Breaking News: Biden says he'll get "104% of the Black vote" after Superstar black entertainer's endorsement

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

Having disrespect for an internet loudmouth like you is irrelevant.

You earned my disrespect when you physically threatened me.

You and Lucas need to get a room and swap spit for awhile.

Just to clear up the lie you just made. I never physically threatened you. What I said is that I had the physical ability to kick your ass from Austin to Houston. More than a slight exaggeration and certainly in bad taste on my part. At no time did I threaten to come to Houston, find you, and kick your ass.

Also, you lied a while ago when you said you had some sort of proof that I hired an investigator to search you out.

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Just to clear up the lie you just made. I never physically threatened you. What I said is that I had the physical ability to kick your ass from Austin to Houston. More than a slight exaggeration and certainly in bad taste on my part. At no time did I threaten to come to Houston, find you, and kick your ass.

Also, you lied a while ago when you said you had some sort of proof that I hired an investigator to search you out.

Did I say you said: You would "come to Houston, find you, and kick your ass"? FYI: You'll be the first!

And show me the post where I said you hired an "investigator"!! You can't help yourself. I did say you had some duffus call me or it was you calling ... that is true!

Just so you know: Beating up old people is an aggravated felony ... for which deadly force may be used as a defense. So going around threatening people with your fantasy prowess is not a good idea! But kindergarten school grounds are loaded with folks like you! Grow up!

It is apparent how you lie! Telling someone you can kick their ass all the way back to Houston is a physical threat ... which is bullshit BTW. And if you wish a further explanation I will provide one ....

... you've been to Houston area since that time. How many times have you driven by my residence? (Or where you believe is my residence!).

Anyone who does the chest beating of you and Lucas ... are wimps!

You earned the disrespect I have for you....both of you! From now on you get "Fluffer" as a title.

Quit stirring up bullshit with your lies. Here's the big one .... and relevant. Run and hide, Fluffer!

10-20-2016, 08:03 AM #21
SpeedRacerXXX


This election is OVER. Republicans should start focusing on 2020. Unless a bomb hits between now and November 8th there is no way Trump can overcome the lead that Clinton has in the polls. For those of you who are still not believing the polls . . . we'll see in a handful of days how accurate they are.

[eccielover]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

I'm certainly not disagreeing with you that things could shift rapidly in the world of politics. Happened in 2016 and could happen again in 2020.

I just look at different conditions in Michigan in 2020 than in 2016. Time will tell if this very early prediction of mine comes true.

At this point, it's not even rapidly, it's just politics.

Hillary ran a rollercoaster in polling from July through election day in Michigan. I expect similar in 2020.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

Did I say you said: You would "come to Houston, find you, and kick your ass"? FYI: You'll be the first!

And show me the post where I said you hired an "investigator"!! You can't help yourself. I did say you had some duffus call me or it was you calling ... that is true!

Just so you know: Beating up old people is an aggravated felony ... for which deadly force may be used as a defense. So going around threatening people with your fantasy prowess is not a good idea! But kindergarten school grounds are loaded with folks like you! Grow up!

It is apparent how you lie! Telling someone you can kick their ass all the way back to Houston is a physical threat ... which is bullshit BTW. And if you wish a further explanation I will provide one ....

... you've been to Houston area since that time. How many times have you driven by my residence? (Or where you believe is my residence!).

Anyone who does the chest beating of you and Lucas ... are wimps!

You earned the disrespect I have for you....both of you! From now on you get "Fluffer" as a title.

Quit stirring up bullshit with your lies. Here's the big one .... and relevant. Run and hide, Fluffer!

You said I phyically threatened you which means I would have to find you in order to do so. I never threatened you with physical violence and to imply that I did is a lie. Could I kick your ass from Austin to Houston? Obviously not. Could I kick your ass in a fight? Yes. No doubt in my mind.

And I was slightly mistaken when I said you accused me of hiring an investigator to find you. You accused me of having someone call you or calling you myself. A TOTAL LIE.

So you've made 2 lies and it's not even noon time yet. Can't wait to see what you come up with next.

[LexusLover]

Give it a rest Fluffer before I start calling you "Fluffy"! Also, get over yourself. You are a low speed bump in my life.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

Give it a rest Fluffer before I start calling you "Fluffy"! Also, get over yourself. You are a low speed bump in my life.

