What the White House, DNC Got Wrong in 2014, and for that Matter, 2010

The Obama campaign machine is the single greatest political campaign machine we've ever seen assembled (at least until the next President, as all build and improve on the last in this area). They ran through two national elections, and a long, hard primary fight, and won two national elections. Their success in Presidential elections is as good or better than we've ever seen, and it's fair to call them experts. They do a great job putting together a campaign.

That's Presidential elections though, and not midterms. In midterm elections, he has one of the worst records we've seen in modern times. While President Bush did well the first time, and President Clinton the second time, President Obama got crushed both times, losing a house in both midterm elections he lead the party into. It was ugly, to say the least.

I think the biggest fault of the Obama team in both midterms was acting on a desire to change the electorate we were dealing with in both elections into something it wasn't. In 2012, voting rights, access to contraception, marriage equality, and other socially liberal causes moved large numbers of voters into the Democratic column, and made the party a juggernaut at the polls. In 2014, the electorate that came out didn't care about that. The Obama team, as it did in 2010 when touting it's achievements at the time, did not do a good job pivoting onto issues that mattered to the electorate at hand. He never was able to sell this electorate on his record of results- which is pretty damn good- or talk to them on issues that they cared about (with a few exceptions). If we wanted to talk about issues such as immigration, or contraception, or anything else, we needed more concrete examples of action being taken, and better messaging about what was done (since things were). The messaging was just, for lack of a better word, off.

Now, if they had been on, would they have avoided this electoral fate? No. We would have lost seats. We would maybe even have lost the Senate. We would have lost less though, and been closer in several states that ended up costing us badly. With that said, I don't think the President or the DNC deserve the largest share of the blame. No, my next post will talk about who should be blamed more.