Dems Need More Diversity, Too
Midterms typically turn out a much smaller, older, whiter and more conservative electorate than presidential election years. But this one revealed what the National Journal's Ron Brownstein called a dangerous dependency by Democrats "on a boom-and-bust coalition of young people and minorities." The coalition that brings Democratic victories in national elections doesn't show up in Congressional midterm elections.
What are Dems to do now?
As the Grand Old Party's 2012 autopsy said, outreach matters. If Democrats want to compete for Congress in the off-years, they need more support from middle-class and older whites. That includes the most conservative demographic: white men without college degrees.
Bill Clinton demonstrated how to do that in 1992. "Bubba" broke his party's losing streak by skillfully moving to the center on issues like crime, civil rights and welfare reform without losing his party's liberal base. His campaign also mobilized a vigorous youth outreach that was largely duplicated by Obama in 2008.
Obama similarly was able to overcome the perils of racial prejudice partly by focusing on economic issues with a reassuring common-sense approach. As Kuhn points out, white support for Obama before the September 2008 crash was very similar to that of earlier Democratic nominees. But after the crash "he earned the support of more white men than any other Democrat since 1976." He also improved with white women, winning a traditional share for Democrats.
Since then the electorate obviously has become much more polarized. Our elections increasingly seem to be determined not so much by persuading people to change their minds as by persuading your own side to show up at the polls with more people than the other side.
That may sound like good news for Democrats in 2016, if their outreach is better than the Republicans'.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
