What Numbers and History Have Taught Me About Elections Senate Edition, Part 1: How The Democrats Won A Whopping Majority and Squandered it in Just Six Short Years

 

Those of you who read my columns know I spend a seemingly inordinate amount of time trashing the left, and I’m going to have to start this part of my series doing the same thing this time. However there’s a purpose to it this time. So bear with me.

According to the left wing of the Democratic Party, the one that seems to exist in academic journals and Hollywood, America is a progressive nation from coast to coast. They’re right – you know, if you only count the states on both coasts and leave out  that pesky section in the middle. (I know, there’s method to my madness this time.)

America believes in racial and gender equality, gun control, raising the minimum wage and taxing the rich by an overwhelming majority. And they’re right – if by ‘overwhelming majority’ you mean somewhere between 53 and 58 percent of all Americans in a given poll. And the Democrats not only believe in these ideals but they are held by large parts of America’s population – African-Americans, LatinX, women, LGBTQ+, college educated and the young. The only people who might not share these opinions are white working-class voters but as progressives have considered them all racist and homophobes decades before the term MAGA was coined, they never count them.

And the only thing standing in the way of passing the complete progressive agenda is the antiquated way the founders designed the Constitution back in the 1780s. And because they were all white men who were willing to let slavery be part of our republic, we should disregard their intentions. (They also couldn’t have foreseen the internal combustion engine, the telephone, air travel, radio or television but somehow that never gets mentioned by Gen Z as their fatal flaws.)

Essentially the only thing that has allowed the Republican Party, the party of white supremacy (since the Democrats abandoned it  in the 1960s), corporate billionaires (except the ones who give money to Democratic campaigns) and a group of token minorities to have any power at all is because of the three flawed elements of are ‘democracy’. (I paraphrase the pure leftists and not the ones tied to the Democrats, though they do sometimes sneak in.)

1.        The electoral college, a broken system that subverts the will of the people and broke down in 2000 and 2016 to allow a Republican to become President without winning the popular vote.

2.       Republicans ability to gerrymander districts to the point to give them a disproportionate amount of influence, particularly in the smaller states

3.       The Senate which gives far too much power to small states and not enough to the big ones.

 

If you read the last article in this series you’ll find the first point is built purely on sand and the entire idea of the big blue states overwhelming the smaller red states where, as we are told over and over, ‘no one lives’. The second point has some teeth, I acknowledge, though I should be clear that given the opportunity the Democrats can redistrict the hell out of some areas as much as Republicans. But the third point demonstrates, yet again, what an incredibly short memory this supposedly academic field of the left has.

And I don’t just mean in terms of the long history of our county. I mean that as recently as fifteen years ago the Democratic Party had a considerable presence in many of those small red states in the deep red south and flyover country where apparently some Democrats lived. They were in fact central to the overwhelming majorities that Obama had when he won the Presidency in 2008 and the Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress by huge numbers. And while one can and should blame the Tea Party for the loss in the House of Representatives, that same loss in the Senate doesn’t hold water. Because while the Democrats were able to win the House back in 2018 after spending the rest of the decade in the minority they have never come close to enjoying the majority they had in Obama’s first years in office – and unless they are willing to learn some hard lessons, it may be a long time before the Democrats hold it again.

It will clearly not happen in this November: the map for Democrats is not a good one this cycle. But if the Democrats are going to be able to be competitive in the Senate at any point in the future, they have to relearn the lessons that they have clearly forgotten in the last decade. So in this series I’m going to discuss the Senate: how the Democrats managed to find their way back to the majority only to fritter it away, how the left has decided it is a loss worth taking even with the most substantial problem of another branch of government hanging in the balance, and the path both the Democrats – and maybe the Republicans need to take in order for our country to move forwards, regardless how the race for the White House turns out this fall.

I’ll begin my story at the end of the 2004 election, when it truly looked like the Democrats were headed towards extinction. Not only had they narrowly lost the President to George W. Bush that year but they continued to show no signs of making any progress in regaining control of either House of Congress. They’d managed to ‘only’ lose 3 seats in the House but they’d lost four seats in the Senate. They’d lost seats in Georgia and Florida, John Edwards run for the Vice Presidency had cost them their seat in North Carolina to Richard Burr and in the crowning insult Tom Daschle, the minority leader had been narrowly defeated for reelection by John Thune. Only Barack Obama’s victory in Illinois was a resounding triumph for the Democrats.

The savior of the Democratic Party came from the most unlikely of sources. Howard Dean of Vermont had been a front-runner for the Democratic nomination but after a disappointing third place finish in Iowa and a notorious scream upon defeat, his campaign dropped to zero. The Democrats elected him Chairman of the DNC in February.

Dean believed for the Democrats to go forward as a party they had to do something radical. He unveiled a ‘fifty state strategy’ in order to make an attempt for the Democrats to compete in the conservative states that the party had spent much of the last twenty years dismissing as ‘Solid Red’.