What? You made it through a post without telling a lie??? Hard to believe.

BTW, you accuse me of lying. Please tell me a lie I've made.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by eccielover

At this point, it's not even rapidly, it's just politics.

Hillary ran a rollercoaster in polling from July through election day in Michigan. I expect similar in 2020.

I'll stand by my prediction that Biden takes Michigan in November.

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

What? You made it through a post without telling a lie??? Hard to believe.

BTW, you accuse me of lying. Please tell me a lie I've made.

Fluffy ... powder your nose.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

Fluffy ... powder your nose.

So you were lying when you called me a liar.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

But if you want to be comparative, I looked back to 2016 Michigan RCP at least and while they didn't give the numbers before 7/7, Clinton was leading in Michigan by polls in the 5-8 point average range with outliers in both directions through most of July/August 2016.

Certainly wasn't predictive then anymore than I would use it in predicting the election today.

I predicted a long time ago that the Democratic nominee would win Michigan in 2020. Why?

1. Trump won Michigan by .2% of the vote.
2. Since Trump took office, his approval rating has dropped 18 points in Michigan.
3. The 2018 midterms saw the Michigan incumbent Democratic Governor and Senator score easy victories.
4. Democratic Senator Peters seems headed to a rather easy victory in 2020.
5. Gov. Whitmer's approval rating is well above 60%.

I'm sure that the frequency of polls will increase over the next couple of months and we will get a clearer view of what is happening in battleground states. Right now that 12% lead in Michigan in the latest poll, conducted among likely voters, is a nice starting point for Biden.

Speedracer, It's interesting looking at what happened in Michigan in the polling closer to election day. Take a look at the table, also click on 14 days on the graph.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...nton-5533.html

Trump gained a lot on Clinton in weeks before the election. Coming into the final stretch, you have Clinton with a 5 point lead in polls conducted on November 1 to November 4. Then you have an 11/6 Trafalgar poll showing Trump with a 2 point lead. This was the last poll before the election, on November 8. You see something similar happening in Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin there were no polls after November 2.

Anyway, maybe the polls for battleground states weren't wrong at the time they were done. Trump was working his butt off and pumping lots of money into battleground states. Clinton not so much. So you have polls done in the earliest part of November included in the averages that didn't reflect Trump's standing on election day.

There are flaws in this argument, like absentee and mail in voting. Also you could say a single polling outfit (Trafalgar) on a single day isn't representative.

As you have noted in the past, the polls weren't that far off in the popular vote. The last RCP average was 3.3% for Clinton, versus an actual result of +2.1% Clinton. With respect to that 1.2 point difference, I wonder how much of that was people who said they intended to vote for Clinton, but weren't that enthused so they didn't make it to the polls. Many on on the other hand were genuinely excited by Trump. So a larger % of Trump respondents to the polls actually ended up going on election day.


Back on topic, you and Eccielover have a great point, that a lot can happen between now and November, so polls aren't that indicative of the final result, and it's anyone's race. You may be right.

Trump's been way behind Biden in the polls going back 12 months. I don't see the last minute surge happening this time. You may have just as much enthusiasm among the Trump voters this year as in 2016. And Biden may be a poor candidate. He may fuck up on the campaign trail and in debates, and can't match Trump's energy. But he's not hated by half the population, like Hillary. Even Chung Tran voted for Trump because he hates Hillary. On the other hand, you may have underestimated what many in this forum have called TDS, which has grown stronger with Trump's time in office. A lot of people, Millenials, independents who wouldn't normally have voted will do it this time. And your typical Democratic voter is less likely to stay at home. If you put Kim Jong-Un up as the Democratic candidate, you'd have some people voting for him. Trump's an extremely polarizing figure and has become more so over the last 4 years. That's probably going to cost him the election, no matter what the state of the economy or the pandemic.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Yet you continue to criticize my missing the 2016 election. Why was that a "BFD" and my nailing the 2018 election NOT a"BFD"? Typical hypocrite.

Democrats picked up 40 House seats and 7 governor's seats in 2018. They lost 2 Senate seats while facing terrible odds. They held seats
in heavily Republican states of Montana and West Virginia.

