This last election cycle revealed two important truths: the Republican Party is in trouble and the Democratic Party may be even worse off.
The mainstream media has proclaimed President Trump’s presidency dead upon arrival but former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that is far from the case.
Bloomberg who ran New York as an independent was outspoken in his opposition to Trump during the election but recently tweeted that he gives the president a 55 percent chance of being re-elected in 2020. His reasoning is simple, Democrats never had a strong message for voters.
That prediction may seem absurd to those whose only diet is CNN and MSNBC but the facts and history reveal something far different. The truth is that Bill Clinton had a lower approval rating at the same point in his presidency than President Trump. Clinton’s party was fairly united in its focus on ideas, the current Democratic Party is not.
While Democrats in Washington are united in their distaste for Trump they have not translated that into anything close to victories on the level that matters – votes.
Over the past two months, Democrats have lost special elections for two House seats, plus the race for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. In one of those elections, Democrats could not even beat a Republican who made headlines by slamming a reporter to the ground the night before the election.
In spite of heavy support from the national Democratic Party, it looks more and more doubtful they will gain a Congressional seat in the upcoming special election in suburban Atlanta.
Many Democrats privately suggest and others publicly that Hillary Clinton is a big part of their problem. Clinton, in turn, has turned to blaming her own party for her loss last November claiming her national party gave her bad data to use in the campaign.
Angry Democrats have responded saying Clinton and her campaign either did not know how to use the data or simply ignored it. Whoever was at fault, Clinton focused on Georgia and North Carolina and ignored Wisconsin and Michigan. The results showed in the Electoral College.
Obama loyalists just want Clinton to get out of the spotlight so their party can move on.
“When Al Gore lost the election, he went to Europe, gained weight and grew a beard,” said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons. He then told a group of black female activists that the DNC was “taking them for granted.”
“Black women have consistently shown up for Democrats as a loyal voting bloc, demonstrating time and again that we are crucial to the protection of progressive policies such as economic security, affordable health care, and criminal justice reform,” they wrote. “Well, like civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who testified at the 1964 Democratic convention demanding blacks have a seat and voice within the party, we are ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired.'”
Perhaps a much bigger sign of fracture within the party is debate over the issue of superdelegates. Unique to the party are these delegates who are prechosen because of their position in the party. Democratic members of Congress, for example, are free to vote however they want.
Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders rightly believe the superdelegate rule helped bury their candidate.
One more problem on the horizon for Democrats is seen in a recent study from the Pew Research Center. Voters in the 50-64 age group demographic are more likely to remain loyal to the Republican Party than people who identified as Democrats.
According to the study, 86 percent of Americans in the 50-64 demographic continuously identify themselves as Republican while only 72 percent of Democrats in the same demographic remain tied to that party.
These findings may be reflected in Democrats difficulty in winning back seats in the House and Senate in 2018 because the 50-64 demographic is one of the largest, wealthiest, and active voting blocs. That block of Republican voters is concentrated in suburban and rural areas, where Democrats struggled in 2016.
Young voters have been historically unreliable in non-presidential-election years, and over the past two decades, they’ve been moving in increasing numbers to urban centers, where Democrats have long been successful.
Congressional elections favor the party that does better in rural and suburban areas and President Barack Obama all but ignored those key areas. It may be that, while Democrats appear to have won the war they have in truth they have lost the battles that ensure that win.
~ American Liberty Report
