groups-drug companies, insurance carriers, and bankers. They are frustrating for ordinary people to navigate-feeding the Republican line that government screws things up, is corrupt, or both.
Source: Stan Greenberg and Democracy Corps
Yet there is a latent set of issues that Democrats could and should be winning on: the still lousy economy, the lack of good jobs, the free ride for bankers, the particular pocketbook assault on the dreams of young adults.
Sure, you say, but any serious initiatives are likely to be blocked by Republicans. But that's exactly the point. If Democrats were drawing clearer distinctions and articulating a bold pocketbook populism, they could move public opinion their way.
Want some evidence? Measures to boost the minimum wage are on the ballot in several states, including deep-red ones like Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, and all are favored to win. Democrats-as a party-should be going to town on the minimum wage issue. Family leave initiatives are also on state ballots, and same story.
Pollster Stan Greenberg demonstrates that voters are drawn to Democrats because of their position on household economic issues-but that this latent advantage is swamped by the larger disaffection against government and politics in general.
Source: Stan Greenberg and Democracy Corps
It's too late for Democrats to make the plight of working families their core theme in this election, but it's never too late to reclaim these issues-and voter affections.
Want to hear what a real Democrat sounds like? Elizabeth Warren, unlike Obama, is welcome on the campaign trail just about everywhere.
Campaigning in Kentucky for Democrat Alison Grimes, who is challenging Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Warren declared: "Mitch McConnell is here to work for the millionaires and billionaires. . . . This is right in line with the Republican philosophy across the board, because their view is the most important thing government can do is protect the tender fannies of the rich and powerful."
"Let's be clear about this," she added, "the game is rigged, and Mitch McConnell wants to keep it rigged."
Too few Democrats embrace this brand of muscular pocketbook populism.
In the Sunday New York Times, there was a tongue-in-cheek article titled, "The Terrible 32s." The authors offer a guide to older adults for parenting 32-year-olds who just can't seem to get traction in adulthood, who bounce back and forth from shared apartments to the family basement. ("Restrict your 32-year-old's data usage on the family cell plan, for which she sporadically remembers to pay her share.")
Beneath the barbed humor is a grim economic reality. Mom and Dad, the boomer generation, floated upwards on a rising tide of debt-free college, good jobs with health and retirement benefits, and a windfall of affordable housing whose value appreciated faster than inflation, leaving a nice nest egg for the silver years. Those anxious 32-year-olds, it turns out, have plenty to be anxious about-college debts, astronomically expensive housing, crappy jobs.
The Times piece is a classic example of how issues that should be politicized are turned into personal failings. Too many boomer parents who had it easier blame the prolonged economic adolescence of their 20- and 30-something offspring on self-indulgence. Too many young adults internalize their economic setbacks. A Democratic Party worthy of the name would be addressing the real pocketbook frustrations of the Barista Generation, and fashioning a narrative and a politics.
One of these days, one perhaps as early as 2016, more Democratic candidates will display progressive convictions and courage. Until then, voters will curse, "A plague on both your houses," and will turn away from politics and government altogether-a default setting that plays into the hands of Republicans.