Latest House results confirm 2018 wasn't a blue wave. It was a blue tsunami.

Cox's victory combined with other election results means that Democrats have picked up a net gain of 40 seats.

As has oft been repeated, this is the largest Democratic House gain since 1974. It's a larger gain than Democrats had in the wave elections of both 1982 and 2006.

Another way to judge an election is by how many votes each side wins. Democrats' position in the national House popular vote is now reaching historical proportions.

According to the vote count from the Cook Political Report, Democrats now have a 8.6 point lead. For a party that started in the minority, this is incredibly strong. Minority parties often struggle because even an unpopular majority party is protected partially by the fact that incumbents receive a boost compared to other candidates.

This year's 8.6 point House popular vote win for the Democrats is the greatest on record for a minority party heading into an election. This dates all the way back to 1942, when the Clerk of the House started listing the House popular vote in its after-election statistics document. That is, the Democratic performance this year was better than the minority party's in the previous 38 elections.


https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/polit...ave/index.html

2018 was most definitely a Blue Wave. You can rationalize it anyway you want. And you would be wrong.

let's look at facts shall we? i've posted both of these articles before. Trump's midterm was not a mass revolt by voters. you and some left leaner writers can't make a case for it based in historical data.

i'm sure you know that the trend in US politics is for the incoming president's party to lose seats in the midterms, yeah? good. now first Trump and the Republicans didn't suffer some historic loss in his first midterm. more on the real loser later...


Trump actually did way better than Obama in his first midterm

https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...idterm-2018-11


Alex Lockie Nov 7, 2018, 10:58 AM



President Donald Trump Ralph Freso/Getty Images

• President Donald Trump on Tuesday night lost control of the House of Representatives.

• Democrats seized at least 26 seats to gain a majority that could stymie his agenda and lead to investigation of his administration.

• But he did way better than then-President Barack Obama in his first midterm election.

• Presidents almost always lose a few dozen House seats in the midterms.Barack Obama lost 63 in 2010 and Bill Clinton lost 52 in 1994.
  

• The elections haven't all been called yet, but Trump likely lost around 30 House seats, making it a pretty strong showing.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night lost the House of Representatives to the Democrats, who seized at least 26 seats from the Republicans.


A majority-Democrat House threatens to stymie Trump's agenda and could lead to the investigation of his administration. But, all told, he didn't do so badly.


In midterm elections, a president's party loses a handful of seats. For former President Barack Obama, midterm elections in 2010 and 2014 were catastrophic compared to Trump's moderate losses.


In 2010, Obama lost 63 House seats. Even if every House race undecided at time of publication gets called for the Democrats, Trump will have lost about half as many seats as Obama did during his first midterm.


In 2014, Obama lost just 13 House seats, but he lost them in a House already packed with Republicans. In the end, Democrats held just 188 seats to 247 for Republicans. Additionally, in 2014, Obama lost the Senate.


Trump managed to keep his hold of the Senate, where the Republican majority may even increase. Republicans in this midterm benefited from having only nine seats up for grabs in the senate, compared to 26 for Democrats and the Independents who caucus with them.

Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have hurt Senate Democrats' ability to campaign by skipping the customary senatorial recess in August.


now about the real loser ...


Obama’s Midterm Loss Record Could Make History


By Stuart Rothenberg
Posted October 30, 2014 at 4:12pm

President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row.


In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.


Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms.


Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are expected to lose another 5 to possibly 12 House seats (or more), taking the sitting president’s total midterm House loses to the 68 seat to 75 seat range.
Most recent presidents have one disastrous midterm and another midterm that was not terrible. The GOP lost 30 House seats in George W. Bush’s second midterm, but gained 8 seats in his first midterm for a net loss of 22 seats. The party lost 26 seats in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm, but a mere 5 seats in his second midterm for a net loss of 31 seats.


Democrats got shellacked in 1994, losing 54 seats in Bill Clinton’s first midterm, but the party gained 5 House seats in 1998, Clinton’s six-year-itch election, for a net Clinton loss of 49 House seats. (The figures don’t include special elections during a president’s term.)


