"Looking Back at Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy"

[villager]

"Despite opposition from national Democrats, the former Vermont governor's bid to build up party infrastructure in every state was a success in the unlikeliest of places -- at least while it lasted."

<snip>

Here's how the Democrats fared in the reddest of red states between January 2005 and January 2009, the period when the 50-state project was in operation:

State House seats: Net gain of 39 seats, a 2 percent increase of all seats in the states analyzed

State Senate seats: Net loss of two seats

Governorships: Net loss of one

Attorney generalships: Net gain of one (elected seats only)

U.S. House seats: Net gain of three seats

U.S. Senate seats: Net gain of one seat

Presidential performance: In 15 of the 20 states, the Democratic nominee saw an increase in vote share between 2004 and 2008. In three other states, the vote share remained constant. It dropped in only two states.

"Where we really made a big difference was in states like Nebraska, where Obama won an electoral vote in 2008," Dean said. "He had a real party to work with."

Overall, Democrats either improved their results in the reddest states between 2005 and 2009 or, at worst, suffered only minor setbacks, which, given the obstacles the party faced in these solidly Republican states, was almost a victory in its own right.

Now let's compare this record to the one between January 2009 and January 2013.

State House seats: Net loss of 249 seats, a decrease of 13 percent of the existing seats in those states

State Senate seats: Net loss of 84 seats, a decrease of 12 percent

Governorships: A decrease by half, from eight governors to four

Attorney generalships: A drop by two-thirds in elected AGs, from nine to three

U.S. House seats: A 40 percent drop, from 44 seats to 26

U.S. Senate seats: A drop from 11 seats to 8. (It could drop further by 2014: Of those eight remaining seats, three senators are retiring and another three face tough reelection contests.)

Presidential performance: Only two of the 20 states (Alaska and Mississippi) saw higher support for Obama in 2012 than in 2008. In most of the 20 solidly red states, Obama's 2012 vote fell back roughly to John Kerry's level from 2004.

Altogether, these post-2009 declines are, to put it bluntly, pretty catastrophic. In these 20 solidly red states, the Democrats controlled 13 legislative chambers in 2005, a number that fell to just three in 2013. Of the 40 chambers in these states, only two experienced a net gain of Democratic seats between 2005 and 2013; in the other 38, the Democrats lost ground.

<snip>

etc.

http://www.governing.com/blogs/politics/gov-democrat-howard-deans-fifty-state-strategy.html

[FarPoint]

1. Yes!!!!!

Yes, and Yes!

[davidn3600]

2. The issue though is those Democrats in the red states were not progressives

And that really made a lot of people upset on the left. The "Blue Dogs" believed the party leadership was leaving them out to dry.

So although Dean did a great job building up a majority as far as the party controlling seats, it kind of fell apart on major issues because the progressives wanted to move the government to the left which caused the Blue Dogs to get destroyed in the following elections.

You can't have a Democrat win a red district and want and expect them to be progressive. It's just not going to work. They'll get killed in the following mid-term. The political demographics of the district have to change for you to get a progressive there.