The Democratic Party is in big trouble and people are starting to notice. The last two mid term elections have flipped control to Republicans on a massive scale and the Democrats have no back bench.
Just look at their leading candidates for president. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders aren’t up and comers, they’re senior citizens and there are no Marco Rubios waiting in the wings.
Ashe Schow writes at the Observer:
Obama Has Decimated His Own Party Unlike Any Other Modern PresidentLast week concluded the final election of President Obama’s tenure that didn’t involve replacing him. After seven years in office and as many elections, the Democratic Party has taken a beating worse than the Republican Party took under George W. Bush.On nearly every level of government, Democrats have lost more seats under Mr. Obama than under any other two-term modern president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower. (This includes the dual presidencies of John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford.)Under Mr. Obama, Democrats have lost 13 net Senate seats, 69 House seats, 11 governorships, a whopping 913 state legislature seats and 30 state legislature chambers, according to analysis from the Washington Post.That makes Mr. Obama the overseer of the biggest loss in Senate seats, House seats and state legislature seats of any of the past seven two-term presidencies, the second biggest loser of state legislature chambers (Mr. Nixon/Mr. Ford lost 31 to Mr. Obama’s 30) and fourth biggest loser of governorships (tied with Bill Clinton).
Even liberals in media are coming to terms with this new reality.
Mark Schmitt writes at the New York Times:
A Lost Generation of DemocratsAs Republicans never tire of pointing out, the Democratic candidates for president are old.The average age of the leaders, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, is 71, older than Ronald Reagan was during his successful 1980 campaign.The Republican candidates average 57, with three candidates in their 40s, even after Scott Walker (47 at the time) dropped out in September. The sole Republican candidate old enough to collect Social Security? Donald J. Trump.Where are the national Democratic politicians in their 40s and 50s? At 52, Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, is this year’s lone exception. Does it say something about the party, or about the generation, that other than President Obama (born at the tail end of the baby boom), national candidates from this age group are rare? If Hillary Clinton is elected and serves eight years, by 2024, the oldest of the millennials will then be hitting their mid-40s, ready to take over. The generation of Run-D.M.C. and Winona Ryder might miss its chance altogether.
It’s so bad that Matthew Yglesias recently Voxsplained the obvious:
Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.The Democratic Party is in much greater peril than its leaders or supporters recognize, and it has no plan to save itself.Yes, Barack Obama is taking a victory lap in his seventh year in office. Yes, Republicans can’t find a credible candidate to so much as run for speaker of the House. Yes, the GOP presidential field is led by a megalomaniacal reality TV star. All this is true — but rather than lay the foundation for enduring Democratic success, all it’s done is breed a wrongheaded atmosphere of complacence.The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, even the House infighting reflects, in some ways, the health of the GOP coalition. Republicans are confident they won’t lose power in the House and are hungry for a vigorous argument about how best to use the power they have.Not only have Republicans won most elections, but they have a perfectly reasonable plan for trying to recapture the White House. But Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot. Democrats aren’t even talking about how to improve on their weak points, because by and large they don’t even admit that they exist.
After Obama was elected in 2008, liberals in media declared the death of the Republican Party and the birth of a new era of progressive Democrats which would last for years.
Things didn’t really work out that way, did they?
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