Obama campaigns with Mary Burke, the Democratic challenger for Wisconsin governor. (Win McNamee/Getty Images News)

Looking at Senate losses, Republicans lost a net of 5 seats in George W. Bush’s two midterms, while Republicans lost a net of 7 seats during Ronald Reagan’s two midterms and Democrats lost a net of 8 seats during Bill Clinton’s two midterms. (Again, these numbers do not reflect party switches or special elections.)


Democrats have a chance to tie the number of Senate losses that Republicans suffered during the midterms of Eisenhower, when the GOP lost a net of 13 Senate seats (12 in 1958 and only one in 1954).


Democrats lost 6 Senate seats in 2010 and seem likely to lose from 5 to as many as 10 seats next week. That would add up to Obama midterm Senate losses of from 11 seats to as many as 16 seats.


Democrats will likely not exceed the number of Senate losses they incurred during the two Truman midterms, in 1946 and 1950, when the party lost a remarkable net of 17 seats.
Are the Democrats’ losses due to the increasingly partisan nature of our elections and the makeup of the past two Senate classes, or is the president at least partially to blame because he failed to show leadership on key issues and never successfully moved to the political center?


The answer, most obviously, is, “Yes.”


Correction, 10:15 a.m.
A previous version of this story misstated the year in which the Democrats lost 6 Senate seats during President Barack Obama’s tenure.


and this ..

https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-in...isenhower/291/


Under Obama, Democrats suffer largest loss in power since Eisenhower


This Tuesday, President Obama will deliver his farewell address from McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, Illinois -- the site of his 2012 re-election celebration. On that night in 2012, Democrats defended the White House, held their majority in the Senate, and regained 8 seats in the House; a significant win for the Obama legacy. Zoom out, and the 2012 election is an outlier in the steady and far-reaching electoral losses of Democratic elected officials during the Obama Administration.


Learn what the 2018 midterms might bring in our report: The Demographics of 2018 Swing Districts


Republican groundswell in state legislatures.

In 2009, President Obama’s party controlled both chambers of 27 state legislatures. Eight years later, Democrats control both chambers in only 13 states. Among the states that slipped from Democratic control are Wisconsin, North Carolina, Iowa and West Virginia; states key to the victory of President-elect Donald Trump last November. According to a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Democratic Party has lost a net total of 13 Governorships and 816 state legislative seats since President Obama entered office, the most of any president since Dwight Eisenhower.



A reversal of power in Congress.

President Obama entered the White House with his party touting a 60 seat majority in the Senate and 257 seat majority in the House. Democrats now hold a 48* seat minority in the Senate and 194 seat minority in the House -- a net loss of 12 and 64 seats respectively.





*2 Independents caucus with Democrats


The midterm elections delivered significant blows to Congressional Democrats. In 2010, Democrats lost 6 seats in the Senate and 63 seats in the House, costing them the chamber. In 2014, Democrats lost another 13 seats in the House and a staggering 9 seats in the Senate; this time losing them the Senate and completing a Republican takeover of Congress.


What’s ahead?

In 12 days, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. The President-elect will enter office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress in addition to 32 state legislatures and 33 governorships. This level of legislative control presents President Trump and his party the opportunity to enact their policy agenda with minimal pushback from their Democratic colleagues.

See maps of 2017 State Legislative Districts

Written by Kevin King
kevin@quorum.us

[bambino]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

i'm sure you know that the trend in US politics is for the incoming president's party to lose seats in the midterms, yeah? good. now first Trump and the Republicans didn't suffer some historic loss in his first midterm. more on the real loser later...


Trump actually did way better than Obama in his first midterm

https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...idterm-2018-11


Alex Lockie Nov 7, 2018, 10:58 AM



President Donald Trump Ralph Freso/Getty Images

• President Donald Trump on Tuesday night lost control of the House of Representatives.

• Democrats seized at least 26 seats to gain a majority that could stymie his agenda and lead to investigation of his administration.

• But he did way better than then-President Barack Obama in his first midterm election.

• Presidents almost always lose a few dozen House seats in the midterms.Barack Obama lost 63 in 2010 and Bill Clinton lost 52 in 1994.
  

• The elections haven't all been called yet, but Trump likely lost around 30 House seats, making it a pretty strong showing.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night lost the House of Representatives to the Democrats, who seized at least 26 seats from the Republicans.