His leadership was opposed by the then minority leaders in Congress, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid but he promised to focus on fundraising and campaigning rather than discuss policy. His model was, ironically, enough built on the Republicans of the mid-70s after Watergate. He intended to seed the local level with young and committed candidates, building them into state candidates. He traveled across the country, including Utah, Mississippi and Texas. He shrunk the Democratic Party platform to make it compact. And most importantly he engaged in a grass roots and online fundraising campaign that was unheard of.

In the 2006 midterms the results paid off. While their was clearly fatigue with Bush’s handling of the Iraq War, the Democrats gained 32 seats in the House. For the first time since the GOP had been founding 152 years earlier it didn’t win a single seat held by a Democrat and didn’t defeat any Democratic incumbents. It was the largest gain for the Democrats since 1974, when the turmoil of Watergate a new wave of Democrats into the House. The Democrats were just as successful in the Senate, taking out six Republican incumbents. Jon Tester narrowly won in Montana, giving the state two Democratic senators along with Max Baucus. Claire McCaskill won in Missouri, Sherrod Brown overwhelmed Mike DeWine in Ohio and Pat Casy defeated Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. Sheldon Whitehouse was elected in Rhode Island and Jim Webb narrowly beat George Allen in Virgina. Combined with the two independents in the Senate – Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman in Connecticut – the Democrats had taken back the majority there too.

Dean’s strategy was on full display in Obama’s landslide victory in 2008. The Republicans were defending 23 seats in the Senate to the Democrats 12 and early on they conceded that they wouldn’t be able to regain the majority. But not even they expected what was going to come.

The Democrats gained eight seats in the Senate while not losing a single one in contention. Their victories came not just in blue states like New Hampshire and Oregon but states that were trending blue such as Colorado and New Mexico. Elizabeth Dole lost in North Carolina to Kay Hagan. Mark Begich defeated six term Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. By the time Al Franken finally won in Minnesota the Democrats had won 58 seats and for the briefest of periods a supermajority in the Senate.

In just four years Howard Dean had built the Democratic Party back in control of both the White House and both houses of Congress. Obama had become the first President since 1980 to gain seats in the House – and as of this writing, the only President of either party to do so. The Democrats had effectively erased all of the gains the GOP had made since Gingrich led the revolution in 1994.

But the man who helped bring it down was  literally calling from inside the House. Rahm Emmanuel was the head of the DCCC and constantly clashed with Dean over strategy. He favored a tactical approach focusing on key districts. And when it came to recruiting candidates he favored right-leaning candidates and former Republicans. Many of the Representatives he recruited voted against much of the Obama administration’s policies including stimulus, banking reform and health care. This strategy was short-sighted and led to the start of the massive losses in the House majority. Added to his role as Obama’s chief of staff, he eventually had to leave prior to the 2010 midterms.

Because of Emmanuel’s clashes with Dean, Dean was pushed out after Obama’s election as head of the DNC. Tim Kaine the new chair, abandoned Dean’s 50 state strategy and no Democratic chair has tried anything like it since. The party has clearly suffered from it ever since.

It wasn’t clear in 2010 that the repercussions of abandoning Dean’s plan had been responsible for Democratic losses in the Senate, mainly because none of the candidates were up for reelection. There were troubling signs to be sure: Blanche Lincoln was soundly  defeated in Arkansas and Bryan Dorgan and Evan Bayh’s retirement had cost them seats in North Dakota and Indiana, respectively  but the Democrats had also suffered in what had been solidly blue states as well: Russ Feingold lost to Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Pat Toomey had inched out Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania. The Democrats were counting themselves lucky that they still were in the majority at all.

Obama’s reelection two years later made it seem like that might very have just been a hiccup. Because in large part due to the superb work by Dean in 2006, the Republicans had a better opportunity to reclaim the Senate. The Democrats were defending 21 seats, the Republicans only ten with one Independent and one Independent Democrat up for reelection.

But Obama managed something no Democratic President had done since FDR’s second term: he added seats to the Senate majority in both his runs for the White House. Much of this was due to the groundwork Dean had done: all seven Senators who had won election for the first time under his stewardship were reelected with only Jon Tester facing what might be considered a close race, winning by less than four percent over his Republican challenger. But the Democrats also managed to take back the seat that they had lost to Scott Brown in 2010 when Elizabeth Warren managed to win and Chris Murphy took over the Independent Joe Lieberman’s seat in Connecticut. Joe Donnelly managed to win over Richard Mourdock in Indiana (after the latter made some terrible comments about abortion that he never recovered from) and Heidi Heitkamp managed to (narrowly) hold the Democratic seat five-term Senator Kent Conrad had vacated. Even the retirement of Jim Webb in Virginia didn’t cost the Democrats as Tim Kaine defeated George Allen.