A majority-Democrat House threatens to stymie Trump's agenda and could lead to the investigation of his administration. But, all told, he didn't do so badly.


In midterm elections, a president's party loses a handful of seats. For former President Barack Obama, midterm elections in 2010 and 2014 were catastrophic compared to Trump's moderate losses.


In 2010, Obama lost 63 House seats. Even if every House race undecided at time of publication gets called for the Democrats, Trump will have lost about half as many seats as Obama did during his first midterm.


In 2014, Obama lost just 13 House seats, but he lost them in a House already packed with Republicans. In the end, Democrats held just 188 seats to 247 for Republicans. Additionally, in 2014, Obama lost the Senate.


Trump managed to keep his hold of the Senate, where the Republican majority may even increase. Republicans in this midterm benefited from having only nine seats up for grabs in the senate, compared to 26 for Democrats and the Independents who caucus with them.

Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have hurt Senate Democrats' ability to campaign by skipping the customary senatorial recess in August.


now about the real loser ...


Obama’s Midterm Loss Record Could Make History


By Stuart Rothenberg
Posted October 30, 2014 at 4:12pm

President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row.


In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.


Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms.


Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are expected to lose another 5 to possibly 12 House seats (or more), taking the sitting president’s total midterm House loses to the 68 seat to 75 seat range.
Most recent presidents have one disastrous midterm and another midterm that was not terrible. The GOP lost 30 House seats in George W. Bush’s second midterm, but gained 8 seats in his first midterm for a net loss of 22 seats. The party lost 26 seats in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm, but a mere 5 seats in his second midterm for a net loss of 31 seats.


Democrats got shellacked in 1994, losing 54 seats in Bill Clinton’s first midterm, but the party gained 5 House seats in 1998, Clinton’s six-year-itch election, for a net Clinton loss of 49 House seats. (The figures don’t include special elections during a president’s term.)


Obama campaigns with Mary Burke, the Democratic challenger for Wisconsin governor. (Win McNamee/Getty Images News)

Looking at Senate losses, Republicans lost a net of 5 seats in George W. Bush’s two midterms, while Republicans lost a net of 7 seats during Ronald Reagan’s two midterms and Democrats lost a net of 8 seats during Bill Clinton’s two midterms. (Again, these numbers do not reflect party switches or special elections.)


Democrats have a chance to tie the number of Senate losses that Republicans suffered during the midterms of Eisenhower, when the GOP lost a net of 13 Senate seats (12 in 1958 and only one in 1954).


Democrats lost 6 Senate seats in 2010 and seem likely to lose from 5 to as many as 10 seats next week. That would add up to Obama midterm Senate losses of from 11 seats to as many as 16 seats.


Democrats will likely not exceed the number of Senate losses they incurred during the two Truman midterms, in 1946 and 1950, when the party lost a remarkable net of 17 seats.
Are the Democrats’ losses due to the increasingly partisan nature of our elections and the makeup of the past two Senate classes, or is the president at least partially to blame because he failed to show leadership on key issues and never successfully moved to the political center?


The answer, most obviously, is, “Yes.”


Correction, 10:15 a.m.
A previous version of this story misstated the year in which the Democrats lost 6 Senate seats during President Barack Obama’s tenure.


and this ..

https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-in...isenhower/291/


Under Obama, Democrats suffer largest loss in power since Eisenhower


This Tuesday, President Obama will deliver his farewell address from McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, Illinois -- the site of his 2012 re-election celebration. On that night in 2012, Democrats defended the White House, held their majority in the Senate, and regained 8 seats in the House; a significant win for the Obama legacy. Zoom out, and the 2012 election is an outlier in the steady and far-reaching electoral losses of Democratic elected officials during the Obama Administration.


Learn what the 2018 midterms might bring in our report: The Demographics of 2018 Swing Districts


Republican groundswell in state legislatures.

In 2009, President Obama’s party controlled both chambers of 27 state legislatures. Eight years later, Democrats control both chambers in only 13 states. Among the states that slipped from Democratic control are Wisconsin, North Carolina, Iowa and West Virginia; states key to the victory of President-elect Donald Trump last November. According to a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Democratic Party has lost a net total of 13 Governorships and 816 state legislative seats since President Obama entered office, the most of any president since Dwight Eisenhower.



A reversal of power in Congress.

President Obama entered the White House with his party touting a 60 seat majority in the Senate and 257 seat majority in the House. Democrats now hold a 48* seat minority in the Senate and 194 seat minority in the House -- a net loss of 12 and 64 seats respectively.





*2 Independents caucus with Democrats


The midterm elections delivered significant blows to Congressional Democrats. In 2010, Democrats lost 6 seats in the Senate and 63 seats in the House, costing them the chamber. In 2014, Democrats lost another 13 seats in the House and a staggering 9 seats in the Senate; this time losing them the Senate and completing a Republican takeover of Congress.


What’s ahead?

In 12 days, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. The President-elect will enter office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress in addition to 32 state legislatures and 33 governorships. This level of legislative control presents President Trump and his party the opportunity to enact their policy agenda with minimal pushback from their Democratic colleagues.

See maps of 2017 State Legislative Districts

Written by Kevin King
kevin@quorum.us

I’ve pointed this out to him several times. It just doesn’t sink in. I’m waiting for him and Lexus Lover in a cage match. I have no idea who would win. Maybe Biden could referee.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by bambino

I’ve pointed this out to him several times. It just doesn’t sink in. I’m waiting for him and Lexus Lover in a cage match. I have no idea who would win.

20 bucks on LL!


BAHHAAA

[bambino]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

20 bucks on LL!


BAHHAAA

I’ll take the underdog. I read the polls. Speedy in a technical KO. His Under Armour shorts fit better.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by bambino

I’ve pointed this out to him several times. It just doesn’t sink in. I’m waiting for him and Lexus Lover in a cage match. I have no idea who would win. Maybe Biden could referee.

maybe this will help him get it? from the far left VOX .. one of their famous (sic) "explainers" with of course the perfunctory disclaimer "NOT OBAMA'S FAULT" slant.

when VOX calls the Democratic majority lost under Obama a "collapse" it's bad.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ats-downballot


The Democratic Party’s down-ballot collapse, explained

Thanks, Obama (well, it’s not really his fault).


By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com Jan 10, 2017



(Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

Over the past eight years, the Democratic Party has lost a mind-bogglingly large number of races across the country. Their share of seats in the United States Senate has fallen from 59 to 48. They’ve lost 62 House seats, 12 governorships, and 958 seats in state legislatures. Paired with Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory, that means that the party whose champion won the popular vote — and whose outgoing president delivers his farewell address Tuesday — lies right now as a smoking pile of rubble.



It’s tempting to blame the man at the top — Barack Obama, whose own approval rating just hit 56 percent. To conservatives, like the Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost, the simple moral is that “while people still like Obama, they haven't much cared for his policies — and time and again they have taken their frustrations out on his fellow partisans.” Many left critics of Obama-era policies claim the same thing. “Bernie would have won” has become a natural rallying cry for supporters of the self-proclaimed democratic socialist from Vermont.



There’s also the argument that Hillary Clinton, personally, had serious self-confessed weaknesses as a politician and an idiosyncratic vulnerability to an overhyped email scandal. On this version of the theory, you could just as easily say “Gillibrand would have won” or “O’Malley would have won” or echo Obama’s own claim that he would have beaten Trump and won a third term. To the left, the Democrats’ down-ballot failures undermine that kind of complacency. It’s true that Obama, personally, was a very successful politician. But Obamaism, they say, has been a political failure and needs to be replaced by something new.



The truth, however, is that while it’s certainly true that Democrats spent Obama’s last two years in office being much too complacent about the state of the party, there’s less than meets the eye regarding the apparent divergence of Obama’s political fortunes from his party’s. American politics simply operates on a very complicated series of partially overlapping time cycles — two-year House cycles, four-year presidential terms, six-year Senate terms, decennial redistricting processes — that played out in an unfavorable way for Obama-era Democrats. The party as a whole generally did well when Obama was popular (including down-ballot gains in 2016) and did poorly when he was unpopular.