In addition there were promising signs in the Sun Belt. Shelley Berkley had narrowly lost to Dean Heller in Nevada and Richard Carmona only barely lost to Jeff Flake, who took over Jon Kyl’s seat in Arizona. Only Deb Fischer solidly winning Nebraska after Ben Nelson retired put a damper on the night.

But in 2014 the Democrats finally paid the price for rejecting Dean’s plan. The Senate elections were devastating as the Republicans took nine seats that had belonged to the Democrats, the largest gain by either party since 1980. Three of the losers were winners from 2008: Kay Hagan lost to Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Mark Udall lost to Cory Gardener (by a  nose) in Colorado and Dan Sullivan defeated Mark Begich in Alaska.

2014 also removed three of the last Senators in Dixie; Mark Pryor was flatted by Tom Cotton in Arkansas; Shelly Moore Capito became the first Republican in seventy years to win in the Senate in West Virginia; and Mary Landrieu lost in a runoff in Louisiana to Bill Cassidy. The Democrats also lost their other Senate seat in South Dakota and Steve Daines became a freshman Republican in Montana.

All of this was bad enough but after Trump’s upset victory in 2016 the Democrats would compound the error when they ended up embracing so much of Bernie Sanders and the Justice Democrats as their standard bearers after the primaries of 2018.

The Justice Democrats, as I wrote in an earlier article, had a disastrous run in their initial rollout, particularly when it came to the Senate: all four of their standard bearers had been flattened in the primaries that year. They hadn’t even come close to a fifty state strategy, particularly in states were until fairly recently there had been Democratic Senators. In Indiana, Iowa and North Carolina they had been unable to win a single primary; both of their candidates in Missouri would not win their seats and they’d done worse in Utah than Dean had twelve years earlier.

But the Democrats chose to make AOC and Rashida Tlaib the voices of the party. Admittedly the Democrats were facing, if anything, a tougher map in 2018 then they were in 2012 they were now defending 26 states to the Republicans 8. It is a credit to the Democrats, in some respects, that they did as well as they managed too, managing a net loss of 2 seats. Jacky Rosen managed to defeat Dean Heller in Nevada and Krysten Sinema managed to win narrowly over Martha McSally in Arizona.

But the root of the Democratic defeat came when Claire McCaskill lost in Missouri to Josh Hawley and two red state Senators from 2012 – Joe Donelly and Heidi Heitkamp lost. Had the Democrats spent some of the money they shoved into Florida to keep Bill Nelson afloat and in Texas for Beto O’Rourke, it’s not impossible that either Senator could have kept their seat. (Donnelly’s margin was one of the closest of the races that were being contested.) But this was not the standard to be fought for by a party that was increasingly looking at Joe Manchin as a DINO and Paula Swearengin (who’d only gotten 30 percent of the vote in her primary challenge) as the future of the party.

As of this writing only five of the Democrats that Dean helped get elected to the Senate during his tenure are still in the Senate. Two of them Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar are all but assured reelected. Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey are the narrow favorites to win and as of this writing Jon Tester’s prospect for reelection are increasingly bleak. The Democrats face an uphill battle to hold the majority this fall defending 23 seats to the Republicans 10. And it is telling that the Democrats have focused all of their energies on Florida and Texas – large electoral prizes with a huge urban base – rather than even attempt to make  a run in any of the states they held Senate seats in as recently as ten or even six years ago. Indeed it tells you everything you need to know about so much of the Democratic Party today that their plan to control the Senate involves creating new states rather than trying to win back the ones they had.

(And for the record, I’m all for DC and Puerto Rico becoming a states. It doesn’t change the fact that the entire idea behind it is built on a Catch-22: these states are the key to breaking the imbalance the Republicans have with their small states but in order for it to happen in the current system, some of those Republican small states will be needed to sign on.)

By far the most symbolic loss in 2024 will be when Jim Justice wins Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia. This state was once the most reliably Democratic in the nation and as late as 2014 still had two Democratic Senators. To the far left Manchin is a Democrat in Name Only because he didn’t endorse the Social Democrats platform. The fact that it is a non-starter for any Democrat seeking statewide office – as Paula Swearengin found out twice in two years – is irrelevant to the left who has demonstrated time and again that they would rather lose horribly with a full-throated progressive then win with a moderate Democrat.

That’s the difference between the Justice Democrats and the Democrats under Howard Dean. The Justice Democrats can only win in deep blue states. Under Dean’s strategy the Democrats were capable of winning everywhere. A political party needs to let as many people in as it can to have influence. The left has made it clear who they want in their tent and it doesn’t include anyone in the flyover states where nobody lives – but until fairly recently some voters were willing to elect Democrats and still might be if they didn’t have to embrace every aspect of the progressive platform. The left hates Republicans and the deep red states so much that they don’t want to help the Democrats who are in it, if it involves compromise.

In the next article I’m going to make it very clear how the people who scream the loudest about the Supreme Court for the last eight years clearly never let it influence how they voted until eight years ago.