But while it’s hard to blame Obama for Democrats’ down-ballot decline, it’s correct to blame him — and his team more broadly — for the complacency. Democrats were taking on water for the bulk of his presidency. And rather than act like a crew staving off emergency with an all-hands-on-deck spirit, Obamaworld largely acted like victorious conquerors and took the opportunity to cash in on the private sector.



Obama started out with a lot to lose

The most obvious problem with judging a president by a raw count of how many seats his party lost is that it serves to oddly punish Obama for Democrats’ success in 2006 and 2008. But the extreme unpopularity of George W. Bush, combined with Obama’s fresh-faced appeal and rhetorical prowess, ended up giving Obama the strongest down-ballot support of any president since Jimmy Carter.



This would almost certainly have been unsustainable under any circumstances.



The American political system features a strong tendency to revert toward the mean. You sometimes pick up unlikely seats, as when Democrats won a 2008 Senate race in Alaska or the GOP won a 2010 Senate race in Illinois, but you almost inevitably wind up giving back those gains. Had the most acute phase of the financial crisis hit in December 2008 rather than October 2008, Democrats probably would have started Obama’s term with fewer marginal seats and therefore would have lost less in subsequent elections.


Two-term presidents always lose down ballot

What’s more, Obama determined to put those majorities to use by pushing public policy in a more progressive direction. This has the natural consequence of costing Democrats seats because, as George Washington University’s John Sides put it in 2010, “the public is a thermostat” and almost invariably shifts in the opposite direction from current governing trends.


“The public requests liberal policies, gets them, and then moves in the other direction,” is how Matt Grossmann, a Michigan State University political scientist, explains it. “They then get more conservative policies and move against them.”


In 2006 and 2008, the thermostat pushed many red-leaning districts to elect Democrats. The combination of a big stimulus bill, a major expansion of the welfare state, a big new financial regulation framework, and dozens of smaller initiatives was to push things in the other direction. This is simply how the system works. During the eight years of Kennedy and Johnson, Republicans made legislative gains across the country only to give them back during the eight years of Nixon and Ford.


Xenocrypt



This was a turbulent 16-year span of American political history, featuring the Vietnam War, a presidential assassination, a resignation under threat of impeachment, the civil rights revolution, and much more.



But the much more placid two-term presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton show the same pattern — the only difference is Democrats didn’t make down-ballot gains in the solid South under Ike because one-party rule in Dixie was already so entrenched that there was nothing to gain.



Xenocrypt



The exception that proves the rule here is the Reagan Revolution, which, whether you measure it as ending in 1989 or 1993, was associated with strong GOP gains in the South that offset losses in the North.


Xenocrypt



The most natural way to interpret the historical pattern is that Reagan was the beneficiary of a generational realignment of white Southerners’ partisan affiliations, not that every single other president was a miserable failure in cultivating down-ballot popularity. The fact that even Reagan generally saw GOP losses outside of the South simply underscores the strength of the overall trend.



Democrats suffered from bad timing under Obama

Obama’s boast that if he’d been on the ballot this past November he would have won is likely accurate. At the same time, if he’d been on the ballot in November 2014 he almost certainly would have lost. His intense unpopularity two years ago is now largely forgotten, since it was largely driven by two transient issues — the Ebola epidemic and a string of widely publicized ISIS beheadings — that have since vanished from the scene.
But at the time, his approval ratings were badly underwater, with only 43 percent of voters saying he was doing a good job compared with 51 percent who disapproved. This proved deadly to Democratic Party Senate candidates, who, nonetheless, consistently outpolled Obama in their own home states.






Today, Obama’s approval numbers have flipped to 56-42. Had Obama been that popular back in November 2014, it’s likely Democratic incumbents in North Carolina, Arkansas, and Louisiana would have been reelected, and there’s an outside chance Democratic challengers in Georgia and Kentucky could have prevailed.



Nothing fundamental would have to change about the long-term trajectory of American politics for that to have happened. But a 2017 reality in which Democrats held a narrow majority in the Senate — giving Democrats the ability to set the rules governing confirmation hearings and the agenda for executive branch oversight — would look very different.



By the same token, Democrats’ losses in the 2010 midterms were big, but they weren’t particularly unusual. What was unusual is that 2010 was also a census year. Midterm elections line up with a census only once every 20 years, and while gerrymandering isn’t a new practice, the present-day combination of advanced mapping technology and ideologically sorted parties is quite new. This meant that losing ground in Obama’s first midterm election proved unusually consequential, setting up a situation where the GOP managed to maintain its majority in the House of Representatives after the 2012 elections despite winning 1.4 million fewer votes.



Losing the White House in 2016 may have been for the best

Having done a fair amount of reporting on Democrats’ down-ballot woes over the course of 2015, I can tell you that the party’s plan for recovery didn’t really make sense. What they had was joint effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), and Democratic Governors Association (DGA) to share data and field operations while identifying key districts whose underlying demographics were shifting in a more blue-friendly direction. Their hope was to make gains in 2016, minimize losses in 2018, and then make a big push to win state legislatures in 2020 in order to control the redistricting process.



This was pretty much the best plan available to them, but it stood no real chance of working. There’s simply no precedent for a party making those kinds of big down-ballot gains while holding the White House.



Over the summer of 2016, something else unprecedented happened, as Donald Trump secured the GOP nomination and at a couple of junctures appeared to be headed for a huge landslide defeat. Instead, he successfully reconsolidated the support of just enough traditionally Republican-voting white college graduates in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to eke out an Electoral College win while losing the popular vote.



Democrats rightly regard this as an alarming development both for their party’s issue agenda and for the stability of American democratic institutions. But from a narrow party-building perspective, it gives them a much more realistic chance at recovery.



Faced with the objective problem of unfavorably drawn districts for both the House of Representatives and most state legislatures, the best solution is the opportunity to run against an unpopular incumbent president. There’s obviously no guarantee that Trump will be unpopular in 2018 and 2020. But having an incumbent president of the other party to run against is the necessary first step, and at the moment Trump is unusually unpopular for a president-elect who’s supposed to be enjoying his honeymoon period.



Obama hasn’t been much of a party builder

While much of the above has tended in the direction of exculpating Obama from blame for the sorry state of his party, the basic numbers are bad enough that it’s unavoidable to cast some blame in the direction of the outgoing president and his team.



This starts with the matter of the succession. Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses as a general election candidate were not unforeseeable. Indeed, the ability to foresee them was one of the main reasons Obama was able to garner endorsements from so many party elected officials back in his 2008 primary campaign. But starting with his selection of a vice president who, though well-liked, did not seem to inspire enormous confidence in Obama as a potential president, Obama consistently acted to make Clinton his designated successor in all but name. This began well before the 2016 primary season officially started, and contributed to the pace with which the field narrowed down to a Clinton-versus-Sanders choice.



Nor has Obama been particularly astute in using executive branch appointments to elevate the profiles of talented younger people who might make effective electoral candidates. Someone like Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro is frequently seen as a “rising star” pick in this mold, but Castro is from Texas, where close association with a Democratic administration in Washington is unlikely to be helpful. By contrast, there are states that Obama won twice, like Florida, Wisconsin, and Michigan, whose local parties are hurting for talent with name recognition and fundraising ability.



Most of all, the Obama team often contributed to — and seemed complicit in — an atmosphere of complacency, in which control of the White House obscured the Democratic Party’s underlying weaknesses. Losing to Trump, who was an unusually poor candidate, was a bitter pill to swallow. But Democrats were lucky to face off against a weak nominee in a year when the fundamentals favored a GOP victory.



A very large share of veterans of the Obama White House — people who’d come to Washington because they cared about issues and causes — ended up cycling out to the private sector, often in Silicon Valley or Wall Street, even though the legacy they’d fought for was far from secure. The prevailing attitude seemed to be that continuing the fight in Congress or in the states — whether that meant helping Democrats win back states where they’d lost control or simply helping Democratic governors of blue states succeed in building inspiring models of progressive politics — was unnecessary.



Trump’s victory is already beginning to push some Obama veterans back into the game with, for example, the team behind the Keepin’ It 1600 podcast mostly quitting their day jobs to form a new media company. The underlying weaknesses that Trump’s win exposed were caused much more by bad timing than anything about Obama personally or ideologically. But it’s been present and clearly visible for at least two if not six years, yet it’s only over the past month or so that Obamaworld seems to have become fully awake to it.


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